'Little people' litter streets in the name of art

UK street artist known by the moniker Slinkachu places tiny people in discarded rubbish, creating exciting installations only the hawk-eyed will notice.

Leaving small figurines drowning in a discarded takeaway curry tray (‘Chicken Tikka disasta’), or an intrepid father and son sailing perilously close to the Loch Ness monster on a bottle top (‘Fantastic Voyage,’ pictured above), Slinkachu’s mini sculptures are both witty and unexpected.

The guerrilla creator leaves his “little people” littered across East London amid overflowing bins, cracked paving stones and other detritus. His work is impermanent and he abandons it to its fate happily.

“I don’t often wait around to see how people react to my work. I prefer just to leave and not to see what happens to it,” the artist told Independent.co.uk in an interview last year.

Another of his trademark techniques is painting the shells of live snails before setting them free. “I like the idea that these pieces of art disappear into the city and have the potential to re-emerge at any point, as I think snails live for quite a few years,” he said.

But Slinkachu’s work is not entirely lost into the ether. Each piece is carefully photographed before the artist leaves the scene.

An exhibition of images of Slinkachu’s work opens at the Andipa Gallery in London tomorrow. The show follows his hugely successful exhibition ‘Extraordinary Measures’ at Belsay Hall, Northumberland last summer which drew a record-breaking 55,000 visitors.

‘Concrete Ocean’ is the second solo exhibition of Slinkachu’s work to be shown at Andipa Gallery and follows ‘Whatever Happened to the Men of Tomorrow’ (2009), a show centred around an old, balding Superman facing rejection by Metropolis.

Concrete Ocean is at the Andipa Gallery 3 March - 2 April 2011