Quite possibly. The Los Angeles Times reports that two “French nationals” were busted with “buckets of grout and pieces of tile” in Little Tokyo. The LAPD believes that one of them may indeed have been the semi-anonymous street artist Invader. He was in town for MOCA’s “Art in the Streets” exhibition and for the sake of keeping it real, has been putting up his signature work outside of the museum as well. According to the police, there’s been a sharp increase in vandalism near the venue since the show opened. Consequently, the pair were let go while authorities investigated and its now believed they flew back to France. (Photo: waltarrrrr/flickr)

Street Art Manhole Covers: Looter’s Delight

Gasp! What’s this? City commissioned street art that actually looks alright? Milan’s Fibre Optic company Metroweb sponsored 20 manhole covers from The London Police, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, Rendo and the Flying Fortress. The manholes will remain in Milan for one or two years, capping sewers and inviting crowbar-happy scavengers from eBay to an international buffet. Full menu here.

While everyone’s speculating about the details of Banksy’s new documentary, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” and its connection to universally despised street artist Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash, Shepard Fairey openly discussed details of the soon to be premiered Sundance film in a 2008 video, while sitting on a panel at Bonhams auction house. So what did we learn? Quite a bit, but overall, Mr. Brainwash is the human, performance art version of this Banksy painting and that’s mostly Banksy’s doing. Read more »

Space Invader, the globe trotting street artist that gets respect and beautifully vandalizes property with arcade classic inspired mosaic tiles, opens a new exhibit of work this week at Lazarides Rathbone gallery in London. “Low Fidelity” will be on display from August 15 until September 17 and includes “sculptures, mosaics and a brand new series of Rubik classic album covers.” Click the images above for a sampling and see a full preview of the pixellated masterpieces here.

Photos by Ian Cox for ©WalkAndy