Stuck Up
Stockholm's Street StickersThe streets of Stockholm are alive right now in an explosion of street art stickers, with many different artists working in almost as many different media.
The outsider may not think of Sweden as having a vibrant underground/hip hop/art culture. You'd be very surprised. While the city streets are kept clean of spray can graffiti (to the extent that graf artists don’t bother anymore), the train track-sides are lined with large-scale, highly coloured graffiti pieces.
The number of active sticker artists is easily on par with that of London, and the quality of the very best is probably better. For years, Akayism has been creating remarkable works across many street mediums, moving from graffiti to stickers and bill posters, stealthily placing posters into street poster frames and hoardings, and even manipulating full-size advertising billboards in the city's prime spots overlooking the busy harbour. The quality of his work is indistinguishable from the slick, commercially produced posters and adverts he often bases his work on.
More recently deer heads have appeared all over the city: high-quality vinyl stickers with cut-to-shape images of deer heads in various sizes and colours — some with text, most without, some made specifically to fit the shape and size of the road signs they are stuck on. No reference is ever made to the artist's identity.
So, what defines the graphic styles of the Stockholm sticker scene? Notably the images are much more iconographic, and much less the ‘me, me, me’ repetition of the artist's name or tag than elsewhere; few of the stickers feature names or words — instead, identification of the (better) artists is easily possible through the repetition of themes and styles.
While the authorities have cracked down hard on spray can graffiti, for now the city’s sticker phenomenon flourishes; you can see generations and evolutions of stickers by prolific, long-term artists all over the city, with fading, smaller, handmade stickers from yesteryear up next to their latest multi-colour vinyl masterpiece — like art portfolios left open for passer-bys to view.
Of the stickers and artists who are 'up' at the moment, a few deserve special mention. 'On Top' is an artist uses techniques such as hand-tagging, multi-layered stencils, rubber-stamping and laser-printed stickers, featuring dark, moody images of skulls, coffins, zombies and suicidal psychos. The stickers are everywhere you look in Stockholm; the zombie 'flesheater' face has become so iconographic that even the 3cm orange stickers, each showing a tiny part of the face, clearly identify the artist.
'Ingen Reklam Tack' is a Swedish phrase widely used on household letterboxes, meaning 'no advertising (junk mail) thank you'. One Stockholm artist has been using this wording, together with the image of an angry face, to claim the public space for public art — a pre-emptive strike against the record companies and commercial advertisers who use stickers/street art techniques to draw the youth market.
As this is one of the world's cleanest cities, a mass cleanup of the stickers is inevitable, and many artists’ work will be lost. Perhaps it is what happens after such action that will be the real measure of the scene — how many artists will stick up their work faster than it gets removed, and how many of them will disappear for good.
The number of active sticker artists is easily on par with that of London, and the quality of the very best is probably better. For years, Akayism has been creating remarkable works across many street mediums, moving from graffiti to stickers and bill posters, stealthily placing posters into street poster frames and hoardings, and even manipulating full-size advertising billboards in the city's prime spots overlooking the busy harbour. The quality of his work is indistinguishable from the slick, commercially produced posters and adverts he often bases his work on.
More recently deer heads have appeared all over the city: high-quality vinyl stickers with cut-to-shape images of deer heads in various sizes and colours — some with text, most without, some made specifically to fit the shape and size of the road signs they are stuck on. No reference is ever made to the artist's identity.
So, what defines the graphic styles of the Stockholm sticker scene? Notably the images are much more iconographic, and much less the ‘me, me, me’ repetition of the artist's name or tag than elsewhere; few of the stickers feature names or words — instead, identification of the (better) artists is easily possible through the repetition of themes and styles.
While the authorities have cracked down hard on spray can graffiti, for now the city’s sticker phenomenon flourishes; you can see generations and evolutions of stickers by prolific, long-term artists all over the city, with fading, smaller, handmade stickers from yesteryear up next to their latest multi-colour vinyl masterpiece — like art portfolios left open for passer-bys to view.
Of the stickers and artists who are 'up' at the moment, a few deserve special mention. 'On Top' is an artist uses techniques such as hand-tagging, multi-layered stencils, rubber-stamping and laser-printed stickers, featuring dark, moody images of skulls, coffins, zombies and suicidal psychos. The stickers are everywhere you look in Stockholm; the zombie 'flesheater' face has become so iconographic that even the 3cm orange stickers, each showing a tiny part of the face, clearly identify the artist.
'Ingen Reklam Tack' is a Swedish phrase widely used on household letterboxes, meaning 'no advertising (junk mail) thank you'. One Stockholm artist has been using this wording, together with the image of an angry face, to claim the public space for public art — a pre-emptive strike against the record companies and commercial advertisers who use stickers/street art techniques to draw the youth market.
As this is one of the world's cleanest cities, a mass cleanup of the stickers is inevitable, and many artists’ work will be lost. Perhaps it is what happens after such action that will be the real measure of the scene — how many artists will stick up their work faster than it gets removed, and how many of them will disappear for good.
Photography by Tim Claxton
