Meeting of Styles 2018 returns to the Nomadic Community Gardens

Meeting of Styles, London’s biggest street art festival returned for 2018 and once again took over the Nomadic Community Gardens, the cool social space next just off to Brick Lane.

The centrepiece of the event is always the big wall which overlooks the gardens and dominates the proceedings. Possibly the biggest wall in the city which is available to paint, it gets refreshed each year with a multitude of artists collaborating together to make something spectacular.

LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS AT MEETING OF STYLES

This year the wall featured a variety of local and international artists with the likes Voyder, Fanakapan, Aches, Jay Kaes, Jeba, Jim Vision, Core246 and Irony creating a large scale computer desktop with each artwork as if opening up into a different window. It was another ambitious piece to pull off to say that the whole thing normally only has three days allocated to its painting.

Elsewhere spots in the gardens themselves, Pedley Street and Cheshire Street were all opened up to artists who spent the bank holiday weekend pretty much painting and partying. If there’s one thing to be said for the Meeting of Styles, it’s always a bit of a party atmosphere.

THIRD BIRTHDAY FOR THE GARDENS

The gardens themselves also recently celebrated their third anniversary. It’s a space which over the years has grown from an empty piece of industrial scrubland to an organic oasis full with allotments, makeshift buildings and a whole host of greenery. The transformation in this area has been nothing short of remarkable and really shows off the community benefit of a project such as this.

But Meeting of Styles is really all about the art and indeed it is the meeting of different artists and the blend of their own styles which makes this such a vibrant and fun festival. So with that in mind, take a look at the styles on show…

Meeting of Styles was visited on 27 & 28 May 2018 and was located in the area around the Nomadic Community Gardens off Brick Lane in London. To see art from previous years of the event, check out these posts from 2017, 2016, 2015 & 2014.

Meeting of Styles Gallery

The Main Wall

Featuring Voyder, Fanakapan, Aches, Jay Kaes, Jeba, Jim Vision, Core246 and Irony. The main wall is the centrepiece of the meeting of styles as it’s all about the artists working together and blending together in order to make something spectacular.

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Inside the Gardens

The gardens themselves are hugely popular with lots of walls and boards on which to paint. The art blends in and just becomes part of the surroundings and the backdrop. Ever changing it gives the place a unique atmosphere. Stand out pieces for me in the gardens were from Woserski, Ed Hicks, Elfin and Elno.

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Outside the Gardens

Just outside the gardens there is a railway which separates it from the public space of Allen Gardens. A path then runs up in the space between the railway and the gardens towards Whitechapel. All this space is now used for painting and featured the likes of Envol, Minto, Reves, Xenx and Balstroem.

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Pedley Street 

An incredibly popular spot, Pedley Street is one of the prime areas to paint in the city. This time the Nomad Clan and Dan Kitchener took the main walls on the street with the likes of ‘This One’, Tom Blackford & Ewan Ewan, Carleen De Sozer and Gent all also painting some substantive pieces in one of the key street art areas of the city.

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Cheshire Street and the Tunnel

At the back of the gardens there is a disused access tunnel which presumably at some point supported the railway. Not anymore though, now it supports art. The tunnel itself leads to a stairway which leads to a footpath over the railway towards Cheshire Street. Both areas either side of the footbridge were opened up for painting with Morgandy and Curtis Hylton taking the Cheshire Street side and Sky High, Roo, Jerome Davenport, Captain Kris, The Real Dill and a number of others taking the tunnel end.