Introducing Maikel Walkman (artist/street art)

Artist Maikel Walkman (London 2016 – 2017)

Back at the end of November last year, I came across this haunting work down in the Leake Street tunnel, near Waterloo Station. It stood out amongst the graff surrounding it.

Artist Maikel Walkman. Leake Street Tunnel. (photographed 12 November 2016)

I couldn’t work out if the tag on the right was the artist’s name, so I posted it on Instagram as artist unknown.  I now realise that I can just see Maikel hidden behind the discarded rubbish on the left.

Fast forward to July 2017 and the Meeting of Styles paint Jam in the Nomadic Community Gardens, Shoreditch.  And I came across this artist at work.

 

Artist Maikel Walkman at work for MoS 2017. Nomadic Community Gardens. (photographed 2nd July 2017)

The distinctive black and yellow palette looked familiar and I asked him if he had painted in Leake Street last year?  And of course he had.

I can’t find much other information about this artist online beyond photographs of his work. He was in Cardiff last year for the Taffpaint jam covered by diff graff blog.

These are all the other works I’ve found by him since July.

Maikel Walkman: works in Hackney

Earlier in 2017, he painted these works.

Artist: Maikel Walkman. Off Hackney Road. (photographed 6th July 2017)

 

Artist: Maikel Walkman. Hackney Road. (photographed 20th August 2017)

 

I too find the nearby gasworks rather magnificent.  Here is a photograph of mine from 2012.

 

Maikel Walkman: dummy art, summer 2017

His latest series of works feature faceless dummies, similar to the dummies they use when testing car safety.  Or they could also be robots.

 

In the close-up below, are they metal roses or electric cables? I love the ambiguity, of the heartbroken dummy.

 

 

And this satirical homage to the Statue of Liberty in the US, with the crows or vultures closing in.

 

 

And if you’re in Leake Street tunnel, you may spot some there too, embedded in amongst the graff.

Here is the finished work from the Meeting of Styles paint jam.  One of my favourite pieces this year.

 

 

The vision of Maikel Walkman,with his black and yellow palette, presents a dystopian, neon-lit reflection of our celebrity obsessed world, where foxes scavenge at night and both humans and dummies are lonely.