Over the course of a few days last week, culminating on Saturday, amidst the extreme cold and wet weather, Street Artist Fanakapan was out near the river to lay out his latest piece of ‘Helium Graff’ work entitled ‘Pain t’, further advancing his change of direction, moving into a more monochrome approach to his helium balloon creations through 2015, offering the maximum opportunity to demonstrate his superb use of shadow and reflective light highlights to make the work just pop of the wall in a full 3D effect.

Luckily for us here at London Calling Blog we caught Fanakapan as he was finishing the work and he kindly took the time to explain the meaning behind the piece with us. The work is focused around Alcoholism the cause of so many problems for so many, a problem that transcends geography, cultures, religions and ages, something that directly or indirectly affects countless people the world over.

There are two integral elements tying this wonderful thought-provoking work together, beyond it’s obvious incredible aesthetic appearance. The work spells ‘paint’, with a broken wine bottle taking the place of the missing ‘I’, and is very much a key to the message of this work. The piece was designed to be photo’d on most cameras from the street in order to capture the key message behind this work, ‘Pain’, with the superb deflated ‘T’ added on to the end of the work providing the second message within the piece and lying with how for Fanakapan painting saved his life and helps keep him sane.

It’s always an absolute pleasure to spy work from Fanakapan, he is certainly one of our utmost favourite artists in the UK and around the globe. However it is all the more impressive to see just how far he is developing his latest styling, with each piece just becoming increasingly realistic and always with new adaptations and variations to be seen, in all leaving one wondering just where will Fanakapan continue to take his work. This wall was put up with support from McSweeney.

Work-in-progress after 2 days work interspersed by extreme cold, high winds and icy downpours.

Fanakapan at work on Saturday.

Fanakapan at work on Saturday.

As designed to be photo’d on most cameras from the street, capturing the key message behind this work, ‘Pain’.

The full piece demonstrating the distance imposed on the final character in order to create a secondary image, depending on your focus point or viewing angle.

Detail of the letter ‘P’.

The broken wine bottle which takes the place of the missing ‘I’, and is very much a key to the message of this work.

Detail of the letter ‘N’.

Superb deflated ‘T’ added on to the end of the work providing the second message within the piece and lying with how for Fanakapan painting saved his life and helps keep him sane.

Detail of the letter ‘T’.

Scale-shot, offering a sense of the size of each of the letters.

The piece’s message nicely illustrated from behind the barbed-wire.