Hanbury Street

Street art in Hanbury Street, off Brick Lane, London E1.
Roa’s giant crane has now been uncovered by Tower Hamlets, who had earlier placed a massive, featureless and entirely pointless banner over it, ironically without planning permission (demonstrating that they have little if any idea what constitutes art and culture, or pride for that matter, in this area). While I was taking one of these photos I spoke to the owner of the wall which Roa painted his crane on. ‘So what do you think,’ I asked him, ‘should they have covered it up?’. His look of shock was so genuine that it was as if I’d slapped him. ‘NO, NO!’ he exclaimed, ‘I campaigned to get it uncovered. Roa asked my permission to paint here, and I gave it to him. They [Tower Hamlets] never asked my permission.’
‘This is my wall, too,’ he says, pointing to Ben Slow’s double portrait of a white nationalist and a Muslim extremist side by side. Then he laughs, pointing out a bright blue plastic bottle attached to the top of the wall with a large plastic dragon fly attached to the top, swaying in the breeze. ‘Someone came and added that in the night…’.
While I was taking these photos, there was a steady stream of visitors (from overseas and the UK) coming to see, and photograph, the street art in this area – something Tower Hamlets has clearly managed to overlook.






Photos © Rudolf Abraham. No unauthorized use.
There’s a nice little video of Roa painting his ‘big bird’ here.
More images of London street art at http://photography.rudolfabraham.co.uk.