We sat down with Anthony Overend and Izzy Hoskins, co-founders of Graffwerk; an artist collective based in Leicester.
Graffwerk was founded in July 2017, with a mission to redefine the visual landscape of urban areas through street art. They are a collective of street artists, illustrators and digital creators with members all around the world. As a cohort, they create large scale murals and deliver corporate projects.
“As a collective of artists our style is varied, from cartoon-esque visuals and graphical styles through to photo realism.”
As part of the organisation Graffwerk run The Mill, which contains GraffHQ, offices, an art gallery, and two further independents; Peacocks Printing and Bitsy’s.
Graffwerk also project manage and deliver ‘Bring The Paint’; a street art festival in Leicester. ‘Bring The Paint’ is hosted every two years and has grown into one of the largest street art festivals in Europe, featuring some of the top artists and crews on the planet. They come to the city to showcase their talent and combine styles covering traditional letter forms, street art and character based works.
Recently, Graffwerk produced arguably their most significant piece of art; a mural on St George’s Tower in Leicester. Not only is it a beautiful piece, it is also the tallest street art mural in Europe, and the fourth tallest in the world (standing at 82 metres). They collaborated on the project with BID Leicester and it’s fair to say they have created a statement piece that the city of Leicester can be proud of.
Being based on Frog Island, we also asked Graffwerk what some of their favourite local independents were.
“At Graffwerk we have GraffHQ, Peacocks Printing and Bitsy’s who are our in-house independent
retailers. Other than those, we love Out Of Joint Records for great music, Social Climbing and Lane7 for good times, Grounded Kitchen for good food, Stayfree Music for everything for local musicians, and HSH Opticians for quality eyewear. Leicester is home to some great independents and so there are loads more that we could mention.”
