Westminster Arts Library
35 St Martins Street
London WC1 

Admission: By Advance Ticket Only from: WeGotTickets

Is London a giant canvas upon which we project our own images of it? Whereas June’s Salon investigated the way the capital has been depicted in imagined settings, this month Ingrid Beazley and David Speed take us on a tour of the ways urban artists have painted the town red (and blue, green, silver, gold plus a whole range of dayglo colours..). Practising London street artist Barney Clarke will paint a personal picture.

A soundtrack for the city will be provided by The Clerkenwell Kid.

An extraordinary art experiment has taken place in the quiet London suburb of Dulwich over the last two years. In 2012 our first speaker, Ingrid Beazley of the Dulwich Picture gallery, initiated a project with international graffiti artist Stik to reinterpret 18th C. old masters from the gallery’s collection on the streets of the area.

In 2013, more international stars of the street art scene including ROA, Nunca, Remi Rough and System, Reka One and MadC joined in. Ingrid will talk about the project’s impact on the local community and the “Arthouse” created by Street Art London, which saw a suburban house completely painted over by the artists. She will describe how their work aims to alter ideas about what constitutes art and has spawned “The Baroque Streets Art Festival” – turning leafy Dulwich into an unlikely must-see venue for quality urban art.

Many of us still perceive Graffiti art as an underground and perhaps illegal practice, tolerated in certain areas such as the South Bank or as part of well meaning youth programs. But our second guest David Speed of Graffiti Life, a bespoke graffiti company, will spray paint all over that notion.
David was active in illegal painting in a five year period between 1999 and 2004. He will trace the evolution of London street art from its beginnings as a response to social dystopia through its transformation into a radical alternative to mainstream gallery art. But with its current eminently bankable status, can it continue to retain its energy and power to transform and subvert the city streets?

Ingrid Beazley is a teacher. She has worked in the education department of Dulwich Picture Gallery, England’s oldest public art gallery, for over 15 years. Her book “Street Art Fine Art“, documents the creation of the Dulwich street art project , linking it to art from the past and positioning it in the continuum of art history.

David Speed is director of Graffiti Life, a bespoke graffiti company that offers live art entertainment and graffiti team-building as well as wall murals. David runs the The Graffiti Life Gallery, an independent, artist-run gallery in Shoreditch, which displays works by individuals with backgrounds in graffiti and street art. 

Barney Clarke was born in Hackney and became a child actor at the age of eight, playing the title role in Roman Polanski’s 2005 version of Oliver Twist.