Street artists: New Yorkers Darius and Downey are bringing their witty artworks to the streets of Europe. Gavin Lucas met them at their London studio.(Brad Downey and )

LAST YEAR, SHARP-EYED LONDONERS may have noticed a three foot high sheet metal figure painted green in the classic pedestrian crossing pose, looking for all the world like it was about to cross Tottenham Court Road at the traffic fights outside Habitat. Meanwhile, Bristolians may have come across a metal sculpture of a spider installed on a bricked-up window of an unoccupied house. A few may even have twigged that the sculpture was some kind of monument to a well known local character. Even fewer people still will know who is behind these and many more unsigned sculptures--two American artists now operating in the UK, Darius and Downey.

Brad Downey recently spoke at the ICA's Branding The Street: New Directions in Graffiti Art event. There, he showed a short film made with documentarian Quenell Jones called Public Discourse which documents several street artists in New York installing and talking candidly about their art, be it stickers, stencils, posters or spray painted tags. When Downey started making that film, he wasn't doing street work himself. Fellow Pratt Institute art student Darius, also one of the subjects of the film, had asked him to get involved with the doctored street signs he was putting up around New York but Downey, coming from a more traditional art approach, initially turned the opportunity down.

But that was four years and a graffiti documentary ago. Making the film gave Downey a taste of what it's like to put your art in the public eye and, during the making of it, he started to work with Darius, installing artwork on the streets of New York disguised in the jackets and hard hats of the city's manual workforce.

"We could stay in New York and just play with the inherent street furniture forever," says Darius, but London, where they are both studying fine art, is ...