The warm and stylish interoir of the HUH. store

The HUH store in Dalston is an offshoot of the very popular online arts, culture, fashion, design and lifestyle website of the same name. The store is a carefully curated mix of men’s and women’s clothing with some homeware/accessories.

Speaking to Robyn Ross, Retail Director at the HUH store, she explains the ethos behind the store: “The store basically represents our tastes. We believe in classic, practical and stylish design, no frills. As the store develops we also hope to support new English brands alongside the more established names, creating an interesting and unique shopping experience!”

Warm up with a Caravan coffee, whilst you browse

Opened a year ago by Jack Lowe and Ross, the HUH store was one of the first clothing retailers to open in Dalston. Robyn says of the area: “Dalston has been steadily ‘coming up’ over the past three years or so and we felt it was really the only place to establish ourselves as a current, interesting and different retailer. There’s a great sense of community in the area, as well as a lot of exciting creative opportunities”.

The store has a great mix of brands, and amongst others currently stocks Percival, Libertine Libertine, Norse Projects, Pointer, Herschel and Carhartt. With an offering like this, and the warm and inviting space that the store occupies offering an uncomplicated and stylish place to shop, the HUH. store is definitely worth a visit. Even if it’s just for a chat with Robyn and Jack, whilst you sip one of their excellent Caravan coffees, this Dalston store is a must.

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A gruesome murder. A macabre cover up. These things are not uncommon in London, especially in the days of yore. But when I found out about what happened to Anne Naylor, a sickly girl who worked for a milliner in the late eighteenth century, I had to investigate further.  Are there really ghosts on the London Underground? Is there really a Screaming Spectre?

Aaaaggghhhh!

Anne and her sister were apprentices at a milliner’s run by Mrs Metyard and her daughter. The Metyards were the most brutal of taskmasters and when Anne fell behind on her work (which was often, due to her illness) she would be beaten. One day, unable to take it any more, she ran away, hoping to escape the violent torment that defined her life. Watch the video to find out what happened to her….. and what happened to me when I went looking for her some two hundred years later!

Have you heard the Screaming Spectre? Have you seen any other ghosts on the London Underground? Have you got any of your own ghost stories to share? We want to know. And if you want to learn more about ghostly goings on in London, why not join us on our chilling Death & Debauchery walking tour.

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Wandering around East London taking in the wealth of street art on offer has got to rank as one of the top activities to do in London. 

But the weather does sometimes (with me, seemingly, always) rather get in the way…

Happily….

…there are myriad galleries to get your street art fix meaning that at any given moment any number of post-graffiti artists are plying their wares for your delectation.

Galleries

For a start, there’s Tony’s, D*Face’s Stolen Space Gallery and The Brick Lane Gallery. But also…..

Signal Gallery

Signal Gallery is arguably less well known than the others… though that is changing. Last month I popped along to Signal to see Brooklyn street artist RAE and his first UK exhibition - and was rather taken with it. So, I decided to head down to see 2+2, an exhibition that paired two contemporary fine artists with two street artists, Bristolian stencil artist SPQR and another Brooklyn-ite, Joe Iurato.

SPQR…

Leaving Banksy comparisons aside… well, ok, maybe not leaving comparisons aside….SPQR favours making social comment with his art, at times utilising a brutalist, and abrasive touch. Yet there is also a touch of whimsy and humour – the smiling young woman earlier in the post brings to mind the nudge-nudge of Carry On films. Be sure to keep an eye out for more.

Joe Iurato

I dunno what you said but she don't look happy!

I absolutely adore this piece – the menace, the power and, well, the pure bonkersness of the imagery. And this?….

Ta-xi!

Yessir, the man Iurato is my favourite of the two here. What sort of mind conjures these portraits?

The other great thing about Mr Iurato – he’s well in to his wine; a street artist-cum-sommelier. You don’t get too many of them to the pound.

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Thierry Noir shot to fame in the 80s when he decided the old Berlin Wall was looking a bit shabby and that the whole totalitarian state thing needed a bit of zhoozh. I do not seek to make unnecessary light of such a horror – thank goodness, frankly, for people like Thierry seeking to demystify the dehumanising effect of the wall. And it was joyous poetry that the man himself was not only there to see it come down but was also one of the first to paint the East side.

It would be fair to say the ‘East side’ of London is less political – and moreover, the walls seem designed for people like Thierry to paint on. And he did just that recently, hooking up with the great Stik to adorn the Village Underground.

As the paint dried, we asked Monsiuer Noir if he’d answer a few questions.

You say everything a person does is political and clearly painting the Berlin Wall in the 80s was political. In what way(s) are your paintings at the Village Underground political?
When you paint on the street you change the city where the citizens live. So you make politics. Politics (from the Greek” politikos ” – “of, for, or relating to citizens”) is the art or science of influencing people on a civic, or individual level, when there are more than 2 people involved.

What reaction do you hope to inspire in those looking at your work?
The big mural at the Village Underground I painted with Stik changes the neighbourhood, for good or bad. It depends how you like it. You are free not to like it. We are in a democracy.

How did the collaboration with Stik come about?
I met Stik in Berlin in October 2012 when he visited my atelier and we decided immediately that I had to come to London to paint the streets of Shoreditch.

What artists do you rate? Any in particular in East London?
I like all the great Street Artists of East London like:
Stik, Kid Acne, Broken Fingaz Crew, Phlegm, Pablo Delgado, The Rolling People, Run, Ben Eine, Roa.

What constitutes great street art in your opinion?
For me a great artist is somebody who is at once recognisable.

Do you feel some newer artists get into street art for the wrong reasons – i.e. to make profit? And if that is the case, is the future of street art under threat?
Street Art is everywhere. The advertising companies use Street Art more and more in their ads. This Street Art movement is too big to stop it. What was graffiti in the 80`s is now Street Art: One global movement. Even in China there are Street Artists now.

For a man who has achieved a huge amount, are there any cities you haven’t yet painted in that you still have ambition to work in?
I would like to paint something in New York City.

These days, is there a situation comparable to living in a divided Berlin in the 80s?
Since the Berlin Wall has gone there are new walls all around the world. Sometimes they call this new wall: Green Line or Peace border. Every wall maker says: Please do not compare our wall with the Berlin Wall. Our wall is a good wall.

What do you still hope to achieve with your art?
Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2010, wears a T-Shirt that I made in 2001 with the Checkpoint Charlie Museum: Le Dialogue. I hope Liu Xiaobo will be free soon.

Here, here… do not underestimate the political power of art.

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London’s gin palaces – convivial, glamorous environments. But how did gin reinvent itself from being something drunk by children in slums just 80 years prior?

Fans of booze and/or history may know a few things about gin’s past. One being that the gin craze raged in London between 1720 and 1751, during which time adults would drink an average of half a pint of gin a day. The gin consumption of the average child’s wasn’t far off this either.

Then, from 1830, the gin palace was born. These were brightly lit, welcoming spaces that were adorned with lamps, mirrors and cut glass.*

But how did gin reinvent itself between these dates? How did it go from being something drunk in the slums to something drunk by the well-to-do in glitzy spaces?

Not much is written about gin’s transition, but we’ve done some super sleuthing to uncover the following…

First of all, the gin drunk during the gin craze was known as ‘Old Tom’, and was very different to the gin we drink today. Anyone was allowed to distil their own gin; the lack of quality control causing it to taste foul. Copious amounts of sugar would be added to mask its base flavour. It was so disgusting that turpentine and sulphuric acid were also often added in the name of making the drink taste better.

The gin craze was brought to a halt largely by the Gin Act of 1751. By prohibiting gin distillers from selling to unlicensed merchants and charging higher fees for licenses, it eliminated small gin shops, which helped curb consumption. Bad harvests between 1757 and 1760 led to a ban on distilling grain, which helped reduce consumption further.

Although the ban was lifted in 1760, gin was subject to higher taxes and had to pass tougher quality controls than ever before. Distillers, realising gin would cost more to make, were forced to improve the quality of the drink so it could justify its price.

Alexander Gordon, the founder of Gordon’s Dry London Gin, opened his first distillery in 1769. His commitment to quality was clear – the gin was (and still is) distilled three times for purity. In 1786 he relocated his factory to Clerkenwell in order to take advantage of the purer water bubbling up at the natural spring of Clerk’s Well.**

Although Alexander Gordon laid the way for better gin, other distillers followed suit in the late 1820s and early 1830s. New distilling methods were invented at this time, enabling producers to make spirits that were free of impurities. As they didn’t need sugar or other nasty ingredients to hide the taste, gin from the 1830s onwards was much cleaner and brighter. This new type of gin, referred to as London Dry gin, became popular as it fit beautifully with the Victorians’ interest in healthier ways of living.

The other part of gin’s reinvention came with the arrival of gin palaces in the 1830s. The motivation for their introduction was the 1830 Beer Act, which enabled anyone who had purchased a cheap licence to sell beer. Over the eight years that followed, 45,000 beer shops opened across the UK – more than 15 a day. Gin sellers knew they need to do something to fight back.

The aesthetic of the gin palace was aided by numerous recent innovations. In the early 1800s, gas lighting was introduced – for example, Pall Mall was lit by gas lamps in 1807. In 1832, sheet glass was invented, making this much more affordable and accessible. Mirrors were also put within reach from 1835, when the silvered-glass mirror was invented. All of these innovations meant that gin palaces could supply glorious amounts of light, day or night. More importantly, they were far more glamorous and exciting than the competing beer shops.

So, with innovations in gin’s production and the appearance of its environment, gin moved from being a deadly and foul drink to something sophisticated that was quaffed in sparkling surroundings. It moved an incredibly long way between 1750 and 1850.
If you have any other interesting facts about gin, we’d love to hear them! Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

*There’s lots to say about the gin craze and gin palaces, but unfortunately we don’t have space here. You can find out more about both the gin craze and gin palaces from various sources, including our Death and Debauchery Walking Tour. You can also check out one of London’s last gin palaces on our History of Drinking Tour.

**A few other interesting facts about Gordon’s London Dry Gin: the recipe he launched with has not been changed to this day. We know that the gin is triple distilled and takes its flavour from juniper berries, coriander seeds, angelica root, liquorice, orris root, orange and lemon peel. However, only 12 people in the world are privy to the complete recipe. Gordon’s Gin is now the world’s best selling London Dry gin.

‘Gin Lane’ by William Hogarth, a print that illustrates the possible consequences of gin drinking. Note the hanged man in the building, the children drinking gin on the right hand side and the baby on a skewer in the distance.

An early Gordon’s gin bottle. Alexander Gordon began distilling gin in 1769.

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First up was a sojourn to the Strand Gallery, at the back end of Charing Cross, to have a gander at the work of that most anarchic of funny men – Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves.

As you’d expect from Reeves, humour features prominently although he does have many strings to his Dadaist bow. From a Cezanne-esque bright painting that looks a bit like a boiled sweet (see above), to minimal abstract renderings of Margate, to Beavis and Butthead-style workings of stars of yesteryear and even eighteenth centuy satirical cartoons, Reeves is a dab hand.

This effort reminded me of Brazilian street artsist, Cranio.

After this I headed to the Black Rat Gallery – named after Blek le Rat, the French stencil artist that Banksy may have, er, been inspired by.

Exhibiting here is Butch Anthony, and his Intertwangleism. Butch is a boy from Alabama, but before you insert your own joke about Rednecks, bear in mind I lived in ‘Bama back in the day so watch your tongue!

Anthony is an artist famed for collecting disparate objects and rendering them into a form of street art back in his home state. He calls it ‘The Museum of Wonder’.

Back here in Blighty, Anthony again exhibits a rather sharp sense of humour. His efforts here comprise old school portraits with cartoon bones drawn over the top.

Elsewhere there are scupltures that seem to hint at the possible quintessence of the Deep South – all guns, crucifixes and pocket knives… and what looks like a cast of Han Solo’s ear. Cue the Deliverance guitar….

The post Things to do in London – art, and lots of it! appeared first on Alternative London Walking Tours – Street Art, London Underground, Modern Architecture and more.

It’s an ongoing debate – and it won’t go away.  Should street artists put their work in galleries? Do (some) street artists that decide against such a pursuit get too het up about people wanting to earn a living from it? At what stage do you cease to be a street artist?

These types of musings are sort of on my mind as I have a day out west, trekking in the sunshine over to the Graffik Gallery on Portobello Road to have a look at South London artist Zeus’ conversion of the gallery into a sweet shop.

First impressions are largely comprised of walking into a giant packet of love hearts. It is certainly an all encompassing experience. As we peruse a man enters the shop.

“Have you had any sweets yet?” he yells.

“Er, no”, I reply.

“Come on, let’s get you some sweets!” he responds, and makes a bee-line for the counter.

As we tuck in to banana foams and pink shrimps it dawns on me that as luck or serendipity would have it, this is the man himself. This is Zeus. So we get chatting and discover Zeus is an affable man, happy conversing about his work.. or indeed anything!

We walk through to the backroom where the theme changes ever so slightly. This painting is my personal favourite.

surveillance has never been so sweet

Acid

Dean Zeus Colman…his parents actually gave him that as a middle name. One of his sister’s middle names is Ceilidh. When I raise an eyebrow he tells me he once met a girl conceived at Glastonbury called Acid…. Anyway, Dean Zeus Colman began life as a graffiti artist in the 80s, dubbed a 3D graffiti pioneer by Face Magazine in 1992.Since that time he has ploughed a very singular furrow and we spend a very enjoyable twenty minutes or so in his company as he talks us through a host of work including the construction of a fish tank –“I think it’s in Japan now”. He also tells us for the opening night of this show there were slush puppy machines with Zeus Juice – red for adults, blue for the kids. “At least I think it was that way around” he says with a smile.

“Are you artists?” he asks.

We explain we are an actor and writer respectively.

“You getting work?”

“There’s good years and bad”, responds my companion. Zeus nods and we enter the potentially thorny subject of moolah. However you slice it, it has to be made.

Style

For Zeus, street artist is a reductive term. He’s an artist and as it stands he doesn’t feel the need to go back on the streets. I moot that the Eastend can feel saturated. He agrees, musing that sometimes ‘too much can be like advertising’. He also draws a distinction between what he does now and what he did when he started out. This isn’t street art inside but what he is adamant about is that the style, energy and sentiment of a street artist who chooses to ‘go inside’ should not be diminished. It seems sometimes Zeus feels artists become too reverential in a gallery setting and that’s where they lose credibility. He has no qualms trying to make a crust. It’s all in the how.

Want to see the latest street art? Why not pop along on our Eastend street art walking tour? It’s the best thing you’ll ever do.

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So after all the furore of the ‘will they or won’t they’, the auction of the stolen Banksy was finally prevented. But what realistically is the next move? What are they gonna do – bring it back and slap it back up there?

The notion that it belongs to the community is an interesting one. Why does it belong to them? Does it belong to anyone? You may argue the owner of the sainted wall is the owner. Controversial? I’m not so sure.

There is a thought that it’s only once something is removed people start to take notice of it. And certainly ‘the wall’ has been receiving pilgrimages from locals that may otherwise have scurried past in their hunt for the bargains that lie inside this most decorated of Poundlands.

“Is that a Banksy?” asks the woman.

No madam, it most certainly is not. But many other artists have certainly sought to fill the gap. And make comment.

The most frequently misunderstood, or rather, mis-attributed, was the ‘Why?’ stencil, for a while believed to have been a Banksy. That it so clearly wasn’t got me thinking. To whit, I decided to carry out an experiment.

Round the corner from the ex-Banksy is a piece by Shepard Fairey, commissioned as part of Haringay Council’s regeneration programme last year.

Envision Peace? I envisioned a quarter of million quid and quickly lined up a buyer for Fairey’s work. All I needed to do was get the thing down, and hey presto, I’d be rich, counting my money, watching the fall out. Would the good burghers of Haringay react with the same dismay and high dudgeon that greeted the departure of their Banksy?

Under the cloak of night I went about my work, chisel, hammer and trowel in hand.

Alas, dear readers, I was rumbled. Clever council that they are, Fairey’s eye is being used as a vast monitoring tool, a huge CCTV device! Cripes! Look closely, you can probably make out the blinks of the camera shutter.

Andre the Giant you betray me!

What choice did I have but to obey? As things to do in London go, stealing a vast piece of street art was, I admit, a pretty bone-headed thing to do. I rang my buyer in Skegness to tell her the deal was off and I am now currently residing in a police cell in Tottenham, tapping out these few words to you loyal Insider London readers.

*please note – only some of the content in this post is true. For clarification please get in touch.

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For the small business owner, opportunities are opening up to enter the retail race. They are:

• PopUp – why take on a long lease and financial commitment of a shop when you can PopUp! Small businesses are turning to PopUp Britain and platforms such as We Are PopUp to get a taste of trading in a retail environment. Through PopUp Britain, we are opening empty shops and filling them with small businesses who trade for a fortnight and pay £150 to do so. In this time, tenants make sales, meet customers, test markets and increase online traffic and orders too. We crowdfund the rent and tenants crowdresource the shop. The results have been impressive with 91% of tenants saying they had a positive PopUp experience, 76% committed to going back onto the High Street and 12% looking for a permanent shop, having proved physical retail is a solution for them. PopUps enable small businesses to be online and offline retailers, at low cost and with low risk. Don’t start with a shop – go with a PopUp!
• PitchUp – benefit from the increasing number of large retailers wanting to stock your goods on their shelves. Through its PitchUp programme, StartUp Britain matches small businesses with head buyers from John Lewis. For companies with digital products, an announcement later this month will open up a potential sales channel to one of the world’s most successful games developers. Pitching to large retailers suits products of all types as seen in Pets at Home Innovation Days through to the HP SMEngage programme, introducing small businesses to large government contracts. Expect to see more big businesses court small ones so be sure to perfect your pitch for when the opportunity comes to your sector or trade!
• Payment – select a payment tool that enables you to accept any form of payment via your phone. Intuit Pay was one of the first to market in the UK and I’ve seen at first hand how easy it is to use and the effect of not having to ask a customer to walk to the closest ATM as you only accept cash! IntuitPay is being used in PopUp Britain shops and is proven to increase turnover. Other payment options include iZettle, mPowa, PayPal’s recently announced PayPal Here (soon to be available in the UK) and O2’s partnership with Visa - they are all designed to ensure you increase sales, whether trading from a shop, farmers market, trade show, or on the move.

There have never been so many opportunities for small businesses to get onto the High Street, stocked on shelves, and be part of the retail scene. Will this be an opportunity you embrace?

Emma will be offering retail tips and trends at the Future of Retail event on Monday 25^thMarch at British Library. Click here to register.

Emma Jones is founder of small business community, Enterprise Nation and a co-founder of StartUp Britain

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This artist had covered over all the street art on the wall and was painting her own massive piece. She was 2 weeks in to a 4 week project. The whole thing will be documented stop animation – we’ll post it here when it’s done.

Shutters at the back of the market

A Roa piece which can be seen over the hoardings from the street, fully revealed up close. Love it

The back of the hoardings facing the Old Street junction. Amazing 3D skull.

Shipping container office

Perspicere work – paint and thread – he’s our new favourite street artist

Perspicere geometric threading vs Aida’s printing – love this too!

Even the main gate to the space has an amazing image over it.

The Red Market is open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 12 – 5pm – be sure to check it out.

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