15 Facts About Steve Lazarides

Steve Lazarides is a British-Greek Cypriot publisher, photographer, collector and curator.

Steve Lazarides has helped popularise street art and underground art.

Steve Lazarides grew up in Bristol, England and studied photography at Newcastle Polytechnic.

Steve Lazarides discovered street subculture and graffiti art as a teenager at Bristol's Barton Hill neighbourhood youth club, organised by John Nation and referenced in 2020 documentary Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art.

Steve Lazarides subsequently worked as a photographer for Sleazenation, where he was employed as photography director from 1996 till 2001, and The Face.

Steve Lazarides created an in-house print studio, Lazarides Editions, and worked with the artists to create prints to share with the art community.

Steve Lazarides opened up his first gallery in London in 2006, and brought many unknown artists in the UK to light including holding Invader's first UK exhibition, Space Invader's Invasion London and Rubik Bad Men II.

In 2009 he moved headquarters from Charing Cross Road into a five-story Georgian townhouse on Rathbone Place, near Oxford Street, with the first exhibition at the new Steve Lazarides Rathbone being of the Portuguese graffiti artist Vhils, which was the artist's debut UK show.

In 2016 Steve Lazarides opened Banksy Print Gallery in the Mondrian Hotel on the South Bank.

Steve Lazarides began to organise shows that "would not look out of place on a Turner Prize shortlist".

Steve Lazarides pioneered the contemporary 'immersive art' trend with several 'pop-up' shows, including Hell's Half Acre in October 2010, co-curated with actor Kevin Spacey and held in The Old Vic Tunnels beneath Waterloo station, London.

Steve Lazarides returned to the tunnels in 2011 and 2012, with shows titled Minotaur and Bedlam.

Steve Lazarides held an off-site exhibition in collaboration with The Vinyl Factory in October 2013, titled BRUTAL and taking place at London's 180 The Strand.

Steve Lazarides self-distributed the first and second editions of the two volumes, resulting in sales of over 5,000 copies within a month, at the end of 2019.

In 2020 Steve Lazarides appeared as a talking head in Vision Films' documentary Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art.