this is weeny » Street

Vandre

Sheena — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 20:51:43 +0000

I love you, Bandra. I love your Portuguese influence, I love your villages and your Goan grannies who get their skirt suits “stitched” and your tiny stalls set up in verandahs selling homemade pickle and potato chops, I love your promenades and pink sunsets and shwarmas, I love your games nights and communal youtubing and burrito bars and theme parties.

I love your farmers markets, and your supper clubs and Sunday brunches and rooftop dancing. (I don’t like your rickshaw strikes and when they say they won’t go some place) I love that Janata and Jimme’s Kitchen deliver. I love your lively backdrops to impromptu photo shoots. I love your bookshops in garages and artist studios and production offices and chocolate shops and Manju dosa and Bombay sandwiches guy on Hill Road and Saroj sev puri.

I love your things to do on Mondays and Thursdays and other days. (I don’t like when your venues shut before I’m ready to stop moving) I love your street stalls and junk jewels and best fifty rupee finds. I love photos from your skywalks and the shops who sold me furniture underneath. I love your host of interesting characters, your beautiful women and sometimes men and my wonderful, wonderful friends.

Bandra, I’m in love.

Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2011

Sheena — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:31:33 +0000

The nine day Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Bombay just ended and it was a treat. Jampacked with art and activities, the historic arts precinct Kala Ghoda really puts on a show. Rampart Row is pedestrian only, decorated with flags and festoons, providing stage and street for live performances, hair installations, live painting to fire dancing and drum circles, photography exhibitions, as well as NGO, food, handicraft and independent designer stalls. Everywhere in the surrounds is a gallery space; the classrooms host workshops; the halls hold screenings; the gardens, book readings, panels and poetry slams.

I think however, to fully enjoy the festival, you have to become a part of it. I was dressed as an eggplant one day, a strawberry another, I took photos most nights for the Art Loft who organised the doll parades and a bevy of other performances daily. I painted faces. I attended a fantastic weekend workshop on freelance journalism, and a panel once on food and literature. I only wish I hadn’t missed the heritage walks! I am completely smitten with the Fort-Colaba-Churchgate triangle. I feel like I’m cheating on Bandra with South Bombay.

Rad, rad festival. This city needs it. Counting down to 2012′s.

Things We Forget

Sheena — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:46:40 +0000

I’m not one for talking or hearing bumper sticker, but it seems I love post-it notes left to their fate in public places. Shaheen linked me to this ace blog Things We Forget by this anonymous Singaporean blogger and street artist and I’ve spent a good part of the last hour wisening up. ‘JJ’ draws and leaves this notes all over the tiny island and elsewhere for fortuitous people to find. So wonderful.

Bricklane

Sheena — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:21:26 +0000

I absolutely adored Bricklane. I don’t want to gush too much but let’s just say I used the words ‘vibe’ and ‘love’ a lot. Plus my stylish friend Jake, his boyfriend Pedro and friend made for excellent company on the Sunday afternoon we had lunch at the Spitalfields market, shopped at the Upmarket and made our way to Bricklane.

Street sign- in English, and Bengali

It’s an unlikely amalgamation – the South Asian immigrant community, consisting mainly of Bangladeshis that run the businesses and the masses of hipsters and kooky characters that congregate on Sunday (and other days) to wander around, illegally set up stalls selling vintage wares on the street, visit sample sales, listen to music and drink in the beer gardens/compounds, but strangely enough it works, making Bricklane one of the most sought after neighbourhoods in London.

We traipsed around until we found a cute bar to drink Pimms in, stopped by a couple of shops and sales, bought some sunglasses, listened to a really great band from Argentina that were busking, and checked out all the street art.

The mother and child portrait wasn’t always headless, only when part of the building was broken down. Called Ma o Shishu, and painted by Ben Slow (who paints beautiful romanticized portraits of women), with Joe Deane and Joseph Loughborough, you can view the full piece on his flickr.

The 12-metre crane in Hanbury Street, just off Brick Lane, is by Belgian street artist Roa whose artworks can be found all over London. But the crane is a focal symbol in Bangladeshi culture and was therefore chosen to represent the neighbourhood.

Space Invaders

Sheena — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:25:26 +0000

Spotted some of the work of French street artist Invader on my trip. I wonder at his work, (mostly) mosaic tiles arranged like the pixelated Space Invaders of the classic video game and pasted up in various locations all over the world. Read more about him by him here. His new work RubikCubism is also rather genius.

London

Paris

The last one is disguised as a leaf on the tree, hopefully you can spot it. Also, I just saw the marvelous Banksy film Exit from the Giftshop, where the protagonist (I think?) is the cousin of Space Invader. Great film, go watch.

BlowUp

Sheena — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:04:50 +0000

I was having the worst day on Saturday. My SLR had a concussion and I lost my house in a disgusting minor flood. So I bounced from the cesspool to the super cool BlowUp Bombay to help out. Organised by Blind Boys, it was a street exhibition of photographs – around 600 I think taped to walls and woven mats hanging between trees and even within a desolate, decrepit house. There were many great submissions – some incredible photoessays, some so bad that they were kinda good. Half the fun was in the set up though I reckon so I’m glad I didn’t miss out on that. An artist and musician played an audio visual set – one played some great tunes while the other painted on canvas. There were some interesting themes and series – Life in Kashmir, bicycles, my relationship with my girlfriend, photos from 100 days of travel, an interpretation of loneliness in Bombay. I met five hundred amazing photographers or maybe a dozen or so. It was quite awesome and after Melbourne, it’s so lovely to see my new city’s street art culture flourish. Oh and a public dissemination model means people got to take the prints they liked home, leaving no trace of the event. Big ups to the cute kids who helped us set up – they were indispensable. Next up, BlowUp Pune.

This kid decided to be a walking photo installation for a while.

Teaching the kids origami.

Khush painted a mural.

Please excuse the hideous Blackberry pictures. They’re all I’ve got.

Bandra by Night

Sheena — Sat, 15 May 2010 01:04:35 +0000

Neville, a fantastic photographer, my oldest friend and first mentor and myself have been taking to the streets at night with our 50 mm arsenal, his with a very low 1.4 F-stop, mine not as fancy. Bastard. We’re shooting a series of Bandra’s old Portuguese fishing villages and started with Chuim Village earlier this week. Last night we shot the areas around Chapel and Varoda Rd. It’s nice, because although we’re often shooting the same subjects, Neville loves geometry and shadows while I seek out pretty things – like shrines and furry animals. Many of the street lights weren’t working though, but since I’m head over heels about the architecture in the villages, I’ll do a Bandra by day in time. Here are some of our pictures.

Sheena

Diptych by Neville

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Wayne Tippetts

Sheena — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:12:09 +0000

I love Wayne Tippetts’ photography blog. As far as street style blogs go, I shan’t be bothered with ones that feature only middle aged men in bespoke Italian suits with pocket squares. Pssh. Wayne’s on the other hand is full of lovely, light, creative styling and good looking guys and girls. And he’s a very talented photographer.

Postcards from Tokyo: Takeshita St

Sheena — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:49:37 +0000

At first, I was pretty apprehensive asking people if I could take their photograph in Tokyo so mostly I didn’t and didn’t get to. Frustrated, I finally asked this sexy hairdresser if I could take his photo and he obliged. Thus, I began to ask more. Japanese guys cuff their trousers like nobody else. I photographed way more men than women. These weren’t all on Takeshita St, but I was. My favourite store in the area was Comme Des Garçons (Pretty sure I saw Rei Kawakubo!!!!!!), followed by the cute Mercibeaucoup, the architectural genius that is Prada Aoyama, the colourful Takashi Murakami designed Louis Vuitton in Omotesando. In Ginza, my favourite hands down was Lanvin.

Black

Sheena — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:41:57 +0000

If I could dress like Paul Bui or Hanneli Mustaparta sometime soon, that would be nice. I don’t even care that Paul is a man. They exemplify sexy cold weather style. Maybe I can rock some black this winter, instead of [direct quote] ‘that absolute shit you wear’, ’quirkiness way of mismatching outfits’, ’cool weird nonsense’, and my favourite, ‘I hope you get married to a rich man so you can finally co-ordinate your clothes’. People are hilarious. I would probably just buy heaps of expensive ugly stuff. Oh and what I’m missing out on winter? So sad. Oh well.

Photo cred: Street Peeper