Well we didn’t expect that today! East London’s rather celebrated Clare street has been buffed, the art vandals have struck! Really wasn’t expecting that today, it was only last weekend we were celebrating the colour and the organic creativity on that street, people come from all over to view the the art on that Bethnal Green street.

Clare Street, East London,, Jan 18th 2017 – buffed!

It was only last weekend that people taking in the opening weekend of Condo were exploring that street as they made their way between East London galleries, while last Sunday we ran in to a film crew from New York over here for the London Art Fair filming along the street. Sure it could get a bit messy down there but that wasn’t the paint on the walls, that was the bits of junk. dumped oil drums and broken car bits, that and the crap left by the people building the imposing block of unwelcome new flats.

The issues down the Clare Street have been documented on these pages before, and indeed addressed by a number of artists and people from the local workshops with that Displacement art show in a metalwork workshop last year. Last weekend the walls of Clare Street were alive with colour as well as people viewing the colour, today the walls are painted a boring lifeless bland as can be grey (thankfully the art on the  side of the street where the arches are looks to be untouched).

32: Clare St, Bethnal Green, Jan 2017

The irony if the previous news story on these pages and the Hackney Council’s celebration of a street artist is not lost on anyone around here    Now we’ve constantly argued around here that street art should not be permanent and that walls should evolve, but to see the art that was enjoyed by so many destroyed like that by either the council or the damn property developers is rather disappointing to say the least…   On the plus side three new coffee shops have opened this year – less art, more coffee shops, on with the cleansing and the gentrification.. (sw)

Click on an image to view Clare Street today, the same street last weekend and two years ago…