By: Shawn Mars
In the constantly evolving landscape of contemporary urban art, few artists manage to sustain a dialogue between the raw materiality of the street and the reflective space of the gallery without potentially diluting the conceptual force of their work. Beast’s recent exhibition, “And we hired a bloke to fix the wall,” presented at Elements Contemporary Art Space in Shoreditch, demonstrates a notable ability to translate the language of the street into a considered and intellectually coherent gallery installation. The exhibition proposes a thoughtful reflection on memory, cultural permanence, and the fragile relationship between historical legacy and contemporary urban environments.
At first glance, the exhibition appears to feature a series of monumental portraits installed on large textile banners suspended from leather straps and metal rods. Yet, the visual simplicity of the presentation hides a more complex technical process and a carefully articulated conceptual framework. Each work originates from a photograph of an existing wall, often located in neglected or partially abandoned urban areas, whose surface bears the marks of time: cracks, stains, exposed brick, and the slow erosion produced by weather and neglect. These surfaces are not treated as neutral backgrounds but as integral visual structures within the composition.
Through digital manipulation and photographic layering, Beast merges the portrait of a cultural figure with the texture of the wall itself. The resulting image does not appear superimposed onto the surface but rather embedded within it. Fractures in the masonry intersect with facial contours, while patches of plaster and brick subtly intrude on the image plane. When printed at large scale, the effect is striking: the portrait seems to emerge from the architectural surface, as though the wall itself retained a memory of the individual represented.
This technique produces a compelling visual ambiguity. The viewer is left uncertain whether the portrait has been applied to the wall or whether it has somehow always been present within it. The image collapses the distinction between representation and environment, creating a visual condition in which portrait and architecture merge into a single continuous body.
Photo Courtesy: Beast Street Art
The cultural figures depicted in the exhibition are not chosen arbitrarily. Writers, philosophers, and artists such as Philip Roth and Jackson Pollock appear within these deteriorating surfaces as if summoned from the past. Their presence suggests a quiet but persistent critique of contemporary cultural amnesia. In a society increasingly dominated by accelerated media cycles and short-lived attention spans, Beast’s work insists on the continued relevance of figures whose intellectual and artistic contributions shaped the cultural landscape of the twentieth century. Rather than presenting these individuals through traditional iconography, Beast situates them within environments marked by abandonment and decay. This juxtaposition is central to the exhibition’s conceptual strength. The crumbling walls function as visual metaphors for the gradual erosion of cultural memory, while the reappearance of these figures within the surfaces suggests a form of resistance to that erosion.
The exhibition’s title, “And we hired a bloke to fix the wall,” introduces an element of subtle irony. At face value, the phrase evokes a mundane act of repair, a practical intervention intended to restore a damaged surface. Within the context of the exhibition, however, the title becomes a quietly subversive statement. While physical walls may be repaired or replaced, the deeper cultural layers embedded within them cannot always be so easily restored once forgotten. The works, therefore, resist the logic of renovation and instead allow deterioration to remain visible as part of the image’s meaning.
Photo Courtesy: Beast Street Art
This conceptual framework is reinforced by a textual element within the exhibition referencing the ideas of historian Howard Zinn, whose reflections on the importance of historical awareness provide an intellectual backdrop to the project. Without explicitly illustrating historical narratives, Beast’s work echoes Zinn’s warning about the vulnerability of societies that lose contact with their past. The portraits embedded within deteriorating walls thus become visual reminders of the intellectual and artistic legacies that continue to shape contemporary thought, even when they risk slipping from collective memory.
From an installation perspective, the exhibition avoids the overly polished aesthetic that often accompanies the institutionalization of street art. The decision to present the works as suspended textile banners rather than conventional framed prints preserves a sense of provisionality. The materials recall the temporary coverings used on construction sites or abandoned buildings, subtly reinforcing the connection between the gallery space and the urban environments from which the works originate.
This approach also introduces a spatial dynamic that encourages viewers to move around the works rather than simply observe them from a fixed position. The slight movement of the fabric, combined with the large scale of the images, produces a physical presence that echoes the experience of encountering street interventions in public space.
Shoreditch, with its complex history as both a centre of street art experimentation and a site of intense urban transformation, provides an appropriate context for the exhibition. Over the past two decades, the area has evolved from an industrial district into one of London’s most visible cultural quarters, attracting artists, galleries, technology companies, and international visitors. Street art has played a significant role in this transformation, often functioning simultaneously as a form of cultural resistance and as a catalyst for urban regeneration.
Within this context, Beast’s work occupies an interesting position. Rather than reproducing the visual spectacle commonly associated with contemporary mural culture, the exhibition engages with the quieter, more reflective dimensions of urban surfaces. The walls depicted in the works are not sites of vibrant color or graphic exuberance; they are places marked by neglect and time, where layers of history accumulate almost unnoticed.
This restraint distinguishes Beast’s practice from many contemporary approaches to street-inspired gallery work. By focusing on texture, deterioration, and historical resonance, the artist creates images that feel less like graphic statements and more like visual excavations.
Ultimately, “And we hired a bloke to fix the wall” succeeds because it operates simultaneously on multiple levels. Technically, it demonstrates a sophisticated integration of photographic documentation, digital manipulation, and large-scale installation. Conceptually, it addresses the relationship between architecture, memory, and cultural inheritance with notable clarity. And spatially, it transforms the gallery environment into a contemplative extension of the urban spaces that originally inspired the works.
In an art world where the translation of street art into gallery contexts often results in the loss of its original vitality, Beast offers a compelling alternative. Rather than removing the street from the work, he allows the wall itself, cracks, stains, and all, to remain at the centre of the image.
The result is an exhibition that reminds us that walls do more than divide or support structures. They accumulate traces, absorb histories, and occasionally reveal the presences that time has attempted to conceal. In Beast’s hands, the wall becomes both archive and witness, preserving fragments of cultural memory within its weathered surface.
Instagram: @beastwalls
Website: Beast | Street Art
