For The Love

The Dragon Bar was started in 1999 as a breeding ground for artists and musicians. It has long been known as a place of peace and love and is down to earth to say the least! It was designed in a style that has been copied time and time again in the area and beyond. The “This Way Up� gallery that runs upstairs has a street art focus and has had shows from every aspect of the art world.

PRESS REVIEWS: :

The Dragon Bar in Shoreditch. Of all place in the current bar capital of London it’s the coolest

and

dotted around the walls. These are not enforced decorations but remains from their Chinese New Year celebrations. . .

the name of the beast just above its doorstep, is all the more remarkable considering the faceless strip of

::The unobtrusive entrance at the City Road end of Leonard Street (watch out for the tiny metal ‘Dragon Bar’ legend fitted to the entrance step) gives a suitably discreet clue to the intimate

Leonard Street that surrounds it. For once inside, in a trend-proofed den of trash and tack, your heart swells

bar within. Inside, there’s amuscular, rough-hewn New York loft-feel, with exposed brick, rough wooden floor, salvaged

the most laidback.::The Dragon’s lair, hidden but for the six letters spelling out to the sight of a refreshingly enthusiastic crowd, getting off on the music as much as each

by a couple of tall

other, crammed into a narrow, radiantly unpretentious

bespectacled moose head) adorn the walls. The dingy basement room is disconcertingly windowless and smoky.

bar.

If this bunch (not least the vivacious

house plants. A DJ deck is on the bar, and one or two Brit-art pieces (which may include the

a good number of them from the harder, edgier weather, the atmosphere, bottled up behind the curtains at the front and the blocked-off exhibition nose-ringed end of Shoreditch fashion. Slightly sullen, a bit dark, and idiosyncratic, Dragon is a space above, escapes into the backyard, to drift over the basketball court beyond. The under used bar that feels like it’s at one with itself.::Bare-Boards chic with extra arty touches from Jake & Dinos Chapman. You get DJ at the far end of the bar counter) turned up en masse at your birthday party, you’d be delighted. In fine

Punters are invariably young and smart,

room downstairs serves as spillover space as well, but in reality you don’t mind if someone sloshes a little

a certain overspill of City drinkers, but this one’s really for the Hoxton hipsters.::Some say it’s hard to find, but anyone

Staropra en over your sneakers. Not just cheaper than the competition,

considerably more

with an ounce of initiative should be able to track down Dragon in Leonard Street. It’s worth the effort, but

don’t

honest too::. . Justin Piggott, owner and creator of the Dragon Bar, suggests that this look has become a wear a suit. The bar, which opened two Decembers ago, is another with a selection of old furniture, augmented cliché in itself but says that he “can tell when it’s genuine or when it’s something with some wacky works of art around the wall and some spectacular graffiti that’s been packaged.” Piggott came from a design art background and decided to create his downstairs. Many of the barstaff are also DJs and can combine the two jobs thanks to a deck at the end of the own bar about three years ago. He reckons the project stretched to around £100,000 and says that costs can bar. Bar manager Adi Hall said staff were encouraged to be creative and given the be kept low if you use your imagination. The property was completely derelict with no services, opportunity to develop their DJ prowess while also picking up bar skills.::Some can make so his first job was to strip it all back and start again. He moved the door to the corner of cocktails, others not, but all contribute to the unique feel.::A trend-proof den of trash and tack amid the polish and the building and covered the basement’s concrete floor with timber boards, then built the toilets. All preening of Hoxton. The place is radiantly unpretentious and filled most nights with an enthusiastic in all, the project took him two years to complete, although he says he was consciously hunter-gathering in crowd getting off on the music (as well as with each other). Downstairs a comfy sofa space advance. “I collected for a year beforehand until I hhad a house full of is lit by little red lights and candles.::This building was constructed in the 1860s to house a printing sofas.” The Dragon Bar feels as seedy and offbeat as a New York dive bar on the lower workshop but when Justin Piggott found it a couple of years ago it was being used as storage for a local school. He chose east side. This is no accident; Pigott visited New York and found a far more inspirational bar the site for its East End Dickensian character but also liked its size and the fact that its three scene. “They do the bars in their own way and somehow they’re not linked to whats floors would offer a more intimate scale at each level than the single vast open spaces of other sites he had visited. in and what’s out. In the UK it can be quite boring.” Pigott had to stop himself falling into the same Discoveries such as the mismatched panes of obscured and textured glass – the whole trap. “Normally I want minimal stuff, but I tried to remember that it’s not a showpiece – it’s place had been boarded up – and the working fire places led to a decision to keep the original character of not about being a designed bar and looking perfect and finished, but the building with only minimal interference from new design elements. The idea was to look old but not more of a blank canvas.” Piggott soon got a well known grafitti artist to tag the decrepitly so; various parts could be gradually added, changed and developed from the bare canvas of toilets, which has since become something of a taggers corner, and added some Jake & the original features. The bar has an in-situ concrete base with white plastic-coated wood panels and a Dinos Chapman artwork too. Adi, his bar manager and ex-art history student, describes the overall sealed concrete top. Hidden lighting is cast downwards at the foot of the base. The rows of bottles on three look as very loose, “a fluid, living design that continually changes.” There are Chinese lanterns simple concrete-block shelves are lit by small porthole lights. Trays of low-voltage lamps are encased

sculptural-looking wing-shaped steel light which hangs from the ceiling on steel wires. The spindly form of the piece is jewellery-like, which is unsurprising as Piggott has previously designed stands for twisted antlers hanging by the door are not – as often claimed by those looking for unusual mannequin body parts – by Jake and Dinos Chapman, who are instead responsible for the skull panels downstairs. It was simply a found piece from Brick Lane proving that the old adage, ‘hang it on the wall and call it art’, really works! The bony outgrowths are also not part of some mascot or namesake for the bar – the name of which was chosen purely for its Georgian-pub connotations. The slate step entrance with the discreetly embedded ‘Dragon’ name is often accompanied by an intimidating hand-written ‘no office clothes’ sign. This is apparently not meant to offend but to keep the place from becoming a strictly after-work City bar – the original intention being for a more relaxed drinking venue which local residents would find equally comfortable at different times of the day.::‘Very Nearly, Never Always’ is a show of six boys in a room above the Dragon Bar. It is accompanied by an extraordinary catalogue; either naïve or very sharp, it implausibly describes the artists’ work and methods in ways that bears no relationship to the objects on show. These plumb teen obsessions with banality and phoniness in a

contemporary jeweler Janet Fitch. The large

while also making polite references to drapery, sculptural techniques (things cast, cut or stuck) and fine art icns like Bernini’s ecstatic sculpture of St Theresa, Caspar David Friedrich’s sublime landscapes or Don Judd’s minialism.

Most dominant are some photographs of a levitating

boy. These are neither, we are told, ‘the product of computer manipulation nor trompe l’oeil’.

What looks like ripped pink silk – the lining

of a hold-all turns out to be a flattened rubber cast of a Madonna. There’s feeble sculpture – 11 minute and ‘subtley tweaked’ dachsund heads, a half made Nike ‘swoosh’ and a box of tiny silver-foil men bending at the waist. The only painting, of a landscape made from crushed paper, has the competent tonality suited to executive foyers – as shiny as home-strip nylon. Both eager and knowing, the work seems to share formal concerns – crumpled paper, moulds,

It uses familiar and appropriate moves which become enigmatic only when you read the mis-matched catalogue.::The Dragon Bar is a living, wheezing artwork, its furniture a cornucopian confusion of tattered jumble, customised with colourful graffiti, and its customers a tattered, rollie-smoking bunch with colourful histories. This once derelict shell, transformed by owner Justin Piggot, is now a stylishly derelict New York-style bar. And I don’t use the simile lightly. Whilst many London bar and club architects aspire to a Manhattan ambience – see 10 Room, Wild et al – few succeed in capturing the true beat of Big Apple living. But visit the Dragon Bar, with its leaded windows (adorned with plastic bags), weathered director chairs and prolific stickering and graf, and you feel as if you’re hanging out on a Lower East Side fire escape with a bunch of beatniks and breakers. The Dragon is covertly cool, as the lack of signage outside attests, so much so that you suspect you’re in the presence of a group of future Turner Prize winners. Even the bar staff are achingly hip, virtually all of them as happy

shifts in scale and undone construction.

nights offer a variety of music styles in a unique and friendly environment. They can also cater for private parties of up to 60 people upon request.::An earthy, but sophisticated bar with raw

brick walls, red drape and chrome seating on the dimly-lit ground floor, Dragon is reminiscent of Jerusalem in W1, though smaller and a tad trendier. In true Shoreditch fashion, there’s more comfy, second hand sofasin the basement and a mixed crowd of designers, writers, musicians... you get the idea. Sadly, the Moorgate end of Leonard Street attracts more city suits than the opposite end and

behind a drawing board or decks as a bar. So, if you drop by during the day, expect to hear although Dragon tries to be as inconspicuous as possible and even goes as far as to put a sign on an impromptu rare funk set or to see a graffer tagging up the walls, furniture the door saying ‘No Suits Please’, there’s just no escaping them.::Dragon Bar hasn’t really changed much or loos. Scrawling on inanimate objects is, in fact, actively encouraged in the last 7 years or so. Unless you know where it is Dragon Bar is hard to find. here, and legends such as ‘Hore’ and ‘West’ scream out from every surface, but don’t The only thing to alert you to its location is the name in metal on the steps. With the heavy velvet curtains drawn be tempted to join in with a biro if your style isn’t up to scratch. The décor is enough to keep the idle afternoon ligger entertained for hours, so beware. The beauty of the Dragon Bar is in its in winter and the door shut it’s even harder to spot. Nevertheless the place is extremely busy at surprise factor – the deer antlers behind the bar, for example (which wouldn’t look out of place in the weekends. Interior is a two floor afair with fireplaces on both: battered leather Christine Hamilton’s sitting room), the huge, wobbling colonial-style fans above, the large acrylic sofas and 70s kitch apart from the large sculpture on the wall with skulls downstairs. Good of a bleeding cow, or, most impressively, the Jake and Dino Chapman piece in the basement. selection of beers and cocktails. Definitely a good place to go, but best visited in the quieter And look out for the off-the-cuff sets from local DJing faces and mic-hungry freestyle MCs. Priceless.::INTERNET periods.::Wicked place...usually go on a friday or saturday and wear normal garb...but last friday me and REVIEWS::Dragon Bar has certainly struck a chord with the local arty types of Shoreditch, and some guys from work made the mistake of going in suits...the guy on the door was cool but advised we the rough-edged, brick and wood decor provides character without posturing or pretension. So cool take our ties off...got some funny looks inside..fair tho coz we did look like city boys...we just didnt fit in that it doesn’t even bother to put its name above the door (a small engraving on with the atmos...go casual!::The Dragon bar has a very ram-shackled, chaotic look, but if you’re prepared to give it the steps outside being deemed sufficient), Dragon Bar is the perfect place to unwind after a stressful a chance, there is a very nice upstairs section, and it is extremely mellow, relaxed and chilled day. Slide back into the beat-up leather sofas, or venture into the dimly lit, slightly seedy out. Much more mellow than the Cantaloupe and just as ‘girl friendly’ i.e. a distinct lack of sleazy men downstairs bar where DJs spin a selection of laid-back grooves and funky soul.::The hitting on to you (as a male, I always shy away from those type of places).:: Dragon Bar mainly attracts a music, art and design orientated clientele. Different

. . . I FIRST MET BANKSY AND EI FINDERS KEEPERS EVENT UPSTA THE BA

EINE IN THE DRAGON ACTUALLY I MET MANY ARTISTS, ALSO HELD A TAIRS... LONG LONG AGO... DREW SOME DRUNK CHARACTER SHIT ON ACK DOOR THAT ENDED UP APPEARING IN A KEANE VIDEO. . . DFACE

its a dark dark place the toilets , thin corridor , graffiti covered walls , and ceiling ,

to know which is which , well you know if you know , and if you dont , you only make th

,

no signs on the doors .

hat mistake once .

..

..

how you ment

or twice

THE CONCEPT OF ‘THISTHE WAY UP’OFGALLER CONCEPT ‘THIS WA APART AS TWO OP SPACE, RIPPED APARTRIPPED AS TWO OPPOS SHOREDITCH, IE.IE. UNFINISH DERELICTION OF SHOREDITCH, UNF ANY MODERN GALLERY IS WALLS, ESSENTIALLY WHAT ANY MODER SLICK INTERIOR MODELLING. JFJP

RY THATIS OF GALLERY AY UP’IS GALLERY THATA OFTRADITIONAL A TRADITIONAL GALLERY SPACE, PPOSINGCORNERS, CORNERS, EXPOSING UNDERLYINGUNDERLYING DERELICTION OF SING EXPOSING HED FLOORS ANDFLOORS PEELING BRICK WALLS, ESSENTIALLYBRICK WHAT FINISHED AND PEELING WITHOUT THEIR OVERLY SLICK INTERIOR MODELLING. JFJP

ERN GALLERY IS WITHOUT THEIR OVERLY

graf.fi.ti

03-06-2009

[gruh-fee-tee] (singular: graffito; the plural is used as a mass noun) is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is sometimes regarded as a form of art and other times regarded as unsightly damage or unwanted.

Graffiti is any type of public markings that

may appear in the forms of simple written words to elaborate wall paintings.

Graffiti has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to Ancient

In

In modern times, spray paint and markers have become the most commonly used materials. most countries, defacing property with graffiti without the property owner’s

consent is considered

Greece

and the

Roman Empire.

vandalism, which is punishable by law.

Sometimes graffiti is employed to communicate social and political messages.

To some, it is an art form worthy of display in galleries and exhibitions; to others it is merely vandalism.

There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing artform whose value is highly contested, being reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

http://www.www.wikipedia.org

street_art

[street ahrt] Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives.

The term can include traditional graffiti artwork, stencil graffiti, sticker art, wheatpasting and street poster art, video projection, art intervention, guerrilla art, flash mobbing and street installations.

Typically, the term Street Art or the more specific Post-Graffiti

is used to distinguish contemporary public-space artwork from territorial graffiti, vandalism, and corporate art.

Artists have challenged art by situating it in non-art contexts.

‘Street’ artists do not aspire to change the definition of an artwork, but rather to question the existing environment with its own language.

They attempt to have their work communicate with everyday people about socially relevant themes in ways that are informed by esthetic values without being imprisoned by them.

In January 2000 Eine had a lock in on Saturday night, my first at the Dragon. The toilets were nice and quiet so I tagged all the empty spaces left, there wasn’t many, but I filled even the most obscure spots and when the April 2000 edition of ID came out with the Dragon feature they had shots of the toilets with Tek 33 tags blazing out which was phat. That night there was this guy going wild dancing really funky with his hood up, I saw him in the toilet and was bigging up his moves on the floor, he recognised my voice took his hood down and it was Dave the Chimp who

I hadn’t seen since 1992 at college in Luton. The Dragon had a habit of attracting vibing artistic people and I felt really at home there, something hadn’t experienced before with a bar. It became a meeting point for many of North East London’s graffiti vandals. I used to come out the Dragon drunk and street bomb all the way as I walked home to York Way, taking slightly different routes each time.

Gradually week after week my tags built up through 2000 and by the end of the year I was up in North East London properly for the fist time.

top from left to right: dragon bar window, internationalism 1, exaggeration 275

middle from left to right: traces with reasons, foridden for all, here making out with a softporn icecream queen, internationalism 2 , anyone can draw a fucked up fly,

bottem from left to right: the climbing of buildings, fences and other opportunities, favourite mispellings #9, this is what i do for a living, pointless oneliner, totally integrated in the streets

“i did some stuff at the dragon been about six years ago. i

dragon bar

- not much i can remember though, except that i was with good company - must have

got kicked out of the place for spraying inside on a wall with a banksy stencil which they where supposingly very proud off. haha�

I

Dragon Bar’s This Way up Gallery in january 2003, shortly after being discovered by I-D magazine in 2002. The private views were legendary, filling the gallery with a raw and vibrant energy that reflected the street portraits on the wall (there were Djs, MCs, singers dancers, artist and photographers). I continued to use the Dragon Bar exhibited my street portraits for the first time at the

as a vibrant visual backdrop when photographing models and artists and my associates at the dragon led me both directly and indirectly to future opportunity

In 2001, Dave the Chimp and Kabe 243 started the doodle zine ‘Dang’, inviting various artists (including Flying Fortress, PMH, Ichi Bunny, Stefan Marx, Ekta, Mysterious Al, and many others) to sit with them and draw. Dang is freedom on paper, and an excuse to talk shit, draw nonsense, steal each others ideas, and generally enjoy the free exchange and good vibes of scribbling like school kids.

In January 2005, Kabe

and the

Chimp

pasted the walls of the

with giant photocopies of the pages from various issues of the

Ichi, Product Two, Mr. Yu, Ronzo, on top. They also set up a table

and

Austin

from

NEW Studios,

Dragon Bar Gallery zine, and, along with added colour doodles

covered in paper in the centre of the gallery with

two dozen assorted markers suspended above on elastic strings, and painted the rest of the room white, with stenciled notices reading

The

opening party was on

Tuesday

the

‘KILL WHITE SPACE’.

18th January,

and a whole host of

London’s

street art community turned up to draw on everything that didn’t move, and a few things that did!

Scratch Perverts Plus One and Tony Vegas manned the decks, while there were free ‘Dang in Dub’ dub mix cds created by Mr. Trick, and a fat stack of sample issues of the zine given away, not forgetting free beer from Asahi and vodka from Fallen. As I’m sure you expected, the party went off, even getting written about in the pages of Modart magazine!

With a direct influence from japanese art, terratag takes elements from eastern and western cu pop art and graffiti, an effect that is as much about shoreditch as it is shinjuku.

Launched in 2002, terratag creates t-shirts, sweatshirts, art prints and paintings.

With a direct influence from japanese art, terratag takes elements from eastern and western culture to create a mash-up of manga, pop art and graffiti, an effect that is as much about shoreditch as it is shinjuku.

Terratag continues to experiment, exploring the cutting edge of contemporary global culture. Made ever the more attractive due to the fact that it is still very much an underground label. The brand is neither mainstream nor commercial, but simply an exciting, innovative mind, working towards a creative vision.

With the current series of work terratag embraces the robot as an icon, creating a futuristic neo-pop aesthetic. Whether it be bold neon colours, metallic foils or anime robots, terratag has the distinctive feel of being something fresh, exciting but most importantly, different.

In march 2008, terratag opened it’s flagship store at 188 brick lane, london. This is to be followed by a terratag ‘virtual’ store in second life, in conjunction with sine wave company.

ulture to create a mash-up of manga,

Terratag has been distributed and exhibited worldwide and designed for both commercial and non-commercial clients, collectors and institutions. Clients include aphex twin, studio gonzo (creators of samuel l jackson’s “afro samurai� project), urbis gallery (manchester), warp records, wagamama, sony playstation, manga entertainment, habitat and harvey nichols. Terratag has also worked with production ig animation studios in japan, on the successful animated television series ghost in the shell - stand alone complex, creating logos for laughing man and individual 11, terratag being the first western collaborator to work with this influential japanese studio.

When D, PMH, Al and me were first doing the

Finders

Keepers shows, we met up at the bar.

They were tagging

the toilets with krink,

and some city boys who’d come to the bar to score coke managed to get silver ink all over their suits and were super pissed and went to complain to chair

James. He came outside to tell us off, and just as he opened his mouth, the seat of the

I was sitting on broke and I fell into the hole. I was sitting there with my legs in the air and arse on the floor,

and all

James could do was roll his eyes! Any other bar and we would have been banned for life, but not the Dragon

Bar. That’s why it rules, because it’s NOT about fashion and famous names and all that pointless, worthless bullshit - it’s about friends and fun and freedom, simple as that.

invited me In March 2000 Eine on a week s ne tu to play some s this guy wa e er th d an night finger with a really cool at the t ou ab ing puppet mess tion, en att my ht ug ca bar who ed rn tu it d I got introduced an r ne ow e th n sti out to be Ju t ea gr s wa It . on ag of the Dr my d hin to meet the man be mber favourite bar, I reme he at th ed ck wi s saying it wa ged. tag so t ge ts ile to let the

construction hoarding leonard street july 2000

alas it could never last forever

for the love of the dragon