LONDON: Far from London’s beaten tourist track, a group of visitors is staring keenly at the graffiti-covered gates to an abandoned construction site.
Their guide, Karim Samuels, points out the black-and-white images of two young faces, and behind them, a piece of street art by Britain’s most famous and enigmatic street artist, Banksy.
Welcome to Shoreditch, an edgy district in the east of the capital where flocks of art lovers are ditching the National Gallery for an urban adventure.
Sadly, the Banksy of a rat wielding a knife and fork is too precious to stay public and has been hidden under boards to protect it from vandals and the weather, Samuels tells members of his Street Art London tour.
The owner plans to make a feature of the image when he opens a new restaurant at the site, capitalizing on a surge in popularity for Banksy’s work which saw one piece sell for more than £ 100,000 (115,000 euros, $ 160,000) in October.
“If you’re lucky enough to have a Banksy piece on the corner of your house, it will probably boost the value,” Samuels said, his beanie hat pulled down low against the freezing wind.
For £ 12 ($ 19, 14 euros) per person, Street Art London leads visitors through the maze of Shoreditch’s colorful streets, showing off the area’s most outstanding works. The tours transform east London into a vast outdoor museum, where many of the works on show contain hidden messages — and quite a few of the artworks are illegal.
“Art is not inside the museums or the galleries. Art is everywhere you can imagine,” said 20-year-old Brazilian student Felipe Rama, donning 3D glasses to enjoy a psychedelic portrait daubed by Australian artist Jimmy Cochran on a cafe wall.
Urban art needn’t be limited to spray-painted walls and shop shutters. It can take the form of mosaics, sculptures — or even painted blobs of discarded chewing gum, which might be trampled over without the help of a guide.
