London’s street art scene
You may have noticed on London’s walls, lining subways, railway arches, hoardings and on every other conceivable painting surface, that the city hosts an ever-widening array of urban art. Most notably with the rise to fame of Banksy, awareness of uncommissioned works has gone some way to making London one of the street art capitals of the world.
Pieces range from the multistorey high rise unavoidable experience…
… to discreet works that most of the public might miss entirely, if they’re not specifically allowing their gaze to roam.
One significant facet of street art is its ephemeral nature – something ideally suited to social media. Thanks to hashtags, ‘likes’ and retweets, a broader public is given an opportunity to view or locate an artwork before it gets demolished, tagged on or overwritten. The scene is an eclectic mixture of popular representations, quirky humour and tough social statements. The continuous conveyor belt of inspirations and ideas is definitively expressed near to the location where you board your Barnes-bound Roehampton train. Located in the previously unloved and damp subterranean world of Leake Street Tunnel under Waterloo station, it now forms the backdrop to a constantly changing world of creativity.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnf-_W0H0yl/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Raising the Roehampton ‘R’
Picking up on the medium of mural art, and building on the theme of inclusion, we’ve added some sparkle to one corner of campus, between the Froebel Diner and RSU, through the painting of a rainbow flag version of the Roehampton ‘R’. The artist responsible for this fantastic mural is Peruvian-born London-based painter, Gisella Stapleton.
Gisella’s work draws from a mixture of literary, dance, music and other traditional Andean/Latina influences. This background and the subject matter of the mural reflects the University of Roehampton’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. Equally it resonates well with the teaching and research strengths of a significant cluster of Roehampton departments including Drama, Theatre and Performance, Anthropology, Dance, and Media, Culture and Language.
We hope you enjoy Roehampton’s first contribution to London’s street art!
nice – links to our latest work in anthropology on murals. We are just back from a fieldtrip to Derry/Londonderry researching them with level 2 Cultural Politics on Tour students. jonathan
https://www.routledge.com/Murals-and-Tourism-Heritage-Politics-and-Identity/Skinner-Jolliffe/p/book/9781472461438