After a heavy weekend of dancing to Fat Freddy’s Drop, DJ Derek and Theo Parrish, the Pictures on Walls Open Day on Sunday was a welcomed retreat.

The Open Day event was on a closed road in Shoreditch, London with street stalls and a gallery setup in their studio, displaying works by Blu, Banksy, Ian Stevenson, Xenz, Mudwig, Sickboy plus many others…with a charity raffle and free screen printing if you brought a spare t-shirt along (or like Chris, the jumper you’re wearing). It was their first Open Day on Willow Street and attracted lots of enthusiasts and ‘painters’ alike, with the walls being continuously tagged up.

However the fame and notoriety of Banksy et al attracted many “monsters” (as the POW screen printing guy called them) – with people buying originals for upto £20,000 and buying lottery tickets to get limited edition Banksy prints. Now I’m all for artists making money, but I can’t stand people who just go there to buy art to make money from it, the “what’s the most expensive piece you have left” type – with no regard for the content.

But it wasn’t all greed – the event was full of great pictures, paintings, stencils and sculptures and maybe more importantly it was for charity, with percentages of sales and lottery tickets going to an African Blindness charity.