that fluorescent light was tricky to photograph under. This was our best shot…shot through our Nag’s Head stencilid-iom Bluebeard & Aspire birdshot through our Nags Head wallpaper stencil
We’ve come across Azrael Goldbeard a few times now but this is the first time we’ve run across his identical twin Mikhail Bluebeard. Whilst Goldbeard is a time-travelling warrior poet Bluebeard has chosen to tread a completely different path as he became a time-travelling poet warrior. The difference may appear trivial but the difference in ideologies has led to more than a few family arguments over the years. For now Bluebeard lives in 2019 North London but he’s already thinking of moving back to 2070’s New York. Those US cats are off the leash right there…
Completed in record time at Nag’s Head market in Holloway on Sunday evening. As hard as we tried to get a decent shot of Bluebeard the fluorescent light directly above was having none of it. And this is what we’re left with…
I was just looking for something else on my computer when I come across this rare image of the younger half of id-iom actually doing some work! I know because I took the shot. Any pics that you may have previously seen showing him doing something that looks like work will undoubtedly have been staged or digitally generated using Photoshop. What’s more incredible is that he’s also up a small pair of steps (which are just out of shot) so that makes the whole thing doubly rare. He doesn’t like using ladders at the best of times. Even small ones. If only I could remember what had driven him to such extremes. Perhaps I was suffering from whooping cough or the more dangerous man flu at the time. Who knows?
When we got a call from Rosa’s Thai Cafe about painting a mural at their imminently opening new branch in Brixton we jumped at the chance. Amongst other things it’s nice working close to home for a change. After a couple of meetings and a bit of R&D banter with them and their architects/interior designers it was decided that a shutter wall would be constructed to give it that grimy urban look and we’d paint directly onto that. After batting round a few designs we finally had a winner – the slightly bemused looking lady with a custom designed ambigram wallpaper style background.
Given that we’ve done this enough times to know that the wallpaper stencil would be slightly lost on the shutters due to their curvature we decided to go belt & braces with it and laser cut some wooden cutouts of the wallpaper design so there would still be some clarity to the design if you cared to look that closely. After a busy day’s painting whilst the workmen were still at work on the interior we managed to get it all completed. Given that it’s the launch party this evening it looks like the install went just fine from there. Time for us to dig out some glad rags for later…
With the spectre of gentrification hanging over the railway arches in Brixton we went down to do our small part to raise the profile of the #Savebrixtonarches campaign by painting up some shutters alongside a few other artists. It may not be much against the juggernaut of urban redevelopment but it gets us out of the house on a Sunday at least.
Once we’d arrived and found our spot we managed to draw some inspiration from the red and blue ‘HOT’ and ‘COLD’ lettering above the shutters to give us a colour scheme to work with and some idea of where we were headed. After we’d got that much nailed it was pretty much plain sailing. This design is reasonably minimal for us and it took a fair amout of willpower to overcome the urge to get a load more paint on the shutters and just walk away once it was completed. Righto, what’s next?
Cheers (and a big thanks to Monoprixx for taking the shot!)
thisisidiom.wordpress.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.