22 Jan - 15 Feb 2015Somerset House, London

50 international street artists present a series of ‘cartographic’ representations of their chosen cities.

Ranging from literal to highly abstract, each map is a response to the way these artists experience and interpret the places that they know so well.

The exhibition venue until recently belonged to HRMC (the UK tax office) and so serves as an ironic metaphor for how these artists engage with urban environments by reclaiming spaces.

#mappingthecity

Mapping the city

“Whereas most people go about their business concerned with the business of getting from A to B,

the street artist studies and surveys, carefully considering the city’s potential,

looking for dialogue opportunities, and along the way builds up a mental map

drawn from an intriguing perspective…"

The call for submissions consisted of three words

‘Map your space’ and this was how the artists responded.

108 ‘Mind Maps of Alessandria, during the day’108 ‘Mind Maps of Alessandria, during the night’

“The way we visualise space is radically different from moment to moment. Just in 24 hours, think about the way space looks and feels at night time compared to how it looks and feels in the day. It’s a totally different way of understanding space, so why should it look the same on a map?”

Chu ‘Buenos Aires’ 2012

Chu’s map communicates the kinetic nature of street life.

"I tried to create a map of Buenos Aires marking my usual movements around the city. I am used to moving around it a lot, from one side to other, and sometimes it is really chaotic and stressful. However it is also really where I get a lot of inspiration."

Jurne 2013

Augustine Kofie ‘Overcast Angeles’ 2014

Sixe Paredes ‘Barcelona’ 2013

Sixe Paredes ‘Barcelona’ (detail), 2013

You can recognise the street layout and landmarks like the Sagrada Familia.

“It's using a style of his work he calls circuits. He's obsessed by numbers, numerology and the Kabbalah, and he has his own numeric system and cuneiform form of writing. All of the letters and numbers reference moments in his life or people that he's met. He shows these experiences and hides them at the same time.”

Egs, Finland

MOMO ‘Tag Manhattan’ 2013 [original project 2006]

A hand-drawn map and a video presents the largest tag in the world. The 12.8km continuous line was created using a device attached to his bicycle to drip his name, MOMO, in block-long letters across the entire width of Manhattan.

Hidden in plain sight, the physical line only creates meaning when it’s abstracted to the level of the whole city.

\ Spok, Madrid

Will Sweeney ‘Cabott Square’ 2014 Brad Downey, USA

“I went some years ago to Vienna, I visited one of the best museums I’ve ever been; The Globe Museum. There I found… a globe from the XIV century; America was not there… of course, the continent was discovered by mistake in 1492! So instead of my country there was a big ocean…

That gave me the idea of creating a globe of the world as I know it. I got rid of all the maps and references I have around and created this globe completely from my memories and my geography knowledge. It is a hard memory exercise, the results are not always as expected and it is interesting to compare it to a real globe.”

Martin Tibabuzo ‘Mi mundo/ Meine Welt’ 2013

Swoon ‘Bangkok’ 2012

Known for creating scenes that carefully examine the "relationship of people to their built environment”, Swoon chose the Thai capital Bangkok as her inspiration. In her work, the body and the city is intertwined - the experience, as she says, "of becoming part of the fabric of the city".

\Shephard Fairey ‘Berlin Tower’ 2011

Mapping the City, 22 Jan - 15 Feb 2015, Somerset House, London

Presented byKieran McMillan

Senior UX Designer working in Berlin at HERE.com, a global leader in mapping.