Phlegm and the Street

Occasionally my work at the gallery forces me to think and work outside my favourite box of contemporary and twentieth century artists. Recently the architect asked me to find a specific street artist for him – not, my box at all. Now I really am not a snob, and when he asked me sweetly over coffee several months ago my heart sank like a stone and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or discreetly become deaf and avoid the issue…My mind screamed the question: Street, ME?!? Whilst I found myself saying, “what a wonderful idea, I’d love to help…” After he beetled off to build another multi-million pound property, I drank my cappuccino in contemplative silence, wondering what exactly I’d let myself in for.

What I had done, it turns out, is open the door to a world of art I’d only really seen in passing, admired and by turn slandered as rubbish, and decided that it really isn’t as scary or achingly cool as I thought. The people I met and dealt with were charming artists who were passionate about their work and very unpretentious about the possibility that it was a transient addition to the urban landscape. The majority of artists I meet would throw an epic wobbly if something they’d worked so hard for was destroyed by anyone once they themselves had decided it was finished. In many ways it was a breath of fresh air for me to be surrounded by these guys.

In hindsight the whole operation was akin to a detective story. I had nothing but a picture and my wits and considerable brain to go on – oh yes, I really am that modest. That March morning I saw myself setting out on a journey of adventure and discovery which would take me to the darkest recesses of London, mixing with the seedy underbelly of artistic society. Thankfully I’m the kind of gal who gets stuck in to pretty much anything – particularly food – and whilst slightly nervous as to what I was going to find, I decided to take my reputation in my hands and dive straight in by calling my modern day Baker Street Runners. It took a while but we got there in the end, and as it turns out the seedy underbelly isn’t quite as uncouth as I had reared.

Now, when I started coming to the East End in the blisteringly un-wintery winter of 2010, I was struck by two things – firstly the people and secondly the street art. The first isn’t particularly pertinent to this discussion, but the second is fundamental – street art was everywhere! Being raised in a strictly canvas and paper art world, it was something of a revelation to me that some street art was beautiful. I was particularly struck by an image which I saw on the corner of Great Eastern Street. For a moment I was transported back through the years to my studies on the German reformation – urgh, what a waste of time that was – but way, way cooler… The thing that caught my eye initially was the style, the thing which evolved into a permanent love of the work was the subject; these images were full of wit, dark humour, humanity and curiosity, in short they were brilliant. I never dreamed in a month of Wednesday lunchtimes, that when I wandered by all that time ago that I’d be one day tracking down that same artist and working with him.

Phlegm. Phelgm… Good start with a name like that isn’t it? Well, interesting tag aside, he’s a street artist who lives and works in Sheffield and is fond of a reet good cuppa. Some may think the name was chosen  to be deliberately shocking, but as it turns out it was picked for its historical relevance to health. Phlegm's name derives from classical medicine, where the body was thought to have four main fluids (or humours), if you had too much phlegm in the system it was thought to lead to apathy. His artwork, particularly his comics (see below) were a release from the strict confines of the Fine Art Degree he took and allowed him to escape what he deemed the ‘stagnation’ of his post-degree work.

His artwork bridges a gap between what some people would call proper art and street art, it is intelligent, witty and provokes debate – what more do doubters about the place of street art in our cultural heritage want? For me the images are immediately striking; they aren’t like anything else out there. It’s like seeing a modern take on an ancient art form, bringing the past to present and doing it phenomenally well. I love it. I want it. I managed to get him to paint a wall in Old Street. I survived. I’m chuffed.  Enjoy them – I hope you like, but even if you don’t, I do!