Popping up around East London over the past few months have been a series of portraits from the London based artist Neequaye Dreph, known simply on his work as ‘Dreph’
The works all feature the faces of different artists that Dreph has known or worked with. Each portrait comes with a story and you can come across most of them on his instagram page.
According to his website, Drephs work is “unapologetic, presenting an alternative black British narrative. His murals are a tribute to living unsung hero’s and heroines, larger than life and in technicolor in our public spaces.”
And that’s what he’s done, with spots in areas such as Brick Lane, Hackney Road, Great Eastern Street and Fashion Street murals have popped up featuring friends from the local arts and music scenes.
We haven’t captured them all unfortunately, a few disappeared before we could get there but what we did see we’ve put below. Luckily our friends at Jenikya’s blog did manage to see them all so if you need to see them all in their glory head on over there but in the meantime check out some of the works in our gallery below.
Dreph gallery
Carleen De Sozer – Star Yard – Carleen De Sozer website
Abe Odedina – Brick Lane – Abe Odedina Website
Benji Reid – Hackney Road – Benji Reid website
T-Roy – Great Eastern Street – Broadcite music
After this post was published some more work from Dreph and Carleen De Sozer appeared in the Seven Stars car park on Brick Lane, replacing the images there previously featured at the top of this post. These pieces were captured on 24 January 2017.
Thank you for the shoutout. I was lucky enough to see the one being painted (nearly finished) on Fashion Street, which I saw earlier this month had been replaced by a more colourful portrait. I spoke to Dreph for a minute to compliment his work. I love his work!
Jenn (Jenikya’s Blog)
I’ve been loving these new portraits too Stuart. Glad you spotted the 2 new ones. I haven’t seen them in the flesh yet.