Images from Dan Witz.

How did you get started in the street art scene?

I got started doing street art in the late 1970′s as an art student in downtown New York City. Back then, the idea was that if the world was a fucked up place that desperately needed changing, and contemporary art (and art schooling) had miserably failed us in this respect, then it became our job as artists to not only challenge the system but also change it. Much as I enjoyed museums and galleries, they were part of the problem: clearly exhibiting paintings on some white wall somewhere wasn’t going to change many minds. So, in search of more immediate impact, most of my friends started bands, and I did that for a while too, but I was a painter at heart. Inspired by the awesomely graffiti subway trains, I started going out tagging (or my version of it).

When describing your work, what would you say are the main themes?

If there was a consistent theme running through the past 35 years it would be a wish to stop people in their tracks and make them go, “WHAT THE FUCK?!!?”. My style is suggested somewhat by theme (content), but more so by my need to avoid getting caught and arrested. For my first real street project, in 1979, I painted tiny realistic hummingbirds. Each one took about 2 hours to paint. New York City was such a chaotic mess back then that if I was quiet and kind of hunched over and folded my shoulders in, I could paint in public without anyone paying too much attention. In the 80’s and 90’s I made complicated multi-image sticker installations, each with it’s own intricate airbrush shadow painted on the wall. Installation was a complicated choreographed maneuver and could take up to a half an hour. I could get away with this if I worked in marginal (low income) neighborhoods and was mindful of what walls I chose. But, starting in the late nineties, with the zero police tolerance in NYC brought on by gentrification, I absolutely could not be seen in the act so my style was forced to adapt. The pieces I do now are made in the studio and installed on site, usually in under a minute. This need for speed has forced me to develop new techniques and – and I love the irony here – these technical innovations have given me the means to do much more street art than if the authorities had left me well enough alone.

What are your favourite materials to work with?

It’s a mix. I’ll use anything. My goal is to make it seem as if a real person (or whatever) is there. These days I start with digital media then paint over it using all the tricks of illusionistic painting I know. Mostly it’s glazing and contours and colour technique but I’ve really come to love the airbrush. No street piece of mine is done until I’ve touched it up a bit with the airbrush. Honestly, I’m not really sure why this works so well, but it’s super gratifying when I step back after airbrushing and everything snaps into 3-D.

What has been your most challenging and/or rewarding piece of work thus far?

The summer of 2012’s  Amnesty International collaboration in Frankfurt called Wailing Walls. That was the biggest, coolest thing I’ve ever done. Also, in 2010, Gingko Press published a monograph on my work, Dan Witz: In Plain View. 30 Years of Artworks, Illegal and Otherwise. Usually I’m not so pleased with published stuff about me, but I was very proud of this.

How do you go about creating your street art? How do you choose a street/environment?

Usually my ideas stem from a reaction to the last thing I did. With new pieces I try and amend the failures and shortcomings of the preceding project. Every time I begin a series, I don’t consider it successful until my previous year’s work looks obsolete to me. This can be challenging at times, but for once my chronically restless and dissatisfied personality turns out to be useful – my work keeps evolving and stays fresh and I’m usually pretty psyched to wake up in the morning and get to work.

As far as choosing where I put my stuff, that depends on several factors. First, my subject matter, where it’ll have the most resonance etc. Then the actual object and how it needs to be installed, and, as important as anything, is location: the pieces should be where the most people can see them – but where they won’t be too vulnerable, or where I won’t get caught putting them up. This last part involves a complicated calculus that is actually as creative a part of the process as anything else.

You’ve been creating street art since 1979. How has your work and the idea around street art changed since then?

When I started out I began using a simple message in a bottle approach to making street art. Location and placement were mostly random: the main idea was that free anonymous art with no promotional agenda existed. In the early 2000’s when street art started getting popular, this strategy got to be increasingly difficult, so I began conceiving and planning my work differently.  Rather than competing for attention on the public commons, I tried to make my installations so subtle and so integrated into the urban environment that they were practically invisible. Nothing was more satisfying to me than having hundreds of people somnambulate by my very obvious faux grates every day and not see them. Part of this came from my punk-rock background, my bite-the-hand-that-feeds-me need to twit the bourgeois-zee, but also this was my way of responding to all the brilliant new artists redefining what it meant to be working on the street.

All along street art has never been a means to get ahead for me. I still believe in anonymous, not-for-sale art as a meaningful response to art-world art – a genuine game changer. And I still enjoy doing it, everything about it, especially penetrating into places that conventional art making can’t.

Have you ever been arrested?

No. Or I should knock on wood and say, not yet. The law of averages gets me stopped by the cops every now and then, but thankfully they’ve never taken me in. I’m waiting for the day when they’re sitting in their car checking my license and one of them decides to Google me. You’ll definitely be getting those annoying legal-fee fund raising e-mails from me then.

What attracted you to the streets of London?

Mostly that I was brought here by Lazarides Gallery, and before that by StolenSpace. But I’ve always enjoyed working in London. These days, next to NYC it’s my favorite city to do street art in (or on, or to.) For one thing, the light in both places is very similar, which really suits the emotional temperature of my work. Also, when you get up close in London there’s a grit in the pores that’s a lot like New York’s. Since I’m usually transplanting a NYC grate, my pieces feel at home.

Why do you have such an interest in prisoners?

With these pieces the disenfranchised characters and grate imagery made perfect sense – they were a logical expansion on the previous years’ projects. As I began working though, I sensed a connection to a larger theme, I just had to do my daily easel-sit and paint my way there. Usually this blind alley way of going about my business would have been fine, I’m in no hurry and I’m not really one of those artists who is known for one kind of work and has expectations to fulfill. But for these pieces I was employing models, and we needed a story to work with. Also, with my production process being so complicated and time consuming (and expensive now) months of fumbling around has become impractical.

So while in the midst of this gestation phase, Amnesty International contacted me to collaborate on their 2012 campaign in Frankfurt. It was a perfect match. I’d already been painting prisoners, but the hook was that now these would literally be prisoners. More than symbols, these were real people with names and case histories.

I mentioned earlier that this was the coolest thing I’ve ever done. The best synergy ever, probably because it was about more than me, or art.

Why choose to transform phone boxes (in London).

Yeah, I was worried about this. I mean this had the potential to be corny or wrong footed, but honestly I just love that red so much I couldn’t help myself. And the prisoner imagery always seems to trump my reservations. Also the phone booths fit my code for defacement – in that they’re not really necessary anymore and so ubiquitous and taken for granted that they’re almost invisible. I’m pretty satisfied with this piece. Maybe because it was so difficult and challenging, what with the winter weather, the cameras, the weird traffic warden spy-guys, and the fact that those things are built like WWI battleships and are impossible to drill into. It wasn’t until my third try that I finally got the piece up, and as usual with me, overcoming obstacles and hardships makes the result a lot more gratifying. I should thank that traffic warden dude for chasing me off the first time. I would never have had the guts to put this one where I did if I wasn’t cold and wet and totally fed up.

What do you do when you’re not creating art?

We have a 16-month-old kid.

How has your style developed through out the years? Have you always preferred to paint in a super-realistic style?

Yeah, I’ve never felt a need to express myself in any other way. On one level all my work over the years has been about exploring what realist painting can do that no other visual media else can – what’s intrinsically unique about this way of painting. In the past I’ve used my representational skills to create the illusion of light and space and movement, which I’m still into, but these days it’s mostly about The Presence – that moment when you’re there, and you suspend disbelief and surrender yourself to the universe of the painting. This is what has always excited me about looking at art – that crazy moment when you leave your body and go down the artist’s rabbit hole to places unknown.

What are people’s reactions to your work? Have you ever had bad reactions?

Of course, doing street art is by nature an act of cultural aggression. That said; I understand that I’m working on the public commons and try my best to use discretion. But that said I’m still a punk. The most game changing part about the punk movement was that they didn’t care what anyone thought about them; they didn’t give a fuck about pleasing anyone and (sometimes, actively) even wanted you to dislike them. At the time this was a revelation to me, and really freed me from a lot of craven ambitions and hang-ups. So if everyone was happy about my work I’d be worried about it.

I think I mentioned this earlier but last year when I was using some pretty dark imagery I tried to make it so integrated into the environment that 99% of the people passing by wouldn’t even notice it. This was a lot more fun than it sounds. No one ever saw my pieces. And they were right out there in plain view. Watching everyone walk by oblivious to a naked chained prisoner two feet away from their faces was one of the most perversely satisfying experiences I’ve ever had doing street art.

Has the stigma attached to street art ever put you off?

Depends what stigma you’re referring to. Back in the 80’s and 90’s before many people were doing street art, the art world tended to look down on people like me. There was a general feeling that this was outsider’s art, and trained artists did it because they wanted attention and couldn’t get shown in ‘real’ galleries. There was even an insinuation that maybe we were even a little crazy (and not in a fun way).  But I’ve gotten used to being condescended to by arts professionals. In fact, whenever some smug curator type in silly eyeglasses gives me that armored “I’ve never heard of you” look, I get this private little puff of glee inside of me. I can’t help it; it’s like getting a secret glimpse of some endangered species – the emperor with no clothes. Although, I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit that sometimes it crossed my mind that they might be right about me being crazy.

These days, doing street art has become such a hipster cliché that I suppose I should be embarrassed that I still do it. I’m not. Basically I’m too lazy to worry about hipster clichés.

What is your main reason for making art?

Do I have a main consistent reason for making art? I’m not sure. If I do it’s nothing too profound. Probably it’s something prosaic like, “it’s what I do best”, or “it’s all that I’m capable of anymore”. Over the years most things non-art related in my brain have atrophied away. Seriously, it’s cobwebs in here.  Dirty diapers and dried up old palettes, that‘s all I got.

Is there anything that you dislike about the street art scene?

No. But I’m pretty insulated from the crass commercial side of the scene. And for the most part the artists I meet don’t seem to be threatened by me. Probably because I’m old. And I’ve never hit the money which seems to be when the friction and trash-talking starts. The truth is, my new work takes so much time and energy that I don’t have much attention span left over to worry about career politics or much else. And that crazy kid keeps me pretty busy too.

Thanks Dan. 
Street Art London
DanWitz.com

Thierry Noir painting The Village Underground Wall (Feb 2013)

Why did you move to Berlin in 1982?

I moved to Berlin for one simple reason – because I couldn’t find my way in France. I was fired from every job I started. After a while I said to myself, I have to change something in my life, because if I continue like this I’m going directly into a dead end. I didn’t want to be unemployed. So I thought to myself, I have to change something radically in my life. At that time I had heard a lot about West Berlin, about the music. There were a lot of new wave groups. A lot of people had to live in squats because there were no flats. The new mayor of West Berlin said, “If I am elected, I promise I will clean all the squats from Berlin”. So he got elected in June ’81, and from that point on there was a big battle in West Berlin about housing, with a lot of police and violence. It was in the news everyday in France, so I said to myself let’s go there, let’s see what’s happened. So I started from nothing, with only two small suitcases. I came with an address, but after a few days some guys said to me you have to find something else. I was really on the street, with only my two suitcases, and I started from zero to live in Berlin.

Were you interested in art before you moved to Berlin?

Not really. I started to remark in West Berlin that everybody I met was an artist. So I thought, what a great city – I never met one artist in 20 years in Lyon, and now in one week I have already met 20 artists. I said to myself lets continue in this way; somebody asked me ‘Are you and artist?’ and I said ‘yes’.

The view from Noir’s bathroom in the 1980s (Photo: Thierry Noir)

What was it like living so close to the wall?

I found this house and lived there for 20 years. It was a youth centre – it’s still a youth centre. It was a former hospital but was abandoned because it was so close to the wall. The city of Berlin decided to make a modern, new hospital far from the wall. So in 1971, this hospital was still empty, and a lot of young people decided to occupy it and live there. There was a big battle with the police – one part of this big hospital was still a squat, and in 1978 it was legalised as a youth centre. When I came in 1982, it was already a youth centre, very close to the wall, and it was very special to live there. It was absolutely not like Lou Reed said in his song, ‘It was so nice, it was paradise…Dubonnet on ice’. It was really aggressive to live so close to the wall. Nothing happened really, but at the same time a lot happened, because this melancholic life was very aggressive against the brain. I thought I was getting a little bit crazy with this life by the wall, and 2 years after, in 1984, I decided spontaneously to start to make something on the wall. I got thousands of questions, everyone wanted to know something about this, because it was new – there were no big paintings on the wall, and everything which is new is a little bit disturbing. Everyone wanted to know at first, ‘Who pays you?’ That was the first question.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

Why was it important for you to paint the wall?

It was like a delivery, to show that I am stronger than the wall; I can paint it. I had no idea about the political aspect of the wall, because at school in France we never learned anything about the wall, about that system of West Berlin surrounded by a wall, with East Germany inside. I had no idea what it was all about. Some people were very aggressive because they thought I was paid to make the wall beautiful. I had to stop sometimes and answer them, saying, “No you cant make the wall beautiful because it is a deadly border, and even if you put thousands of kilos of colours on the wall, this wall will never be beautiful.” It was important to repeat this all the time, because it was very emotional at the wall.

Another view from Thierry’s window over East Berlin (Photo: Thierry Noir)

So, did people respond badly to you painting the wall at the beginning?

Yes, they insulted me and treated me like I was a spy from France. It was like this at the very beginning until 1987, when Wim Wendors started to make his film ‘Wings of Desire’. It was an international success, and the Berliners started to think about what the paintings on the wall are all about, and then suddenly it was another time. In Russia, Gorbachev wanted to change the system, and even in the GDR it was different. Some new guys in the GDR wanted to change things, so it was a new time.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

Did you see it as a revolutionary act?

It was a political act to paint the wall – even if you made pee-pee on the wall it was political (laughs). It was forbidden to paint the wall, so in a way it was a revolutionary act. At the same time, it was a mutation of the culture in Berlin, because it was impossible to find another place in Europe with kilometres of painting in the middle of the city. It was bizarre to see, like in Potsdam when suddenly the full moon would light the wall, and it would come up like a 3D object. It was something special, that wall. In another way it was a mutation of nature. The wall was 45 kilometres long between East and West Berlin and it was like a big camp for rabbits. There were thousands of rabbits between those 2 walls. They were very clever because they were sleeping in the East and then eating in the West, some leftover kebab and pizza left by the tourists, like at Potsdamer Platz.

Noir at the Wall in the 1980s (Photo: Thierry Noir)

Why did you paint in that particular style?

That style of painting came because I couldn’t finish my painting because of thousands of questions – everybody wanted to know something. I said to myself, I speak longer than I paint, so I cant finish what I want to do. So I started to develop a style of painting where it is possible to paint and talk at the same time!

Did your speed respond to the danger?

There was danger in certain places, like for example Checkpoint Charlie, because it was well guarded, and it was near certain places where there was a small door in the concrete – in those places it was dangerous to paint. But near our youth centre, it was okay because we knew the border. The wall was not a border, but was 5 metres behind the real East-West border. It was important to know where this line was, as it was dangerous even just to run over those 5 metres.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

What do you think of some current street art which takes much longer to paint, with lots of intricate detail, i.e. artists such as Phlegm or ROA.   Do you think it needs to be spontaneous to have the same effect?

You can’t compare this Berlin wall art with this art in London; it was different. The Berlin Wall was not an art project, but a deadly border. It very often happened to me that I made a big mural in the afternoon and one stupid ‘Michael’ put his name in front of my nice painting, and I said to myself, ‘Fuck you!’ I was upset, and then I thought what can I do? Shall I sleep in front of the wall? So I started to adapt to this situation in my painting. It’s often legal to paint now, so its okay if it’s complicated. But at that time it was impossible to do complicated things.

(Photo: Thierry Noir)

Are the designs symbolic?

Yes, they are now in a lot of countries a symbol of the new freedom in Europe. There are pieces of the Berlin wall almost everywhere now, in Los Angeles, New York, Yokohama. It is a symbol of the new freedom that is not coming from the sky, freedom that is not given to you, but that you have to fight for. If you look now on Wikipedia, you will see new walls all around the world. The speech of the new wall-makers is ‘do not compare these with the Berlin wall, they are nothing to do with it’, but I think, of course it’s the same, a wall is a wall and the reason is different but the wall is still there, and one day this wall also will disappear.

Noir’s segment of The East Side Gallery in Berlin (Photo: Thierry Noir)

Why do you use such bright vivid colours?

This is my way to paint; I don’t know why I do it like this!

Do you have any influences?

Oh yes I have influences. The weather for example, is very important, if its raining or not, if its winter or summer (laughs). And influences from everywhere – television, comics, the Internet, former painters.

Noir’s iconic imagery at the East Side Gallery in Berlin (Photo: Thierry Noir)

You said that your aim was to make the wall ridiculous in order to destroy it. Why use this form of political dissent rather than an overt political slogan?

There were already a lot of words on the wall. There were 3 categories – against the US army, every 5 metres ‘US go home’; a lot of racist comments, ‘Turkish go out’, and a third category were funny slogans and personal words. So I thought to myself, this is enough, I don’t want to do any more writing, so I did what I could do, and that is to paint.

You also said that ‘The wall created in Berlin an atmosphere of urgency, which gave artists the feeling of trying to survive.’ Do you think that in that way the wall acted as a catalyst for art? Were other artists responding to the wall in a less direct way?

The point is that the German artists never painted the wall…there was a kind of taboo I think. The German artists never wanted to paint, and also the normal population of Germany came once or twice per year to the wall and that was it. Maybe it was because I was a foreigner that I started to paint the wall. I heard that some people even made detours with cars not to drive along it…there was a very special atmosphere. Maybe because it was a shame, I don’t know. This wall was very strong for a German, stronger than for me because I came from France and I did not have this pressure.

Memorial in Berlin featuring Noir’s artwork (Photo: Thierry Noir)

In your opinion, how has street art changed? Is it still a revolutionary act?

Street art is new because at that time it was called graffiti. Now it is street art and now it is also commercial. I see in Berlin, every year for fashion week, Levis has a big event for street art, so I think the commercial aspect of street art is strong now. It is also legal to paint on the street. When I started it was not, there was not even any graffiti at all in Berlin at that time. There was some writing on the wall, but on the street there was almost nothing. The street art movement is very strong now, not only in London but everywhere. You can see graffiti in the Caribbean now. Even in China – a TV team from Hong Kong came to Berlin and we were talking about graffiti in China, which is very new. It started in 2008 with the Olympic Games in Beijing. At that time, to prepare for the Olympic Games, a lot of old houses were destroyed. People came in the morning and told people, ‘Okay, you have one hour to go’, and then they destroyed everything. After that people start to put big writing, graffiti on those houses, saying ‘stop’ in Chinese letters to protect them.

You were talking about commercialisation. I know that Peugeot and Mazda have used your designs. What do you think of them using your designs as symbolic of freedom?

It speaks immediately to the young generations. My work being used for advertising is the price to pay. Lawyers have to say if it is alright or not…I don’t want to think about it much more after that.

Noir and Stik painting The Village Underground Wall (Feb 2013) 

What do you think about current politically charged street art, like that of Banksy? Do you think street art can still have a political message or has the proliferation of street art in recent years undermined its ability to do so?

Of course, street art is political. Like I said before, in China, and also in Chile, in Santiago. When Pinochet took the government in 1973, his army broke the hands of painters so they could not paint anymore. I went to Santiago in 2009 and there are now a lot of paintings on the street that are very political.

How did your experience of painting the wall change after it fell? Tell us about the East Side Gallery.

The East Side Gallery is completely different because it was done in 1990 after the fall of the wall and it was not dangerous to paint. It was not a border anymore, so you can’t compare it. It is now more an homage to younger generations, to say look at the wall, the wall was not an art project; please do not repeat the mistakes of your parents.

The completed collaboration between Nour and Stik in Shoreditch, East London

What was it like to paint the east side?

It was very special to be on the other side and to paint the wall. The East Side Gallery is a large avenue which was at that time the way from the airport to the centre of East Berlin, and the East Side Gallery was also made like this to tell those VIPs that the wall will stay for a long time; it is very strong. So now it’s very special to walk along the wall, with thousands and thousands of people every day who come from all over the world. Everybody wants to write something on the wall, even if its not allowed. But that’s okay.

Noir painting in Shoreditch (Feb 2013)

Tell us about the time when Keith Haring painted over your murals on the wall.

Keith Haring was invited at the end of October 1986 by the Checkpoint Charlie museum to paint 100 metres of the Berlin Wall. The thing was, I had painted this spot of the wall with another French painter called Christophe Bouchet. We had wanted to paint 100 statues of liberty at Checkpoint Charlie for the celebration in July 1986 of the 100-year anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in New York. We did not have enough money for this though so we painted only 44 statues (laughs). But it was something! To paint at Checkpoint Charlie was very rough, because that spot was very guarded, by soldiers, by Stasi, by checkpoint police. It was not Haring’s fault because the Checkpoint Charlie museum had organised that five people would prepare the wall for him in the early hours, and when Keith Haring came at 11 o’clock it was already all yellow, but it was very bad quality so you could see our strong statues of liberty behind. He told me after he had wanted to stop, but it was not possible because a lot of press and television was there, so he had to start to paint over our murals. But it was okay!

Another wall by Noir in Shoreditch (Feb 2013)

Do you still paint walls in Berlin?

Yes, I have painted maybe five times now the East Side Gallery again and again, because it is very damaged by thousands of people every day. Everybody writes their name on the wall, from all over the world. When I go back to Berlin I have to repaint three big heads I have done in Schöneberg.

How do people respond to you painting now?

Now I am a classic. It’s completely different than when I started to paint. People don’t insult me anymore!

Noir below Steve ‘ESPO’ Powers at The Village Underground 

What street artists in Berlin do you like?

It’s hard to tell, there are a lot of street artists. I don’t know all the names. I like those two big paintings by two brothers from Brazil…Os Gemeos.

Noir at the end of his visit to London 

Do you see yourself as a forerunner to contemporary street art? Do you think of yourself as part of that scene or separate from it?

Yes, I am a part of this scene, of course.

What do you think of the London street art scene?

I don’t know very much because this is my first time here in 20 years!

How do you think street art fits into the wider context of contemporary art?

Street art is coming into galleries more and more; it’s great. I saw today in the newspaper that Banksy’s wall sold for £500,000 – some piece of concrete from the street. This shows that there is a lot of value behind this street art. Galleries see that you can make money with it, and they run after you and ask you to make a vernissage… it’s impossible to stop it I think. 

Street Art London is hosting the iconic Berlin street artist Thierry Noir as he makes his London debut. Noir is a forerunner of the modern street art movement, famous for being the first artist to continuously decorate the Berlin Wall illegally from 1984 to pre-empt its ultimate fall in 1989. Street Art London is joining forces with prominent London street artist Stik to welcome Noir and introduce his art to the walls of Shoreditch and Dalston. The culmination of Street Art London’s programme of events will see Thierry Noir combine forces with Stik in painting a collaborative mural on the prestigious Village Underground Wall. On the 21st of February Noir and Stik will be exploring the continuum of street art history, the old school and the new school, within the broader context of art history at a talk in association with Street Art London and The Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House.

Thierry Noir & Stik, in conversation

Noir and Stik, in this public talk will explore their own artistic experiences, motivations and influences. The purposes, origins and future direction of street art will also be debated and considered by both artists. The talk will be chaired by Richard Howard-Griffin (Principal of Street Art London) and Hannah Zafiropoulos (Courtauld Institute of Art).

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, London, WC2R 0RN. 21 February, 7:30PM (drinks reception afterwards).
Tickets free but limited. RSVP to hello@streetartlondon.co.uk. Signed editions of screenprinted commemorative Thierry Noir and Stik poster (detailed below) will be available at the event.

The Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London 

Noir and Stik will follow on from Pablo Delgado, Phlegm and Kid Acne at the Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London. The mural that both artists will paint together will form a very special collaboration as kindred styles and ideologies from distinct generations meet face to faceon the same wall.
19-20 February, Holywell Lane, EC2A 3PQ.

Thierry & Stik, ready to paint (Street Art London, Berlin, October 2012)

Thierry Noir

Thierry Noir was born in 1958 in Lyon, France, and came to Berlin in January 1982. In April 1984, Noir began to paint the Berlin Wall with Christophe Bouchet, in order to perform one real revolutionary act: To paint the Berlin wall, to transform it, to make it ridiculous, and to help destroy it. They covered the wall, more than 3 metres high, with bright, vivid colours, aiming not to embellish the wall but to demystify it. In Berlin, Noir lived metres from the Wall – his vivid murals were both a personal response and a poignant political statement.

Noir by the Berlin Wall in the 1980s

Painting on the wall was absolutely forbidden; it was built 3 metres beyond the official border so the east-German soldiers were able to arrest any person standing near it. Noir had to paint as quickly as possible, using the recipe of ‘two ideas, three colours’ as a celebration of the ‘eternal youth’.  Despite their bright colours and playful nature, the murals leave a lingering sense of melancholy: As Noir says, “I did nothing but react to its sadness”.

The view from Noir’s bathroom window in the 1980s

After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, his paintings became a symbol of new-found freedom after the reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War.The fall of the wall gave birth to the East Side Gallery, a 1.3 kilometre stretch of wall upon which 118 artists from 21 countries applied their designs. In 1990, Noir painted 16 of his infamous faces on the wall, leaving a lasting testimony for future generations.

Thierry Noir on the streets 

Stik

Stik painted his characteristic figures on London streets illegally for years and was instrumental in raising the British public’s appreciation of street art. Today, he paints murals across the UK, Europe, Asia and America in association with organisations such as The British Council, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Amnesty International and the Big Issue Foundation.

Stik in Berlin (Street Art London: October 2012)

The Berlin Wall in 1990

Sheffield 2009

Kid Acne’s art can be seen on walls all over the globe. The Sheffield-based artist is best known for his comic-like illustrations and larger-than-life slogans. He recently completed his biggest London mural and Street Art London had the chance to sit down with this one-man-army to pick his brains. 

(All images save London 2013 are Kid Acne’s)

Why did you choose the phrase “OH MY DAYS” for the Village Underground mural?

I’ve been painting phrases for a while now. I probably did the first one around 2007 / 2008. I made hip-hop music for a number of years and when I was in a phase of making a lot of music I wasn’t really painting that much. I would write lyrics and ideas for songs in the back of my sketchbook and after a while I noticed I was writing more words in my book than I was drawing pictures in it. I thought I should really use them for something, so I started painting these slogans.

They’re just every day phrases that people say. I think it is nice to paint things that people can relate to, plus it has a lot of impact. Initially, it was almost as though the buildings were having a conversation. I painted one on my old art college before it got knocked down that said “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone”. I’ve always had it in my head that if I did a slogan in London it would say “Oh My Days”. People don’t really say that up north, so for me it’s a typical London phrase. I like painting big, bold stuff. It’s a good excuse to paint letters without having to write my own name over and over again.

Sheffield 2008

I’ve always liked drawing. I just copied my brother – we used to draw a lot of stuff and I was never really into sport. I guess I developed the style that I’m known for now before I was really into graffiti. When I did get into graffiti, I tried to do what I thought was “graffiti style”. I soon realised that I was just replicating what other people had done and that they had done it much better before as they were the originators of that style – so I started doing graffiti in my own style, which was more illustrative. Since then it’s been about trying to refine that style or at least get the proportions right. I look at some of my old pieces they’re really lopsided, like they’re in a hall of mirrors.

You’ve mentioned before that you’re illustration style is something you adopted from your brother at a young age. How did your brother influence your style exactly?

Our style of drawing is just very similar. When I draw a character the facial features consist of one line for the nose, one for the mouth and two for the eyes, and that’s it. I don’t draw nostrils, eyebrows or extra detail. My brother and I used to draw in that style as kids and I got it from him – he’s two years older. The characters I paint now relate back to the drawings we did when we were four or five years old. I’ve just stuck with it. Same with the lettering style that I’m painting on the VU wall – that’s what I used to do on our gig posters, on the back of our record sleeves and in my comic books. It’s basically my own handwriting on a larger scale. There are a lot of really talented people that paint stuff in the street but they often take characters from other people’s comic books or they take typography from other sources. I like to present my work in my own style, no matter how simple it is.

Rome 2011

They’re kind of like a hybrid between B-boy characters and Fantasy Art, as well as children’s book illustrations. It’s all merged together. Sometimes I paint animals, a lot of the time I paint these female warrior characters, and other times I paint weird, random stuff.

I can’t really remember but we used to play tricks on my dad using our ‘magic powers’. We used to bury his cigarettes in the garden because we wanted him to quit smoking and stuff like that. So normally it was just like weird, silly little games. It was more about the idea of having a different persona or identity I guess. That idea has translated over to our art and music – it’s what we’ve always done, created different personas for ourselves or whatever.

Prolific people. People who paint all the time. Eine was painting around the corner while I was doing the VU wall and having people like that around helps to motivate you. I guess that’s my biggest inspiration – like-minded people who are consistent at what they do. I don’t want my work to be too refined; it becomes contrived when it’s too perfect. So, as much as I want my paintings to be neat and well done I also want them to be quite loose and raw. That’s another thing from doing graffiti, you have the mentality to do more stuff rather than one perfect thing.

Paris 2012

I started writing Kid Acne when I was fifteen and a spotty teenager. I had other names before that but I also wrote ‘Acne’ as a tag. A lot of hip-hop artists had ‘Kid’ in front of their names so I just took that idea. It’s was one of a number of names, but it was the one that stuck. I’ve been Kid Acne for almost 20 years now.

Sometimes it does but other times I might paint a wall just as an excuse to take a photo of the stuff around it. The wall I just finished (Village Underground) is a really good shape and size for doing big typographic stuff. Other artists have done more intricate paintings on there but it’s right by the train line and a lot of people walk past it – so for me, it’s good to go big and bold on something like that. I like big and simple stuff, but it all depends where the wall is and what mood I’m in.

I’ve definitely enjoyed every city I’ve ever visited to paint. Ultimately, it all merges into one – You’re stood in front of a wall painting and that’s it. After I did a bit of travelling a few years ago I started painting these slogans in Sheffield. I thought, “You know what, it doesn’t really matter where I am in the world”. Most people are going to see the work online anyway. It might sound cool to say “I went to Brazil or China or wherever” but actually there are loads of good walls where I live so I now paint more in my hometown. It’s nice to travel but I think it’s good to make use of your own surroundings. I don’t really paint in London very often because I feel like there’s such a big scene here already and the walls don’t tend to last that long. I can do the same piece in Sheffield and it might last three or four years.

Munich 2010

You don’t think there’s something to be said for the ‘outsider’ bringing a different style or perspective to a city?

Yeah, it’s all good – but I think some people only want to go where there’s already an established scene – it’s like jumping on the bandwagon to get recognition through association. I feel that building a scene in my home town alongside a small group of artists has more longevity in a way as it’s something we can all feel proud of and responsible for. I’m not responsible for the London scene – I’m just a tourist here.

Paris has a wicked scene for example and as much as I like painting there I’m not going to start trying to compete with all the artists who actually live in that city. It’s cool to travel but it’s also really good to paint where you live and push that above everything else. That’s what I feel I’ve been doing over the years, there’s a bit of a vibe up there now and it’s cool.

The museum show I did a couple of years ago in Sheffield. It was a big deal because it was my first show in my hometown. It was the biggest project I’ve worked on and over 50,000 people came to see it.

Barcelona 2009

I never expected to do a museum show but I don’t really think about it as such. There’s always someone else who’s bigger than you or more famous and there are always others who are up and coming. I try to concentrate on whatever project I’m working on at the time and once I’ve finished that project I move on to the next thing.

(Laughs) Yeah sure, all the time. I’ve got it now while painting the VU wall. Some people hate it, some are indifferent, but if you try to appease everyone you end up diluting your output and start second guessing everything. Once you do that your integrity and individuality goes out the window. When I’m painting in the street I know the public is going to see it so I want it to look ‘well done’ at least. Other than that I can’t really worry about what people think of it or if it lasts or not.

More people know about street art now but there are still the same arguments and controversies that there were 20 years ago. People are still in discussion about whether it’s art or vandalism. In a lot of ways it hasn’t really changed at all. It’s just that more people are aware of it now and have an opinion on it. I guess one thing that has changed is the documentation if it. There’s no denying that it exists! All the hype around street art has had a sort of knock on effect to graffiti writers too. People have started looking at their work more as a result. Across the board you have so many different styles, you have some people who are very accessible and commercial and some who are very off-key and niche. I think that diversity is really good. In the beginning of the hype around street art – people were only really interested in the accessible stuff but now I feel they’ve started to actually look at individual artists more.

Sheffield 2009

I can’t imagine not doing it – it’s part of my life. It’s not always in the street but I’ve always painted and made stuff, from music to illustrations, exhibitions, printmaking and fanzines. I sort of switch between all these different things, which keeps me occupied. I have a few creative outlets in that sense.

Definitely. They used to be very separate but now they all kind of merge together and it’s more harmonious. There have been times in the past when I was battling one thing against the other but it’s like having conflicts for no real reason. No one has asked you to do this stuff, you’ve chosen to do it – so it’s better if you’re happy about it I think.

In the beginning the music and art started off as the same thing. They were both ways of presenting imagery and narrative. All the lyrics were similar to the style of drawing and they were telling the same kind of story. Then they started going off in different directions. As soon as that happened it felt like I couldn’t do both, I had to do either one or the other. I stopped doing artwork altogether for a while, and then I stopped making music for a few years and now I think I’ve got the balance back.

London 2013

There are certain elements in what I do that are quite commercial or easily accessible and there are other parts that are not. For me, it’s about finding the right balance. As soon as people started saying “Oh I love those characters, they’re so cute” I started making them less cute, or I’d stop painting them for a while. Not to deliberately sabotage my own work, but as a means of switching it up and keeping things moving.

At the minute I seem to have gone full circle, both my painting style and music is not that dissimilar to what I was doing in the late 90’s. I spent a lot of time exploring various ideas and now I think everything is cool and I’m happy with what I’m doing again.

What do you think about the rise of interest in street art?

There are various components that make something fall into one category or another, but there are always individuals on the periphery of whatever that is and they’re usually the most interesting. They’re doing their own thing regardless of fashion. Even if you didn’t like their stuff at the time, you tend to look back and think, “Oh yeah, that was cool. Their stuff was really different” and they’re the ones who get remembered. “Street art” and “urban art” is irrelevant in many ways. If you paint a wall in the middle of a field, it doesn’t become “field art” or “rural art” all of a sudden, it’s just art – either good or bad.

London 2013

If you couldn’t be creative and had to choose any other profession, what would it be?

I would be an archeologist digging up bones with Time Team.

I’ve been working on this animation called ZEBRA FACE so that’s been a pretty big project for the last 18 months or so. It’s nearing completion. Other than that – I’m just painting, making fanzines, music and staying out of trouble.

Kid Acne become the latest artist to participate in Street Art London and Village Underground’s Wall Project with one of his signature slogans – OH MY DAYS.  Acne’s piece cements Sheffield’s early domination of the Wall since he follows fellow Sheffield based artist Phlegm onto the wall.   Working in brutally cold conditions Kid Acne managed to get the piece up over three days and even had time to put up some signature Art Fags on the carriage ends atop the wall with Dscreet.

This latest piece represents the next step on the way to establishing the most prestigious street art wall in the world in the heart of Shoreditch.  Each month or so Street Art London and Village Underground will invite a leading street artist to the Wall.  For all the info on the project head over HERE.

The finished wall: 

About Kid Acne:

Kid Acne is a versatile artist, born in Malawi, Africa, and today based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire alongside fellow artist Phlegm.  He began painting graffiti outdoors aged 12 and has been active in that arena for over 20 years. Kid Acne’s creative output transcends myriad genres encompassing fanzines, animation, graffiti, street art, muralism, screen printing, hip-hop and music production.

He has exhibited his work all around the world.  Acne brings his signature visual aesthetic to his work on the streets which is extremely varied and diverse. One thread of his street work involves painting huge, jocular slogans around the globe in his own handwriting.  ’OH MY DAYS’ on the Wall being another addition to this already extensive body of work. Kid Acne is also known for his mischievous ‘Art Fags’ and his Stabby Women characters which pop up wherever he should travel.

Street Art London will be featuring an in depth interview with Kid Acne over the coming days.

The making of the Wall: 

Rush hour in the morning on Day 3:

Carriage Action. 

Kid Acne and Dscreet also got up on the carriage ends atop the Wall.  Two classics: Kid Acne with a quiver of Art Fags and Dscreet with an Owl (his first in the UK this year): 

For even more on the Kid Acne OH MY DAYS wall.  Head over to the Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London site HERE.

Here is a round-up of the Broken Fingaz Crew’s most recent work on the streets of London.  The fulcrum being a collaboration between crew members UNGA and TANT on the walls of a derelict pub close to Shoreditch.  Impeccably executed, it shows off three frames that are typically  characteristic of Broken Fingaz’s unique styles.  This, and other recent works, build on an already impressive catalogue from the Crew’s last visit to London in May 2012, recorded here, and which notably includes their accurate and vibrant mural along Hackney Road.

TANT was around in London a little longer than the rest of Broken Fingaz and also got up a number of fast black and white frames around Shoreditch the night before he jumped on the plane to get back to Israel.  We haven’t put all of these frames in this article and those in Hackney Wick and Shoreditch should keep their eyes open for more.  TANT and UNGA also put up a piece on Bishopsgate, close to the Square Mile.

About Broken Fingaz Crew 

For those unfamiliar with the work of Broken Fingaz Crew, they are possibly Israel’s best known graffiti crew and hail from Haifa in Northern Israel. Broken Fingaz consist of four members who are DESO, KIP, TANT and UNGA. Their style is incredibly unique and builds on a range of talents and disciplines within the Crew such as illustration and design. They work with a distinct colour palette and visual aesthetic often working within frames betraying their backgrounds in illustration and comics.

Check the Christiaan Nagel shroom..

Broken Fingaz Crew at work

Here are two of the ‘frames’ that TANT got up shortly before jumping on the plane back to Israel

Two quick portraits by UNGA and TANT respectively, close to the Square Mile, typical of Broken Fingaz’s style and aesthetic 

Having completed the big wall at Village Underground as part of Street Art London’s curated project on that wall Phlegm moved onto the front Village Underground walls on Great Eastern Street.  Here he produced a context specific piece on the four panels relating to the characters portrayed on the other side.

This marks the end of Phlegm’s week long trip to London, during which he managed to get up some fantastic work.  This piece follows on from RUN back in December 2012 and of course sits below the iconic slogan from Steve ESPO Powers. (ESPO’s piece formed part of his A Love Letter To You Project which originally comprised of over 50 large uplifting typographical murals along the elevated train line in Philadelphia and since spread to other cities including London and New York.)

This wall is part of Street Art London’s collaboration with Village Underground, check it out —>Village Underground Wall presented by Street Art London.

More photos after the jump.

About Phlegm 

Phlegm is one of the most exciting street artists in the world. He is known for his intricate, precise black and white style through which he portrays fantastical characters and creatures from his imagination. Initially Phlegm started out as an illustrator, producing hand-crafted zines and books. Soon he began to transplant the worlds and stories that he created on paper to the outdoors on a huge scale.  Phlegm hails from Sheffield and this is where the bulk of his work is to be found. Long abandoned warehouses and factories around the Steel City’s hinterland house immense and rarely discovered murals.

Phlegm at work:
Outlines:

Details:

Statement

Street art is the biggest artistic movement of the 21st Century, London is a pre-eminent city within this movement and the Village Underground Wall itself is at the epicentre of London’s street art milieu.

The ambition is to establish the most prestigious street art wall in the world and a cultural landmark in London. This will be achieved through a curated programme of works drawing in the finest London street artists and top international artists from all over the world.

Over the course of 2013 a series of inspiring pieces will be actualised on the Wall and documented in photograph and film.

Project Site

Street Art London is now curating The Village Underground Wall as a collaborative project between Street Art London and Village Underground.  The first two artists to paint the wall were Pablo Delgado in December and Phlegm this January.  Phlegm has just finished off an absolutely staggering piece on the Wall to well and truly set the project off following some stunning work from Pablo Delgado.  Watch this space…

To find out more about the artists involved and follow the Village Underground Wall Project as it unfolds over the coming months head over to the dedicated site at streetartlondon.co.uk/walls.   There are also some images below of Pablo Delgado and Phlegm’s respective walls.

Phlegm

More:
Phlegm profile
Phlegm – Making of the Wall

Pablo Delgado

More:
Pablo Delgado profile 
Pablo Delgado – ‘Wall Narrative’ 

Street Art London presents The Street Art Book London.  Digital street art stimulation on your iPad.  Hundreds of pieces of street art from across London photographed, curated and complied by Street Art London.  Free for your iPad and in an App Store near you.

Features include:

/ works by all of London’s major street artists
// also see work by top international street artists
/// hundreds of high-res photographs including many rarely seen works
//// represents years of documentary work on the streets of London
///// biographies of each street artist featured
////// multiple images for many artists
////// beautifully clean, minimal and easy to use interface
/////// free download
//////// updates and secret features on the way…

The Rolling People collaboration on Hassard Street, just off Hackney Road is surely a contender for one of the best pieces of the year in London. We talk to The Rolling People who are SCARCE, SEKS, CEPT, BRK, SNOE, EGOE and AZIS.

First of all, can you tell us a little about this work and the inspiration behind it?

Snoe: This piece was designed as a mural celebrating the genius of 1980s Marvel comic book artists such as the master, Stan Lee. When I read these comics as a child, the quality of the artwork added so much to the drama and the intense action which allowed you to be in the story where your imagination became the story’s final author. This took you inside the Earth’s core or to a parallel dimension on the other side of the universe/microverse. Cept has been remixing comic imagery and lichtenstienesque stuff for years and in his recent galactic murals and cosmic collages he & our other members of TRP have used Marvel comics to provide background themes for graffiti productions for a long time.

Cept: Yeah we have all been pulling bits from comics for years, and it’s a staple thing within graff to lift stuff from popular culture, so on this piece we dug into our favorites and rocked them together, we each came with our own bits then worked out how it could flow and connect. Which was easy coz we’re all on the same page when it comes to style and influences. I love all the Dr Strange shit, propper trippy, space funk, master of the forbidden arts mystic stuff. and the way old comics are printed, the style of the line..

Snoe: In the case of this mural, we wanted the background artwork to play the bigger role and the lettering pieces to be secondary like comic sound effects. Which is the reverse order of most graffiti productions. (Letters first, background second.)

Cept: And to scale it right up, from comic book size to larger than life, where it feels like you could step inside.

How do you normally collaborate on a big piece like this. Do you plan it all out in advance or can it be more spontaneous and fluid?

Cept: Normally we don’t really plan that much at all, we turn up with our separate outlines and then work it out as we go. Which works well, because we have all chosen to paint with each other, because our styles compliment each other and we come from the same school of thought and style. but this time coz it’s such a fresh big wall to paint in a high vis place, we decided we needed to give it a bit more thought and time, and it was good to really think about hows it’s gonna work together.

Snoe: Its a combination of those processes: the planning stage is the most important where we make a Photoshop collage to establish the layout and composition. When painting the piece, spontaneity plays a part in making the artwork fit to the dimensions of the wall and spraying itself puts the imagery through another filter. As the mural progresses, you start to see the potential for adding elements that you would never be able to plan for as this is where creativity really starts to flow as you work as a crew.

Cremer St. 

We’ve also seen the new piece at the mechanics garage on Cremer Street. There’s a fair amount of history at this spot but this latest piece is probably the most ambitious yet….

Snoe: We took the opportunity to take this spot to another level as the first time we did it, we painted freestyle and didn’t plan ahead. We didn’t have a plan as such this time, but brought reference artwork with us and spent longer in front of the wall. Credit has to go BRK – his involvement made us work harder not accept a result of “…oh, its just another lazy graffiti wall with letters and some characters slapped on as an afterthought once you can’t be bothered to paint any more and wanna get down the pub.” The hare and the tortoise…

Cremer St. 

Cept: This is an old spot, which i first painted with Eine years back, and didn’t bother painting there again for a few years, then I went back and chatted to the owner and he is a super safe guy and said ‘it’s all yours’, do what you like, and now we painted the whole building. Yeah a lot of people have painted with us there and it’s now like the TRP house.  Yeah, when we first met BRK this year, we knew straight away he was one of us, his pieces are sick, he has crazy fresh styles and we’re all on the same wave length. He definitely gave the crew a boost, some new blood, and always up for painting. So now we start to bring the super galactik funk pieces,. it’s like we were waiting for him to arrive…now it’s time to really show a lot of people out there what TRP is about, we’ve smashed it for years, but that was just the warm up. Now we go next level.

How did TRP come together as a crew?

Snoe: THE ROLLING PEOPLE are a graffiti crew, not street artists.  TRP are: SCARCE, SEKS, CEPT, BRK, SNOE, EGOE, AZIS.  In 1998 we were listening to The Verve album ‘Urban Hymns’ a lot  while hanging out as friends. One night we decided the track ’The Rolling People’ had a ring to it and would make a good crew name.

Cept: yeah it already sounded like a crew name, i remember the very night, we were all zoooted and pissed and Scarce kept singing the chorus to the song…The Verve were an amazing band, Ashcroft knows…he’s on a another level, so we took the title and made it ours..  It made sense, especially seeing trains rolling past with pieces on, which is where this whole movement all came from.  We were all mates anyway and were writing in different Crews, such as The Fresh Worms and The Aerosol Slags, Great Western Rockers, so it made sense to form a new crew as an almagamation of our styles. so we became TRP, The Rolling People, Tottenham Rocket Patrol, The Rest Pretend..

Snoe: In the late 90s we were one of the first to paint in the Shoreditch and Hackney we all now know alongside Eine and a few others; it was there that we really blew up and gelled as a crew.

Any plans to go even bigger next year?

Cept & Snoe: Always bigger and better. Fresh surprises in store.

Yesterday RUN painted the Great Eastern Street side of Village Underground which has featured many classic works over the years.  Not least ‘Lets ADORE And ENDURE Each Other’ by Steve ‘ESPO’ Powers which itself has endured since October 2010 and will continue to do so.  SHOk-1′s incredible x-ray style is also visible on the second train carriage – closer view here.

On a slight side-note, ESPO’s piece formed part of his A Love Letter To You Project which originally comprised of over 50 large uplifting typographical murals along the elevated train line in Philadelphia and since spread to other cities including London and New York.

Rumour has it that these four panels are going to get painted again soon so RUN chose to paint a series of simple pieces that reflect some of the recurring themes in his work, faces, and that are reminiscent of the work he painted on the Foundry last year.

Preparing the outline:

**Five Minutes Later**
Outline Finished: 

Details: 

Stik has had a busy 2012 on the streets with many large scale pieces around East London and the World, notably in New York, Berlin and Jordan in the Middle East.  Stik also collaborated with Dulwich Picture Gallery in reinterpreting several paintings from the Gallery’s permanent collection on the streets around Dulwich.  Read all about Stik’s Dulwich project here.

Here is Street Art London’s modest collection of Stik’s best (and biggest) street works over the last few months in East London culminating in Stik’s largest work to date in London, to be found on Scriven Street just off Queensbridge Road in Hackney.

Rivington Street (‘Piano Man’)
Stik:

Hoxton Square

Great Eastern Street
With NEMO to the left:

Scriven Street (off Queensbridge Road)
This simple piece by Stik is his largest ever in London. 

Broken Fingaz Crew, perhaps Israel’s best known graffiti crew, are currently in London and last week Street Art London hooked up Tant, one of the members, with a small wall (see below).  There will surely be new work from Broken Fingaz Crew going up  in the next week or two so watch this space…  For now here is a little background on Broken Fingaz Crew and details of their current work in London.

Broken Fingaz Crew were formed in 2001 and hail from Haifa in Northern Israel. The crew consist of four members who are Deso, Kip, Tant and Unga.  Originally Broken Fingaz crew started out in graffiti but have since moved into illustration, muralism, animation and a whole range of other disciplines.  After conquering Israel with their distinctive styles Broken Fingaz Crew have moved on to paint all over the world, London being no exception.

This is the second time that Broken Fingaz have visited London, they were here in May of this year off the back of some major exhibitions in prominent Israeli art institutions such as the Tel Aviv Museum and the Haifa Museum of Art.  During Broken Fingaz’s first visit they put down some great pieces around East London, notably a large mural on Hackney Road and a collaboration with INSA on Christina Street, Shoreditch.

NOVEMBER 2012
Tant, Broken Fingaz Crew. In Shoreditch. 

Starting out: 

Finished piece next to OZMO:

Time-lapse:

MAY 2012
Broken Fingaz Crew, East London.

 Broken Fingaz Crew Mural, Hackney Road:

Unga, collaboration with Mr Phomer, Pedley Street:

Collaboration with INSA:

INSA produced this a gif animation for this piece…… full story on INSA’s site.

Unga, sclater Street: 

Street Art London: So let’s get this started.

Lister: Sounds great. Anthony Lister, November 15th 2012, the day before the Apocalypse.

Street Art London: I thought that was on the 20th? Anyway. First question, can you tell us a little about how you developed your unique style? Did you study fine art?

Lister: Yes, I did study fine art. Well, I guess I developed my styles with the frame of mind that I wanted to be able to still make art when I’m like old and handicapped. So I kind of wanted to feel comfortable just, you know, making things out of scribbles really. So I actually don’t really even call it drawing. I call it shapeshing. I kind of just push shapes around. I don’t know if that answered your question.

Street Art London: It’s almost like when you take a photo on low exposure you get this blurred image or what you might see when you’re drunk.

Lister: Yeah, well you know, one night I looked at one of my paintings and it was moving. And it really excited me. I knew that I was onto something then. I think I was a lot younger than I am now. It came to life, so I guess I just throw options out there as vapour trails of paths that could have been taken.

Street Art London: So it’s this thing about sort of mistakes and accidents within drawing but not necessarily seeing them as accidents?

Lister: Sure, well in Japan the word opportunity and problem are the same word. So I’m far more interested in problem creation than problem solution.

Street Art London: Problem creation?

Lister: Gives me something to do, doesn’t it?

Street Art London: That’s brilliant, I like that. So you started off doing graffiti as well, obviously. Earlier you were talking about Sofles and DTS was it?.

Lister: Sure, sure, I mean just those guys I grew up with painting in my hometown of Brisbane. But I didn’t start off with graffiti, I started off with just paper at my grandma’s house. She was a painter, just a hobbyist, and I always paid attention to her studio and I thought it was just a magical place. I’m not sure why. I grew up eating off placemats of beautiful Australian impressionists like Arthur Streeton. So I have always had just an awareness of painting and being encouraged to draw. But sure graffiti was thrown in there.  By the time graffiti came around I was already the kid that could draw.

Truman Brewery (Nov 2012) 

Street Art London: So it’s like a natural progression?

Lister: Yeah, scratching into things, that just comes naturally. Looking for them when you’re in the same place years later, that comes naturally too. You get better and deeper at scratching when things disappear.

Street Art London: Did you do a lot of scratchies then?

Lister: I will just naturally scratched into wood, you know, it’s just like a way to test the environment really.  I’m into time travel. I figure, as a public interventionist, street artist, graffiti, artist whatever you call it, I figure that wherever I’ve been, there I am. And that’s the way I time travel for myself, you know.

Street Art London: So it’s a bit like an ideal of immortality as well? So you leave a piece somewhere and long after you passed on it’s still there…

Lister: Yeah, but you can’t expect that unless it’s a landmark.

Street Art London: Well, certain pieces can become landmarks can’t they? A lot of the Banksy’s around here, they are landmarks.

Lister: Yes, but they are still vulnerable to the fires of the apocalypse. Landmarks are more like like concrete, you know. I’ll stalk concrete.

Street Art London: Stalk it?

Lister: Yeah, I’ll wait for everyone to go. I’ll have the right tool.

Street Art London: And then carve into it?

Lister: Yeah, I’ll take my kids to do it and shit. Because, they’re the things, exactly, they’re the moments when you go, longevity and immortality. But you can’t really ever have them as a motivation. The motivation has just got to be the pleasure of being alive.

Curtain Road, Cordy House Shutters, with Hacculla (2011 – now gone) 

Street Art London: So who are some of your artistic influences then? In terms of painters, musicians, directors and so on…

Lister: You know, Bukowski he’s a cool guy. Sigmund Freud’s a cool guy. Jimi Hendrix, you want to keep him in mind all the time.

Street Art London: Does that have to do with improvisation as well? The idea of the mistake?

Lister: I don’t even know, I just know the energies that I want to be paying attention to. Bob Dylan was cool in that interview with Time Magazine where he goes “it’s not my job, it’s not my job to do” you know “it’s gonna happen fast and I can’t explain it”.  That was cool. Charles Manson said some interesting things too. But as far as artists go, Francis Bacon, he was a cool guy, he had some cool opinions, especially when he was drunk. He really said some bold things that were accurate and that everyone else was afraid to say. I was turned on to him by an artist called Brett Whitley who was an Australian artist who did the whole party art thing well before my time. You know, Rembrandt, Egon Schiele, you know, all the clichés and so on and so forth.

Commercial Street, Pictures on Walls Shutters (2011 – now gone) 

Street Art London: You’re in London for your solo “Unslung Heroes” exhibition in both of The Outsiders gallery spaces. What is that exhibition about?

Lister: Well, the exhibition is about a bunch of works that I drew about a bunch of people. I sat around and drew. Their friends and colleagues and acquaintances. It’s party life drawing. I’ve been to life drawing since I was a kid just to understand anatomy because I enjoy it, nudity and drawing, it’s a great combination of things. Often I find myself with people and then drawing them as subjects.

Street Art London: Why is that?

Lister: Well, they move. Sometimes a static subject for me is kind of predictable and stale. You know what I mean?

Street Art London: So you don’t like still life drawing, for example?

Lister: No, I wouldn’t say I don’t like it, I guess I am more excited by people being distracted by having something to do. I feel like the energy of capturing their character. The drawings just come out fun, you know, and better.

Street Art London: A lot more candid perhaps.

Lister: I think it’s just authentic. I don’t get people to sit for me. Well, I do, but as soon as it’s conscious…. It takes the right muse to sit there and be occupied and not make a big deal of it. You know, it can turn into a thing and then it’s a bad energy to draw in.

Street Art London: So what is this obsession with superheroes then?

Lister: It’s just me making sense of the world and trying to raise kids to make sense of the world and finding analogies through contemporary media and influences that I’ve had, like Star Wars, comic books, heroes and villains, good and bad, power struggles. I think that’s about it. Mythology.

At Truman Brewery (Nov, 2012)

Street Art London: You did three pieces in London last week, well four now [SAL: and a few more since this interview]. One on Great Eastern Street and the two on the Old Truman Brewery off Brick Lane and Rivington Street today. Tell us a little about where you were going with these pieces?

Lister: Well they’re my public pieces and I’ve developed that part of my craft to just grind. I like to go out and you know I am just really fortunate and grateful to be able to get to paint here the way I have always wanted to. I mean I have been coming to London for years now and it hasn’t been so open, so. Where was I going with them? Well I mean there is the piece with the eyes on the wall and I would like to think someone would walk down there and feel like the alley is watching them.

Street Art London: Yes, well, it’s quite dark and even….

Lister: …. It’s ominous and dangers and scary. Not really, there’s security everywhere. I think before I did that [Truman Brewery] piece, I was informed by a sign that was on the wall where it said “beware, thieves operating in this area”. Almost like, look out, the birds will get your food! Don’t feed the birds… . classic. So you know, I paint street portraiture, I call it portrait landscape.

Street Art London: It’s obviously influenced by the context then.

Lister: At times.. No, I wouldn’t say….

Street Art London: I mean, because you saw that sign and then…

Lister: OK, it’s true but it’s not always so literal in terms of how things are delivered and presented to me. You know, if it was so literal, then I would have a reason for everything and then I would feel like I was a manipulator, because I had a plan or something. Honestly, I like to remain open when I’m creating work to the very last point. I like to leave the decision to the very end.

Street Art London: So you rarely have a plan then? You don’t really have an idea what you are going to paint before you start painting it?

Lister: Well, I wouldn’t say that. I’d say I never have a plan. And that is adventure painting. And I only have the power to land dope shit when I’m landing it because I surrender to the god of adventure painting.

Street Art London: I keep coming back to this idea in my mind of improvisation and jazz. Like when you painted the wall on Rivington Street and you introduced the Banksy style. That kind of emerged out of what you were painting.

Lister: Well, there was a line at first. Some line came across the whole painting and I didn’t know why or where it was coming from and I stood back and it was a vibration from his [Banksy's] piece. The line was across the whole wall. It wanted to come out, it made that decision and I saw its relationship and it grew from there.

Rivington Street, ‘Lister is over stencils’ (Nov 2012)

Street Art London: So it’s quite subconscious then?

Lister: I would say psychic.

Street Art London: Did you know the Banksy piece was over there?

Lister: No, well, I did after I started painting. I was blown away that it was there. You know, I can’t explain how and it’s just one of these things. I’m just really happy to be there, really, really, I’m flattered.

Street Art London: We were talking about automatic drawing earlier today and perhaps that is quite close to the idea of the adventure painting, as you call it.

Lister: I think I always do automatic drawing. It’s just shapes, it’s shapeshing to me. Pushing shapes around. Things are just shapes. I don’t consider myself the draftsman. To say that I am drawing would be to give me too much credit for it. You’re just a channel. I’m just a channel.

‘Interview time’

Street Art London: Yes, anything else you would like to talk to about….

Lister: Well, I’m interested in philosophy.

Street Art London: What kind of philosophy?

Lister: White trash-philosophy.

Street Art London: What is white trash-philosophy?

Lister: Like real life. Like Eminem. But I’m not going to quote him. I’ll quote Albert Einstein, who said “Imagination is far more powerful than knowledge”. And someone else, said something else, you know, quotes are like jokes, they are easily forgettable. OK, Martin Luther King: “Guided missiles, misguided men”. We are living in a society that I don’t know exactly how to grow old in. I’m not sure it’s going to be all right. Trying to see the future and I’m not sure that the authoritarian figures have been de-powered enough, destabilised enough. I don’t think we’ve reached that point of evolution yet. With police and security actually being useful and cleaning as they watch for danger.

[Lister breaks into song] “I’m an alligator!”

Street Art London: Who is that?

Lister: Bowie.

Street Art London: What kind of music are you into?

Lister: Mainly classical. Mozart

Street Art London: Who else?

Lister: I’m into Thelonious Monk. I’m into Black Flag. I’m into songs that begin with the letter S

Street Art London: Really?

Lister: At the moment.

Street Art London: Songs that begin with the letter S….

Lister: I’ll just go to that letter in my thing and just let it go. Next week it may be T or something.

Street Art London: Like Picasso’s blue phase or something…..

Lister: Picasso,what did he say? Ah, “Everything you imagine is real”. But he was a biter….

Street Art London: Everyone is a biter really aren’t they?

Lister: Well, I don’t know. Some people work very hard to maintain a pseudo original style. I try to be educated about what I am building as far as what aesthetics are coming in. You don’t want your cards to fall from under your feet and find out that someone has been doing what you do. That just makes you wake up in sweats and shit. So I work very hard at not copying actually. If I am attracted to something I’ll actually enjoy it, celebrate it, congratulate the artist and walk away. I’ll dissect it, but I definitely won’t go and try to emulate it and I think that’s what biting is, it’s straight copying. But… yes I did used to… I DREW BART SIMPSON, IT’S TRUE. I DREW A PICTURE OF BART SIMPSON and I bit Banksy today, I’m a walking contradiction.

Rivington Street (Nov 2012)

Street Art London: Perhaps, it’s not about what you bite but how you bite it.

Lister: Well, everyone’s got to eat.

Street Art London: Nice little soundbite there. That could be the title of a painting.

Lister: Titles of paintings, that’s what I live for. ‘The beauty of failure’. That’s what I chase, the titles of paintings. You get three points of power when you create work. You get to make the work. You get to title the work. You paint a big black cock on a canvas and you call it happy wife. It changes. You get a different idea about the painting. It changes it. That’s a point of power. Then you get to hang it. You could either hang it in your mum’s house or you could hang it in a sex shop. This context conditioning, this is how I excite myself about paintings as I realise that it’s not over yet. There are changes you can make that really make a difference to the piece. I don’t know how we came into that but it’s a little tip for the kids out there.

Street Art London: This is another classic problem, how do you know when a piece is actually finished?

Lister: You spend your life trying to work that out.

Street Art London: What do you think about the idea that a work of art is never really finished, just abandoned.

Lister: Well, I disagree. Some things get finished but I think it’s beautiful how you say it about how it’s abandoned. Of course, we can always tighten it. You have to know when to say that’s enough. I usually ask them, I say “what are we doing here, is this enough?”. Then bang, they’ll give me those last few moves and I’ll get out.

Street Art London: You said earlier that you usually wait for a sign, someone around you will say something or you’ll drop a tin or a charcoal.

Lister: Sure, I know if a charcoal jumps out of my hand it’s time to chill.

Street Art London: Look at somewhere like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona for example.

Lister: The place that they will never finished building? The architect died and then someone else took it on.

Street Art London: It’s still being built today.

Lister: And that architect will die and pass it on to someone else. It’s like Blackbeard or some shit. I enjoy that mentality when it comes to architecture and most things in life. I think it should be organic and it should grow on itself. I come from a society where things are ripped down and things are cleaned and things are like maintained on a level that is just beyond humanly carable. It just doesn’t make sense. I am very much into European cities that have been building on themselves like a coral sea. That is beautiful to me

Street Art London: I think there is something in this thing of not really finishing something. You know, something being incomplete.

Lister: Well yeah. You know that’s going to be a dilemma with art because it is subjective in one’s opinion. I have no reservation in saying that I know when a piece is complete and I am aware when I have taken them too far and I am also aware when I could have taken them further. I feel that the less finished they are the more they will give me rather than the more finished they are the more they will give me. There is an honesty in stopping sooner. I can’t think of a good analogy. Painting is like combing your hair. You have to do it a lot of times.

Street Art London: Yeah…. [awkward pause].

Lister: That was a terrible analogy. It made no sense at all. It’s absurd.

Street Art London: I think that when something is incomplete in terms of the view or the audience they might prefer it as they can make up the rest for themselves in their own minds.

Lister: Well you know, that’s just like you opinion man [SAL: Big Lebowski reference acknowledged]. The first rule of painting is to take everyone else out of the equation. You are the viewer, so don’t underestimate your viewers. They see everything and you just have to assume that they are you. You cant paint for anyone else. You know what I mean? It’s all about having the courage to say this is finished and they have to know that, you are the boss in painting. Its like being a soldier because you have to be hard as fuck to fall in love with these things and let them go. I mean money does not fill holes of awesome things that you love. Thats for sure. I keep a lot of my paintings that for sure.

Street Art London: Why?

Lister: Because I love them too much and I want my children to have them. I think fuck, I want that.

Great Eastern Street (Nov 2012)

Street Art London: OK, next question. Is there anything in particular that you like about painting in London.

Lister: That’s a good question, I like the fact that it is cloudy here as the sun just bugs me. I like that a lot. The energy is good here. People know things. There are so many talented artists here, I don’t get bored here, I see new things here constantly.

Street Art London: Anything else?

Lister: Well… that’s inappropriate. Jokes are not right. I tried to make a body of work about jokes you know.

Street Art London: That’s tough.

Lister: It was rough man… I mean you get them off the internet. [Lister tells a joke].

Street Art London: That’s awful.

Lister: And then you make a painting about that and you’re the bad guy. I am interested in the fine line between intention and inspiration. Can someone else be blamed for being the source of a concept or are you responsible for giving birth to it in a new form. I’m interested in moral equations like that.

Lister Tag on Shoreditch High Street (2011 – now gone)

Street Art London: Can one person be responsible for a concept? Is it possible?

Lister: Yes, absolutely they can. It’s called copyright.

Street Art London: But in the broadest sense all ideas come from certain influences and the environment.

Lister: A beautiful thing that Chuck Close said: “Inspiration is for beginners, the rest of us just get to work”. I like that one.

Street Art London: So that means that inspiration is what…

Lister: Something that students talk about to buy candles. I don’t know. Inspiration is things that are around but regardless of that fact painters are just going to get on with it. Less is usually more. If I have got one pen in my bag I’ll draw more than if I have 15 pens. Options can be a devil and limiting. Isn’t that crazy, a contradiction. And photoshop, go through those filters, I mean, fucking hell. If I’m walking in to a store I am only walking in there if I know what I am looking for.

Street Art London: Well tell us about the colour palette that you use. It usually white, blue, black and red.

Lister: That’s for my street works.

Christina Street (Nov 2012)

Street Art London: Well tell us about your characters, it looks like the same person.

Lister: I mean I just enjoy doing it. It’s fun and I find new ways to change it even if it doesn’t look like it. I am finding new forms in my motion and it’s comfortable. I mean when you undercoat for more painting, which is really what my craft is… I am sure that I have had more painting painted over than are still alive, and then you know, you want to have fun. I mean when I am in my lab with my canvases and in my sketchbooks and life drawing, thats when I test myself. Out there, thats fun for me. If I played golf I’d go and play golf and then I’d go back to the office and work on that data sheet report for… you know what I mean. Dude has a job, dude plays golf. Street art is like golf for me and then I go back to the lab. I enjoy street art and I do it with my friends.

Street Art London: So gallery and street are quite separate?

Lister: Absolutely, in my studio practice I am working hard to think about what’s this shit is all about, about bodies of work, about building shows. I just choose not to bless the street with that. I don’t need to exhaust myself like that. I like to do things that are fun. I’m lazy, what are you going to do?

Street Art London: Nothing, just going to ask you about it… [laughs]

Lister: No, the short answer, is that I am terribly lazy and I am terribly boring.

Street Art London: Well, that’s just like your opinion man. It’s a bit surprising that you think there is no link.

Lister: Sure, there’s a link. I am the link. But I don’t put a pressure on my street works to really perform like I need my studio pieces to work. My street work is golf, its just a fun thing that I do. I don’t take it that seriously.

Street Art London: So it’s like a release, going from the interior of the studio to the world and the ether. 

Lister: Absolutely it is and I can use materials in a much more quenchable and tangible way. In the street is really where I can grab those cans and really cover some shit. In the studio, you make a mistake and it can take a while for you to get back to where you started. The studio is concentrated and calm and only has moments of violation. The streets are alive and I am just a little atom just shaking in it and I just hold on to something because it’s a ride and sometimes they want to beat me. Sometimes the paintings try to beat me and I can’t let that happen. I am ready for them to try to fight back.

Street Art London: You don’t want to be beaten by a painting.

Lister: You don’t want your shit stinking up the street. You have to have good style 24/7, it’s a wild ride out there.

Holywell Lane Car Park (Nov 2012)

Street Art London: What do you think the importance of street art and graffiti is?

Lister: They are very important. Graffiti is the final frontier of true artistic integrity where you risk everything and give everything for nothing and no-one except for yourself. When you hear about graffiti writers going to jail it’s disconcerting that society is at that level. Yes, it’s important. People need to feel free, not to litter in the streets but sure to draw in the streets. It’s a law not to wear a helmet in my country, there is something a little wrong with that. I don’t know maybe not. There are so many contradictions and rules. It’s very important, people should be free to draw. I am over schooling peeps though. I just do it in front of people and tell them to mind their own business. You have to take their energy and switch it around at them.

Street Art London: Like Judo.

Lister: Yeah, exactly.  Or you just absorb it and that’s fine. Sometimes they need that. Or sometimes I will just swing the mirror at fools. They don’t really understand why they are doing it. So they turn into a Matrix. Some authoritarian figure rolls up on you with some do-gooder renegade shit. They don’t even know why they are doing it and an agent flips out of them and the next thing you know you are dealing with some hothead. Thought it was some grandma, and she’s hitting you or something, it’s a trip right? And they don’t know why they are doing it.

Street Art London: Where do you see street art in the near future, 10, 20, 50 10 years?

Lister: I figure it will be holographic.  I think that someone is going to kill it and then someone else will come along and bring it back to life. Maybe that dude from Blink 182. I also heard that Nick Cave was doing street art. I heard that he actually bought street art and now you have to pay him to even draw on the street. You know what, all I know is that I made a boomerang shaped iPhone and called it an iPhonerang… and I let it ring.

Street Art London: Did it come back?

Lister: Good question. Well, short answer: yes.

Street Art London: Have you copyrighted it yet?

Lister: What does copyright even mean? I just thought if I invented it first that was alright. But no, there are all these sneaky peeps.

Street Art London: You have to get a patent man.

Lister: I don’t know.I’m a small time guy with small time travel making plans. So anyway, that’s my iPhonerang. And what was the new word I was working on? Not procrastibation.

Street Art London: Nice.

Lister: I forget, you know new words and pianos that don’t work.

Street Art London: Do you make up a lot of new words?

Lister: I just like to think of absurd things that fit well together. It’s almost like eating a chicken nugget and an onion ring and calling it a chicken ring.

Street Art London: To come up with good concepts you have to put together disparate objects.

Lister: Sure, and then patent them.

Street Art London: And then sue anyone…

Lister: Well of course, I am hunting on the web all day long to find out who is biting me so I can sue them and get into a big law suit. I am in seven lawsuits right now, I don’t even sleep at night. No, I would hate that to be my life. You have gotta move forward.

Truman Brewery (Nov 2012)

Street Art London: What are your thoughts of the increasing numbers of advertisers using street art?

Lister: Well, I think it is very interesting. It will definitely depend on a lot of things.  The definition of street art is so broad that it is hard to be general about an opinion. I would say that if someone asked to use my artwork on a social studies document for Noway I would say yes. If North Korea asked to use it I would say no.

Street Art London: What about Apple or Coca Cola?

Lister: Well, I mean I use Apple and I have drunk Coca Cola and it may rot my teeth. I’m against people taking advantage of other people.

Street Art London: Do Coca Cola and Apple do that to an extent?

Lister: Well, they own all the spots for sure. But it’s an interesting question, how do I feel about it. If the artist is being paid and they want to label themselves as that then I don’t care. It’s not something I would do. I have been paid by companies to do jobs and I don’t have an issue with that.

Street Art London: So it’s bread and butter?

Lister: Hopefully everyone is getting something they want out of it. I used to stack shelves for money and push trollies for money.  I used to work for companies and get treated like shit and paid shit. I don’t see it being any different. Yeah, it’s survival. It’s the artist that has to sleep and live with themselves. I just sit around and masturbate cry and pour Coca Cola on myself and get sticky.

Street Art London: While checking facebook on your iPhone?

Lister: Always on facebook, I have it on my face. I have it strapped to my face. And a mirror. A mirror and facebook. I have my iPhone taped to my head and a mirror that comes out over my face so I never forget what I am. All I ever ask myself is. Who are you? Who am I? But I know what I am.

Street Art London: I just got a mental image of that. It could make a good painting…

Lister: Well actually, I try to operate the opposite of that.  I try to look in the mirror less, forget what I am, not who I am. I’ll work on that bit.

Street Art London: I guess, that’s it. Thanks.