'Gentrified graffiti' appears in Hackney Wick – to the fury of local street artists whose work was removed from the same walls before the 2012 Games

Glaring out from the brick wall of an old sweet factory on the edge of the Olympic site in east London, a furious face throws a toothy snarl across the canal. Half monkey, half skull, with a golden clothes peg for a nose, the creature has every reason to be angry.

It is the work of local street art collective, the Burning Candy Crew, whose psychedelic scenes defined this industrial stretch of the River Lea Navigation, until they were mostly painted over in preparation for the 2012 Games. Now, on those very walls, the Olympic legacy's public art body has unveiled a series of new artworks – with not a local artist in sight.

“It was a very deliberate decision,” says Sarah Weir, former head of arts and cultural strategy for the Olympics, who now heads up the Legacy List charity that commissioned the work. “We unashamedly wanted to showcase the best international artists and transform this part of the canal into a destination for street art. We want it to have the same energy as somewhere like Camden – I hope people will come on boat tours to see the work.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Off the wall … the mural by Mark Lyken and Teo Moneyless is on the wall in front of an old sweet factory, where local artists used to paint

The four new works, which occupy prominent stretches of wall along both sides of the water, are by artists invited from Brazil and Sweden, Italy, Scotland and the Netherlands. On one building, a graphic black-and-white mural by Swedish artist Ekta Ekta climbs up to the eaves, a tangled pile of odds and ends that form a teetering Heath Robinson contraption. Beneath a bridge, a blue form by Brazilian painter Zezão unfurls like a tribal marking, recalling the looping shapes of cursive sanskrit script.

“We're trying to make a museum-quality exhibition in a public space,” says the project's curator, Cedar Lewisohn, who also organised Tate Modern's 2008 Street Art show, which saw the brick facade of Bankside power station covered with murals. “But curating in such a dynamic context as Hackney Wick is never going to be easy.”

Home to hundreds of artist studios and galleries, the area already has a thriving street art scene. And for local artists, who saw their own work removed from these walls by Hackney and Tower Hamlets councils in the run-up to the Olympics, the project – which is funded by Bloomberg and supported by the Canal & River Trust – could not be more offensive.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Washed away … Dirty Laundry, by the Burning Candy Crew, used to adorn a stretch of wall opposite the Olympic site in Hackney Wick. Photograph: Sweet Toof

“These walls were our playground,” says Sweet Toof, who has worked in the area for the past 15 years, adorning buildings with his trademark disembodied gnashers. “They were constantly evolving and available for anyone to paint on. Now they have commissioned these murals and covered them in coats of anti-graffiti paint, so we all have to look at them for the next 10 years. It completely goes against the spirit of street art.”

Fellow graffiti artist, Mau Mau, agrees: “It's disrespecting local people's creativity,” he says. “They paint it all grey for the Olympics, then when it suits them, they choose who paints where. It takes away the authenticity.”

Mau Mau was subject to one of the most high-profile acts of Olympic censorship, when his legal street painting of a zombie Ronald McDonald, clad in the logos of the Olympic sponsors and running with a Coke-branded torch belching clouds of black smoke, was hastily painted over by Ealing council. Shortly afterwards, several other artists were pre-emptively arrested and banned from going near Olympic venues for the duration of the Games.

Commercialised … one of the new murals commissioned by the Legacy List, by Dutch collective Graphic Surgery. Photograph: the Canals Project

“It continuously happens with rebellious ideas in art or music,” says Mau Mau. “The authorities know they can't stop it, so they have to control it. Graffiti becomes murals and free parties become sponsored events. They infiltrate and commercialise.”

Weir says the Canals Project – which is planned to extend to 20 walls along the canal by 2020 – is about “international cultural exchange, continuing the spirit of the Olympics”, and says that two local street artists will be selected for residencies in Poland or Brazil in autumn.

But for artists such as Sweet Toof, who trained at the Royal Academy and has work in the V&A collection, this is little consolation.

“It's part of a whole culture of graffiti gentrification,” he says, comparing it with a vast Coca-Cola-sponsored Olympic mural that appeared in the area last year, before it was defaced and had to be painted over. “There is a general respect between artists – people paint around each other and are careful about what they paint over. But with the commercialisation of street art, it's becoming pay-as-you-go wall – every surface sold off to the highest bidder.”