Baroque the Streets street art festival in Dulwich

The nine day ‘Baroque the Streets’ festival comes to a close this week with the opening of the ‘arthouse’. A remarkable ensemble of street artists from around the world coming together to paint the entirety of one single house in south London prior to it’s demolition.

Street Art London and Ingrid Beazley of the Dulwich Picture Gallery successfully joined forces last year when the renowned artist Stik re-imagined art from the gallery at various locations in Dulwich. Now they’ve gone one better bringing a whole host of talent to the area.

The festival leaflet says that the event “explores the position of street art, a huge new global street art movement, in the continuum of art history”. It’s quite deep but essentially brings together the established art represented by the gallery and places it together, on an equal footing, with the new art happening on the street in the here and now making Dulwich street art all the more relevant to the community.

The arthouse forms the centrepiece of an outdoor gallery with various artists represented on the streets of the area. It will be knocked down shortly after the festival closes to allow for redevelopment. The owners of the house were happy to give it a big send off and so gave permission for every wall and every room to be turned into one giant street art gallery.

The rest of this post will give a quick tour of the house, starting with the front yard.

Inside the property on the ground floor the rooms were each given different uses. One served as a pop up gallery with various works from the artists present on sale another became a temporary bar. The kitchen, unfortunately inaccessible on account of an old refrigerator barring the way, had works from 616 and Ben Murphy. The highlight of the ground floor though was probably the Thierry Noir room decorated entirely in his trademark style.

The garden and patio area contained works from the likes of Kid Acne, ROA and Cityzen Kane.

The upstairs of the house was spectacular with some simply amazing rooms. Dscreet, Christiaan Nagal, RUN and the Rolling People all pulled out the stops to create some stunning visual experiences.