THE REAL CHARM OF HACKNEY DAVE.
Dave Buonaguidi, also known as Real Hackney Dave, is a fixture at EDiT, across London, and throughout the UK. Based in Hackney, East London, he specialises in hand pulled screen printing and has built a reputation for experimenting with unusual and original ideas. Printing his sharp and humorous texts onto maps, clocks, and vintage memorabilia, nothing is off limits. His work always provokes a reaction.
Much of Buonaguidi’s practice is rooted in a sense of community and place. His location based works tie us to where we live, while poking fun at the identities that divide us. By working with vintage maps, both reproductions and originals, he injects the contemporary into familiar and time worn imagery. Sometimes his work is cheeky, as in ‘Artist’s Clock’, ‘Love is Fun’, or ‘Boom Boom’. Other times it delivers a direct hit, as with ‘Gentle Reminder’.
He sums up his mission clearly: “to make everyone who looks at it, feel minimum 1% better.” His favourite colours are pink and gold, chosen for their ability to deliver impact and joy in what can often feel like, as he puts it, “a pretty shit world.” That spirit is obvious in works like ‘Lady Wore Pink’, which takes a well known landmark and reimagines it with campness and fun.
Buonaguidi credits his background as a second generation immigrant with parents from Montecatini in Tuscany and Copenhagen in Denmark for his instinct to hustle. “You grow up wanting to do better, always pushing, always grafting,” he explains. That sense of drive and resilience runs through everything he does.
He speaks openly about the role of identity and belonging in his work. “The only thing I can engage with is other people like me who are trying to progress, who have energy, who are trying to get onto another rung of the ladder.” East London, with its mix of immigrant cultures, gave him both inspiration and kinship when he first moved to Spitalfields in 1994. Later, Hackney offered that same energy with even more creativity.
Before becoming a full time artist, Dave worked in advertising. His career took many twists and turns, including co-founding agencies such as St. Luke’s and Karmarama (Dave’s old ad agency) in 2000. He looks back on those years with mixed feelings.
"i LOVED RUNNiNG A BUSiNESS AND FiNDiNG TALENT - BUT i DiD NOT ENjOY THE GAME PLAYiNG. i REALiSED iT WAS THE CREATiViTY THAT WAS DRiViNG ME."
Advertising did, however, give him a valuable foundation. It exposed him to different ways of working, demanded speed and innovation, and honed his instinct for bold communication. Posters were always his favourite medium in advertising, and he was “massively inspired by propaganda.” He explains: “I love the simplicity of propaganda. The bold colours, the direct instruction, the playful attitude.” That influence is clear in his own works, such as ‘London is Always a Good Idea’.
When he finally walked into a screen printing studio, he felt an immediate click. “It was literally the minute I walked in. I saw people dressed like this, and I thought, that’s me. I had spent my whole 35 year career pretending I was something I wasn’t. Suddenly it was like someone turned the lights on. This is what I should be doing. I love words, I love typography, I love ideas.”
His combination of words and imagery often strips a message to its core. He points to the Karmarama poster ‘Make Tea Not War’, created during the Iraq war: “Everybody’s angry, you have to come at things a bit left field.” This approach runs through his screen prints. Sometimes they land with humour, sometimes with poignancy, but always with clarity. “Things can get lost when there is lots of anger, a voice isn’t heard over the shouting,” he says. “I want to cut through that.”
Pop art also shaped his outlook. He grew up surrounded by the work of Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Lichtenstein, artists who experimented with screen printing and mass communication. He also cites Jamie Reid, whose punk graphics for the Sex Pistols became iconic, as a lasting influence.
Buonaguidi will print on almost anything: wood, copper, playing cards, stamps, target sheets, and maps. Recently he has been printing onto nineteenth century etchings, see the wonderful limited print ‘The Flowers Still Smell’. That project started in a typically spontaneous way: “Some bloke got in touch on Instagram and said, I’ve just bought ten packs of these etchings, do you want them? I said, how much? And he said, just do five for me and keep the rest. Perfect.”
This openness to collaboration and chance is key to his process. Social media connects him to unexpected opportunities, while his Hackney studio anchors him. He describes his daily routine with precision: “I leave the house at nine and I’m in the studio at three minutes past. There’s always something to do.” He thrives on the immediacy of screen printing. “I can spend a day preparing and then bang out a hundred in an hour. I do not understand people who paint for months. I like it fast.”
Maps hold a special place in his work. “They are beautiful things anyway. You put a map in the middle of a room and people gather around. People look for where they live. It is a magnet.” Many of these maps end up discarded in lofts or bins, but for Buonaguidi they are living canvases. “They have been created by incredible artists. They deserve a second life.” For him, maps are more than objects. They connect people to a sense of place and belonging. In his hands, they are rescued from obscurity and transformed into artworks people want on their walls.
London itself is also central to his story. “So the thing I do feel is London, and more specifically East London. When I moved to Spitalfields in 94, I loved it because it was this massive immigrant culture. People had energy, they were hustling, trying to get onto another rung of the ladder. I loved that.” Later he found the same spirit in Hackney, with an extra layer of creativity. For him, London is not just a city but a community of makers, dreamers, and hustlers.
Buonaguidi’s work is playful, cheeky, and sometimes a little bit adult. ‘NORF SARF’ is a perfect example, exploring the long standing rivalry between north and south London. The piece encourages banter while celebrating identity and belonging. By combining retro cartography with bold typography, it captures both humour and pride.
What ties everything together is his ability to take something overlooked or discarded and breathe new life into it. Old maps, forgotten memorabilia, or nineteenth century etchings — in Buonaguidi’s hands they are given energy and purpose. As he puts it: “I love that you can start with something massively emotional, dig it out of a box under the stairs, and take it from the rubbish tip to the bedroom wall.” And maybe, just maybe, make the world feel at least 1% better in the process.
