Swoon participated in the Ill Communication II (Ten of the world’s best street artists take over Urbis.) at the Urbis Gallery. She must have made a spash there. I received emails from two Mancunians who located the GammaBlaBlog's coverage of all things Swoon, and sent me photos.

The one above is from Rik Shepherd. His description:
"this is a small garage, underneath Deansgate railway station (the railway line is raised on a wide viaduct cutting through town, and there are a number of businesses in the arches). This cut-out is pretty well protected from the elements. As it's very close to the entry to the garage, and no-one's done anything to it, I guess the owners quite like it. It did look like a real person on first sighting."

Photo from Eddie Malone of the same cutout. I heard from him first. He wrote:

Hiya,
Kinda weird story on this one. Basically was making a t-shirt and need a some lips to finish it off so started looking for the image using google (stay with me here) eventually found some that must have been on your website somewhere, and when directed there started to read the blog and BAMMM there were these street art things staring at me. I have been seeing (and snapping) these bits of work around my town and they have amazed and confused me in equal measures. None of my mates had an answer so assume it was just a crazy cool person doing it (which I guess it is).

So basically thank you!!! now that I have a name to the person (Swoon) so I can check more of their stuff out. I have attached the ones that I have found so far here in Manchester.

Cheers ears
Eddie

I love this one, she's sitting there, perfectly integrated with the wall. I haven't seen this print in NYC.

I asked Eddie when he first saw the Swoon prints:
" I think I first saw them on 22 August, I biked a different way home to get a picture of some graffiti I had seen from the road and there they were. There was another one that had been ripped off the wall so maybe they have been there a short while. I did find 2 more down an alleyway I cut through quite often so I am thinking within the last month. There are all within walking distance of a place called 'the Green Room' which does art stuff so maybe thought it was to do with them."

Photo: Eddie Malone

I've seen a different version of this one (without that amazing garbage truck) on the waterfront in Brooklyn.

Photo: Eddie Malone

This is a portrait of the people of Division Street in Chinatown, NYC.

Photo: Eddie Malone

Swoon did an unusual white paint stencil or print overlay for this print. She's constantly experimenting.

Photo: Eddie Malone

"Demolished building, corner of New Wakefield St and Great Marlborough St. A big sign warning about security patrols and drug users put me off climbing over the rubble to get closer to the Swoon piece. I think it looks kind of ghostly from a distance." The Swoon print is below that sign.

I chided Rik, saying: "It's funny that outsider Swoon just barged right into that area that scares native you off."

He replied:
"Well, she's a tough street artist, and I'm not :o)"

Photo: Rik Shepherd

Rik Shepherd describing the Urbis show, and why there is a monkey in this photo:

"Swoon had three walls to work on, in a horseshoe. One wall - visible in the picture - has three women (I think one of these is the cut-out in the demolished building), and a roller coaster; the next wall has a couple of boys running, and the third wall has another woman, some tall tenement buildings, and washing hung out on a line. The darker pieces are fixed to the wall; the lighter ones are on heavy tracing paper, and are suspended on thin wires a little way from the wall (the clips holding them up are just visible along the top of the wall in the picture). Around the the feet of the running boys there are what appear tobe a burned go-cart and shopping trolley. Swoon's area was the first in the exhibition, and it was almost always full of people, making it difficult toget any pictures at all.

The monkey. Well, a while back I bought my girlfriend a little beanie monkey as a birthday present. And a little while after that, we got (a) a laptop with a camera and (b) a book on HTML. And it seemed a good idea to combine the two, and we had a little website with a few pictures of the monkey on holiday. Then we got a digital camera, which was obviously handier than the laptop. And as a result, the website got a bit bigger, as we took the monkey on holiday more often, and took pictures of him, and eventually we had to go from the free space to a real, paid for, space.
houseoftheorangemonkey.co.uk"

Then, earlier this year, I got an email inviting us to the launch party of the DTroit exhibition at Urbis, only the invite is addressed to Mr Monkey (not the most imaginative name, but it fits). So we go, take some pictures, put them on the site. The Urbis people are pleased, we go and meet some of them. Later we get an invite to the launch of Ill Communication II. Technically,we shouldn't be taking pictures, but we've got permission from one of the marketing guys, but we feel obliged to make sure the pictures all involve the monkey. So that's why half the picture is obscured. The pictures, with commentary, are here

We got the first invite solely because one page has a couple of pictures showing the outside of Urbis.