25 Shoreditch Street Artists You Need to Know

In this dispatch from NoLionsInEngland, noted street art photographer, writer, and Guide-in-Chief at Shoreditch Street Art Tours, we look at 25 of the local street artists currently most “up” in Shoreditch. Many names will be familiar, but some will be new to all but the most diehard of street art geeks. Check them out while the buzz is still an underground murmur.

We define Shoreditch in a loose way totally unrelated to any parish boundary or democratic voting ward, the area embraces Hoxton, Redchurch Street and the Bethnal Green Road, Brick Lane, and a large matrix of streets on either side. It even stretches down to Osbourn Street and West to Whitecross Street and mostly encompasses the London postcodes beginning at E1. It's too large to be covered 100% in a single walk, in a single day, or on a single street art tour.

Wandering around Shoreditch’s streets will reveal new street art on almost a daily basis. It is a rare and disappointing day on Shoreditch Street Art Tours when no new street art appears. The artists chosen here are those who repeatedly provide new delights in the Shoreditch area—those who routinely turn to Shoreditch walls to satisfy their peculiar urges to expose the general public to their artistic creativity without worrying about gallery representation.

Shoreditch’s street art scene supports a gallery system, a tourist business, artist studios, and now the spectator sport of almost daily mural painting. We haven’t included any of the mural painters or the visiting international mega stars who breeze in amidst a cloud of publicity, cherry pickers, video-makers and permission letters. They provide a rich color to Shoreditch but aren’t repeatedly adding to the street art “hang."

Among several people left out of this list, Banksy brought popular appeal and mass media attention to street art, and while some examples of his work survive, he hasn’t been active in Shoreditch for years. His continuing influence on Shoreditch’s street art scene cannot be underestimated.

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25 Shoreditch Street Artists You Need to Know

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Sculpture

Christiaan Nagel is the mushroom guy—the man who places large, fluorescent mushrooms prominently on the eaves and gutters of buildings throughout Shoreditch. Beautifully colored and placed, they not only provoke the thought "what's it about" but also "How the devil did he get up there!"

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Germany
Medium: Sculpture

Lovepiepenbrink places half pig toy sculptures in cunning places on the street. Each is elaborately done up in a themed, fancy dress, and they are a joy to find.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Various

Pure Evil is an energetic, multi-talented street artist and gallerist. His black book of international contacts has resulted in some lesser-known but stunning street art talent coming over to show in his gallery and add their mark to Shoreditch. Many a late night obscenity or protest slogan painted on the walls of Shoreditch came back to haunt Pure Evil, as irate property owners hammered on the Pure Evil Gallery door the following morning, reasonably confident of finding the culprit nursing a sheepish look and a hangover cure.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Spraypaint

Shok 1 is a virtuoso talent with a spray can who has a trademark X-Ray style. His recent Shoreditch project was a rainbow X-Ray series painted in a single spot in Shoreditch, which ended with a tenth version.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Spraypaint

Eine was among the early pioneers of street art in Shoreditch. He left behind careers in crime as both a graffiti writer and an insurance clerk. Famous for shutters painted with large, single letters, more recent work in Shoreditch has involved very long words and slogans in narrow streets too tight to be decently photographed!

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Various

Nathan Bowen is a former building site worker who took a shine to painting spiky, angry characters along building site hoardings. He famously appeared on The Apprentice (UK) as one of the artists whose work the contestants had to sell.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Billboard hijacking, paste-up

Dr D is king of the billboard takeover, always with a focused political message. He champions a variety of causes that are anti-poverty, anti-corporate and fat cat greed, and sometimes just anti any politician at all. He appears to have enviable access to huge sheets of paper to facilitate his full hoarding takeovers.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Stencil, Paste-ups

Gee Street Art, like many street artists, is comfortable working with both stencils and paste-ups. He is believed to have been responsible for the two-storey pissing punk work. He's not to be confused with the graffiti tagger, Gee, apparently.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Stencil, paste-ups

Endless is primarily a stencil artist, though sometimes he uses paste-ups. He is believed to be credited with the random appearance of single-stem, stenciled roses in the Shoreditch area over the past couple of years.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Spraypainted paste-ups

Bortusk Leer was originally a hardcore paste-up artist in Shoreditch, noted for his lurid colored monster creatures spraypainted on broadsheet newspapers. Bortusk Leer achieved a spectacular breakout success with a kids TV series featuring his monsters a few years back. He's now believed to be modeling in Amsterdam's red light district, but he still occasionally returns to Shoreditch.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Australia
Medium: Spraypaint

Jimmy C has brought fine art techniques to the street walls, notably a spraycan version of pointillism, in which the dots are allowed to drop in true urban art style. Of the many beautiful pieces in Shoreditch, his top to (almost) bottom piece of Usain Bolt in Sclater Street was seen worldwide during last year's Olympics.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Stenciled paste-up

Mr.Farenheit, of whom little is known (other than his prolific stenciled imagery on newsprint), often produces spoof tabloid covers. MFH (as he often tags his work) was recently among the first street artists to poke fun at the newborn Prince George (well, on the walls at least).

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: A galaxy far, far away
Medium: Paint, roller

Sweet Toof paints teef and gums—very pink gums, everywhere! Formerly the founder and leading light of the London/Bristol crew Burning Candy, he's recently done prolific paste-ups and shutter paintings that remind you to brush twice daily like the dentist orders. He's secretive yet inclined to collaborate. It's still not that easy to find photos of just Sweet Toof's work.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Stickers

Paul Insect's extraordinary baby head sticker is probably his most famous motifs, although recently, he has done a paste-up all over East London with germ-like blob characters. He famously survived Damien Hirst turning up to one of his shows and purchasing the lot.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Chile
Medium: Paint

Otto Schade paints highly intricate stenciled art objects that are deconstructed into tape form. He does anything from portraits to self-peeling fruit and maps of London.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Mexico City
Medium: Paste-up, paint

Pablo Delgado is the master of the miniature. Hailing from Mexico and now a resident in London, he specializes in Borrower-sized paste up tableaus at the foot of walls with cunningly drawn shadows. He started off with London's doors, then he did a pimp and prozzie series. Surreal elements like animals interacting with space rockets frequently make an appearance. When each paste up suffers the natural fate of ephemeral art, intriguing shadows remain on the pavement.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Stencil

Mobstr has developed a significant fan base for his block stencil lettering, often used to mock street art, street artists, street art fans, and even enemies of street art. One of his most successful artistic devices is to provoke the buff into cleaning his graffiti, then taunting them in a long running dialogue played out on the walls on the buff's efforts.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Mixed spraypaint stencil

DON (aka Paul DON Smith, as he likes to sign himself) is celebrated as an old school 1980s master of trainyard graffiti, who now is all over Shoreditch with his multi-colored stencil and freehand sprayed backdrops. Frequently celebrating athletic and artistic achievements of the moment, DON likes to get up quick with the tributes to births, marriages, and deaths.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Stickers, paste-up

D7606 came to our attention by putting up stickers of good 'ol British phone boxes occupied by glamour film starlets. After increasing the size of the phone boxes, he then proved himself a driving force for street art collaboration when he invited other street artists to place their motifs inside the phone box. D7606 has recently appropriated another iconic piece of British street furniture, the post box.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Various

616 was the emergent street artist discovery of 2012! He is a complete outsider who has an imaginative use of found materials and has made street furniture forms the starting point for his tribal monsters. A completely incomplete list of his painted surfaces and techniques would include pistachio shells, tarred and feathered hoardings, tree roots, slate, cardboard boxes, discarded bedroom furniture, doll parts, recycled paint layers, and found photographs.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Italy
Medium: Paint direct on wall

ALO has been painting his increasingly large, striated box characters on the streets of Shoreditch since 2011. He replaces organs with labels and shows a preference for painting the marginalized and less affluent members of society.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Paste-up

A.CE is London's paste-up collage king. Mashing up hybrid monsters, vintage Gatsby-esque characters, classified ad phraseology, and big fashion logos, A.CE's paste-ups brighten many a Shoreditch doorway.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Germany
Medium: Various including sculpture, spraypaint, paste-up, stickers

Ronzo from the Stolen Space D*Face stable is particularly accomplished at working with street art sculpture. His Credit Crunchy Monster has looked down over the fringes of London's City Financial District since 2009. In one spectacular, highly illegal episode, he installed a series of mini-Crunchy sculptures on pedestals around the city. They mimicked the Griffins, and there are several entrances to the city. Beware of the psychedelic pigeons pooping on you.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: Unknown
Medium: Various including painting, sculptural assemblage, bronze casting

Jonesy keeps street art political, using sculpture and unique painted paste-ups to highlight his heartfelt environmentalist agenda. His key concern is the harm mankind is wreaking on the environment and the animal world in its pursuit of energy. His bronze casting sculptures are fine in detail, stunning in execution, and pointed in message.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland

Originally from: London
Medium: Spraypaint

Stik's eponymous stick men register subtle emotions despite his seemingly simplistic artistic approach. Stik's art incorporates a high degree of context, often interacting in a humorous way with the fabric of the building. His artwork sells like hotcakes, but as an individual, his charitable good works are never compromised.

Image Credit: NoLionsInEngland