For the first time ever the Royal Albert Hall is teaming up with graffiti artists to turn the walls of the historic venue’s loading bay, which is three floors underground, into a gallery of graffiti and street artwork to be titled LOAD. Not only that but it has prompted us to think of the best music-related artists we know.
The notion of the event is to depict the life story of the Royal Albert Hall's 138 year history. LOAD will take a graphical journey through some of the most memorable moments in the Hall's existence by displaying 10ft high murals across a 1,125 square metre space featuring the most iconic musicians to have graced the Hall's legendary stage. Names such as Jimi Hendrix, Pavarotti, Eric Clapton, The Killers and Frank Sinatra are all being immortalised as street art works.
This all got us thinking about the intrinsic relationship between art and music and that so much of urban and pop art, old or new, features the glamorous side of music and its entertainers. Within artrepublic alone there are numerous artists who have either created music-based works, artwork for singles or albums or even at some point actually been musicians. The two are quite inseparable, no doubt due to the fact that albums and singles have always needed artwork.
The stand alone artists for us have to be Sir Peter Blake, quite simply for his cover of The Beetles’ ‘Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’, Goldie who as well as being a graffiti artist, with many a high profile show under his belt, is better known as a DJ and producer and also Jamie Hewlett for inventing and then bringing to life the world’s first digital band The Gorillaz.
