Walking down a dark stretch of Beak Street in Soho, London, a doorway is open, light bursting out onto the pavement.  In the darkness, the busy tourist rushing to complete Christmas shopping or to go to the theatre may just stop to notice the colourful Street Art on the wall outside which gives a hint of what might be happening inside.

Inside is an empty building, derelict, awaiting demolition with temporary lighting strung like decorative Christmas lights.  It’s been sitting like that for years. Proposals for a highly contemporary “silver building” in 2008 came to nothing and now there is planning permission to demolish it and replace it with something more in keeping with the existing street.

The building has seen quite a bit of street action.  Built in 1909-10 as a Section House to provide living accommodation for the Metropolitan Police, it was used for offices for a while since the 1970’s.  It made news headlines in June 2013 during the period of the G8 demonstrations in London when hundreds of police sought to recapture the building from around 40 squatters who were occupying it in protest at the amount of empty space in London while homeless people slept on the streets it has appeared on twitter as a venue for rave parties.

Through the doorway, the visitor discovers that the ground floor is full of Brazilian street art, a “surprise pop-up” until the 4^th of January, organised by of Alicia Bastos of Braziliarty, a great use of the space given the recent history of the building.   In the dark rear room is part of an installation “Five Years” (named after the song by David Bowie) presented at the Zer0 Open Studios in London by multi-media artist Flavio Graff showing a deteriorating disturbed world with decaying architectural models surrounded by old materials and collectables found on London streets, spookily illuminated and all sitting in a sea of autumnal leaves. There is a quirky link to the history of the building with a model of a police box which used to be found all over London.

Elsewhere, a series of different artists provide a taster of their work in Brazil with small versions of the street art which in Brazil may cover the complete side of a building. These include Narcelio Grud with his lively naturalistic forms that suggests the fight for space in a crowded world, Digo Cardosa with his beautifully detailed work in black and white and Alex Hornest (Onesto) whose cartoon-like characters record his view of people and their relationship with cities (and who has also provided street art in London), while Amanda Nahu’s work has echos of Mucha in Prague but with the vibrancy of Brazilian art and decoration everywhere, even on tattooed arms and the face.

At the beginning of 2016 – the year of the Olympics in Brazil – this is a good celebration of the lively and colourful street art of Brazil and hopefully the first of many such exhibitions in London during the year.