ZABOU

 ZABOU

    Zabou is a French street artist based in London who has completed over 250 murals in 23 countries.

zabou.me official website.

She travels and paints "to make the world a more colourful place, one wall at a time".

Location: Woodgate Road, Forest Gate

     This is the first of ten works by various artists commissioned by Newham Council in 2024. 

    The Jimi Hendrix Experience was actually the warm up band for The Pretty Things who failed to turn up and were replaced by John Lee Hooker. Charismatic former boxer Billy Walker's club only lasted one year. The last time I saw The Who it cost rather more than 17/6 - and ladies paid the same as gentlemen.

Location: Brick Lane, Whitechapel

      A photograph of Audrey Hepburn by Yousuf Karsh inspired this 2020 painting by Zabou. She added the white tulips as a refence to the hybrid Dutch variety named after Hepburn.

     Location: The Bell pub, New Goulston Street, Shoreditich - at the junction with Middlesex Street. 

    Note that on Sundays Middlesex Street is transformed into Petticoat Lane Street Market which extends from The Bell to Liverpool Street Station (there is actually no such street as Petticoat Lane).

    Self Reflection (2022) is a collaboration with Jimmy C, his distinctive "drip-painting" pointillism contrasting with Zabou's clean lines.

    This is not the first Zabou mural at this location. 

    Previously ..... 

 

Here's Johnny 2018                                     Racism is a Virus 2020

     Another Zabou/Jimmy C collaboration can be found in Poplar .....

                    .... a mural of Queenie Watts and Francis Bacon (2023) in Dee Street, E14. 

      Zabou's Queenie was a popular singer and actress in the 1960s and 1970s. She ran The Ironbridge Tavern and The Rose and Crown which were local watering holes for Bacon. Her image is based on a still from the film Portrait of Queenie (1964).

       And another Jimmy C portrait - of Tommy Flowers - is nearby on the side of a community  pub named after the Post Office engineer .....

     Having not been played by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tommy Flowers is not as well known as Alan Turing. But he created Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to enable mathematician William Tutte to break the Lorentz code at Bletchley Park.

     My pal Martin Gandy writes: "Bletchley Park was really interesting when I visited about 10 years ago. I actually knew of Tommy Flowers when I was at Post Office Telecom starting in 1969, although he had left Dollis Hill by then. He was the technical genius to Alan Turing's mathematical genius. I was in the same group as his son Ken Flowers. I also shared an office with a Norman Thurlow, a technician, who I discovered much later had actually helped build the Colossus computers. And at the end of the war Norman had to help take them apart, a huge setback to the UK computer industry. The only thing I knew about Norman at the time was he helped build the ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) machines for Premium Bonds."

     Tommy Flowers was born in Poplar at 160 Abbott Road. The house no longer exists so there is no blue plaque locally. But there is one at Dollis Hill.

     The charming Tommy Flowers pub is situated on the strikingly colourful Aberfeldy Street ....

     The pub is well worth a visit but has limited opening hours so check times beforehand. The mural, above right, is on the corner of Aberfeldy and Dee, artist unknown.

     The nearest DLR station to Dee Street is All Saints where, on the edge of Chrisp Street Market, you can't fail to notice this 80-foot-tall dog by street artists Irony and Boe ....

     The piece was painted over four days in 2014 and is based on a chihuahua called Knight of the Hunter.

      More Zabou .....

Location: Queen's Head Street, Islington

        The Bill Murray has been the home of the Angel Comedy Club since 2016 when Zabou was commission to do portraits of Robin Williams, Eddie Izzard, Victoria Wood, Richard Pryor, Rowan Atkinson and Charlie Chaplin. She updated all the portraits over eight days in 2019, replacing Williams, Izzard and Chaplin with Bill Murray, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Connolly. I've no idea why there's a toilet standing on the pavement.

      Angel Comedy contacted Bill Murray to seek permission to name the pub after him. But there was no response so it is officially named after William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart and an advisor to Charles I.

      A pleasant 30 minute walk from here alongside the Regent's Canal will take you to what remains of another Zabou mural at Haggerston, passing coots both real and imagined ....

 

Click to see what it originally looked like in 2019.

     However, on the other side of this building, in Orsman Street, is a Zabou gem ....

      This portrait of British saxophonist Nubya Garcia is on the side of the U7 Lounge, a venue for jazz events. 

      I Miss You appeared in Tottenham in 2020 .....

                    ..... a Zabou contribution to the first London Mural Festival which helped keep me sane during lockdown - although hardly essential travel. 

      I don't know if it's still there (Sherringham Avenue, N17).

        

     Second London Mural Festival, September 2024:

    Sisterhood features half-sisters Key and Mimi. It can found, along with other impressive street art, at Webheath Estate, Brondesbury.

     Entitled Spring the mural depicts British singer Eva Lazarus

Location: Villa di Geggiano, Italian restaurant, 66-68 Chiswick High Road, W4 1SY

          I've not eaten here (yet). But it has very good reviews; and up market - pizza is not on the menu.

     

          A Zabou self-portrait which once graced Brick Lane ....