Photo Tour: London Street Art
I love street art. Yet, somehow, I have neglected to showcase the great artwork that appears around London. So, I decided to change that, and put together a photo tour of London street art.
For any visitor to London, East London is the best destination for phenomenal street art, especially the neighborhoods of Shoreditch, Spitalfields, and areas of Hackney. From small pieces tucked down alleyways, to large-scale projects covering entire sides of buildings, the quality and quantity on some streets is almost staggering.
I took a stroll through Shoreditch recently, enjoying some rare sunshine and went hunting for street art. I didn’t have to search hard, as many of the best works are concentrated into a four or five block radius around Shoreditch High Street.
Nevertheless, if you would rather venture out with a group, there are some really well organized street art tours, especially from Context Travel, that highlight and showcase the best of East London street art.
Two of the best examples of quality street art are located right next to each other on Whitby Street. Think impressionism meets street art. The first one consists of thousands of squiggles of paint, that create an amazing portrait.
Right next to it, tiny circles of spray paint are allowed to trickle down the way, leading to my favorite piece of London street art.
It doesn’t end there though. The diversity of the artwork is stunning and has become such a staple of this area that construction sites (of which there are many is this neighborhood) are cordoned off with decorative panels of street art. No ugly walls of plywood here.
If only they could do something about all of those construction cranes!
If you are interested in finding these pieces of London street art, check out the Google Map below. I have pinned each piece of art, so you can easily navigate your way through Shoreditch.
What is your favorite piece of street art?
PS: Since you are sure to get hungry along the way, check out our post on our East London Food Tour by Eating London Tours, hitting the best eats in this area!
Great post! I’ve been meaning to do something like this in London for so long! Will pin this for future reference!
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It’s a great thing to do in so many funky, European cities. We just wander around with a camera for a couple hours – never disappointed!
Wow! This street art looks insanely beautiful! Just wow… It’s not run-of-the-mill graffiti on the streets of London!
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Definitely not graffiti – in fact, many of the artists are pretty well known. The guy who does the black and white animals has had commissions all over the world (we saw another piece of his in Puerto Rico). But despite being well known, most of the work still happens at night and identities are pretty concealed!
You weren’t kidding.. Shoreditch clearly has a very impressive collection of street art! It’s hard to pick a favourite 🙂 It’s kind of surprising that local tourism companies don’t seem to capitalize on the great street art in cities like London and Melbourne.. at least not that I’m aware of haha. Great post!
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I know that in some of the more popular street art cities, there are walking tours of the highlights. In fact, there were several that we saw in Berlin (didn’t have time to participate). There are a lot of great ones in London too.