It would be inconceivable to allow street artists to busy themselves on the walls of the refined streets of Mayfair. Brick Lane in the East End of London or Leake Street at Waterloo may provide urban canvases for an every-changing programme of Street Art but Mayfair is more refined, more controlled and much cleaner. So, let’s turn things on their head and bring the street artists inside a historic Mayfair townhouse.
Sackville Street in Mayfair was developed in the early 18th century as a series of townhouses. No 29, now the home of Lazinc, was developed around 1731, with subsequent sympathetic alterations including the decorations on the first floor redesigned by Robert Adam around 1770, albeit subsequently damaged in fire.
Over the past few months, the walls and floors of the ground and first floors have been covered in plywood while 25 artists including Vhils, Gary Stranger, 1010, Tarek Benaoum, YZ, Jan Vormann, Jan Kaleb, Remi Rough, Ludo and the Maiz Brothers have been busy at work on this blank, but constrained, canvas in a changing exhibition which, in some ways, it is sad to find has come to an end. It has been fascinating to visit at different intervals, talk to the artists and see the changes over time both in terms of the individual works and in the relationships between the different artists as their creations interconnect and collide together, with an overarching theme of reflecting on modern issues of society.
A fascinating collaboration between Lazinc and Magda Danysz of the Danysz Gallery which it would be good to see repeated and developed as a concept.