I was round the back of Hamilton House yesterday, on City Road in St Paul’s, to pick up a tandem for a ride with Two’s Company, a project from Bristol charity LifeCycle which gives visually impaired people the chance to ride bicycles. There’s one shameless plug for a great organisation, and here’s another one: Jake’s Bikes, the hidden-away used bike shop which also offers servicing, repairs and tuition, and where LifeCycle’s tandems are stored.

Plugs come in threes (as the saying doesn’t go), so here’s another one: The Bristol Bike Project, located next to Jake’s Bikes, and according to their website, “a volunteer-run, community bike project, repairing and recycling unwanted bicycles in order to provide them to underprivileged and marginalised groups within Bristol”.

Enough shameless plugs. What I am meant to be posting is a mysterious bit of graffiti which I found behind Hamilton House. The photograph on the right is its location, very much hidden away. I don’t know how long it’s been where it is, but unlike most other pieces of street art in Bristol, its location means that it’s not going to be painted over soon after it appears (the Cheo on nearby Stokes Croft – Bristol Culture story here – has already been tagged, mere days after arriving).

I’m sure I recognise it as being a part imitation of a famous painting, but my knowledge can’t quite stretch to pinpoint what it is.

***UPDATE*** Wednesday, April 28

Thanks to some knowledgable readers out there, it seems that the above street art is a homage to The Son of Man by the Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte (Wikipedia entry here). The Hamilton House piece is by Bristol artist Levi C.

It turns out that Son of Man on Hamilton House was the first street art piece that Levi C ever sprayed on the street, more used to creating works of art on canvas.

“I try to deliver humorous, ironic ideas that are original and hopefully sometimes bring a smile to the viewer,” Levi C says. “I believe the stencil technique to be fairly simple. For me, it’s about the subject matter. So I look to leave out detail and deliver the image boldy and cleanly as it’s the message/idea that I feel has required the most creativity.”