Robbo’s 25 year old masterpiece, on the back of BTP HQ, by Regents canal in Camden, despite being tagged was still visible until it was ruined by Banksy two years ago.
It was restored on Christmas Eve; finally, after the ‘battle’ that commenced two years ago and hopefully this heartfelt tribute and authentic restoration will draw a line under this epoch defining saga and will be left alone as the graffiti writing community and Robbo’s family try to come to terms with Robbo’s currently unchanging condition.
You are never far from our thoughts big man, we hope and dream of the day you recover and are with us once again, you gave so much.
Watch Channel 4 Robbo vs Banksy Graffiti Wars documentary online, or
Watch Channel 4 Robbo vs Banksy Graffiti Wars documentary on YouTube, or
Watch Channel 4 Robbo vs Banksy Graffiti Wars documentary on Channel 4 OD On Demand.
Well you can’t, here’s why.
Channel 4 Robbo vs Banksy Graffiti Wars documentary has been censored.
That’s right ‘someone’ has decided that YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH IT.
No prizes for guessing who.
As the machine grinds onward in it’s desecration, homogenisation, censorship and pillage of underground culture, it must try to censor any unapproved expression from the REAL underground, or dissent, or lingering traces of it’s hypocrisy, with an iron fist, exalting only the idealistic false image of the hero myth.
Careful censorship, exile, blacklisting, marginalisation or mismanagement of serious, old-school talent keeps the mainstream spotlight on one artist (and occasionally his mate), rendering the establishment approved ‘art scene’ and any ‘causes’ highlighted, as mere stage props and backdrops, window dressing to add realism to the charade.
The documentary ‘Graffiti Wars’ made the big move of revealing the tip of a whopping great iceberg to the masses and demonstrated elements of the awful truth that runs diametrically counter to the cute kitsch and contrived legend, and highlighted the negative stereotyping in the form of sweeping and grossly inaccurate generalisations about graffiti writers -“It’s all about male ego, damage and stealing your paint etc…”
From all comments I have read and personal feedback I have recieved, almost everyone who watched Graffiti Wars left it with the beginnings of a completely new reality map.
That meant well over 600,000 on Sunday and over 22,000 on YouTube exposed to truth and freedom of expression, that great old enemy of despots worldwide.
This is bad news for the totalitarian capitalist heart that beats *ker-ching ker-ching* at the core of the libertarian anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist hero myth….
Which is doubtless why there is currently not one single mention of ‘Robbo vs Banksy Graffiti Wars’ on any of the Banksy forums.
Any circulated thread URLs discussing Channel 4 ‘Graffiti Wars’ documentary, I am told, have landed on a “this post does not exist” message, hell those moderators must have been busy, PRAVDA would be proud of you guys! Medals all round! Our community are not even given the opportunity to debate the issues at hand, hurrah!!!
“Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself, it is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime” Potter Stewart
The lie is beginning to unravel before their eyes, and the eyes of the world. The gravity of truth and passion for art and free choice of the people assures this. However in the meantime…
…on the 19th August Channel 4 Robbo vs Banksy Graffiti Wars documentary disappeared from the web.
Channel 4’s YouTube channel deleted the film, so did 4 On Demand, despite there being 23 days left to view the film on OD and it supposedly being on YouTube forever.
I can’t say much more on here other than there have been “Legal Challenges” raised; I’m sure you can work out the rest.
Lets hope it’s back online soon, our commiserations go out to Robbo’s young family who’ve been denied the chance to get closer to their big man by re-watching his film on the web as he lies in hospital in a coma; to his crew We Rock Hard who are busy organising his fundraiser event and are missing out on publicity and potential new donors for Robbo’s ongoing care and that of his family while the film is offline; to the fantastic production team who worked so hard to make the film a success, to Channel 4 who are missing out on the advertising revenue they need to recoup the cost of making the film all the time it is offline; and of course to everyone who actually wanted to see the thing for the first time or watch it again but can’t.
One can’t help but feel that such a panicked reaction amounts to turning the deckchairs around on the Titanic so the passengers are looking the other way.
"You can cage the singer but not the song." Harry Belafonte, 1988
"…There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/ Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse.
Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme…." -Ray Bradbury
I’ll finish this post with what used to be one of my favourite quotations.
People are taking the piss out of you every day. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small…..
They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are the advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Sorry I’m late blogging this, Robbo’s documentary is on Channel 4 tonight (14th August) but can be viewed again online here I’m on there giving my two bobs worth as are many oldskool.
I first started watching then bombing the tube trains properly when working as a messenger boy in the city in 1986 as the first proper wave of graffiti writers got serious.
Sitting on the grimy platform clutching my documents heading for PSAC or wherever my round took me; my dull dead end job was set ablaze with a riot of colour almost every time a train clattered in.
I would sit spellbound for ages, the juddering bare steel of the train, electronic hum of the motors, the smell of the brakes, mysterious allure of the forbidden tunnel illuminated in spasmodic flashes of blue lightning as the train careered in carrying its promise of renegade artworks framed by the nearly derelict tube system and crumbling Victorian brickwork of the ancient city.
This transformed the experience of witnessing train graffiti beyond the leafy lines and lanes of the Hertfordshire suburbs, where my own train painting career started.
If a train came in with a full colour piece on it I rode that car jumping out at every platform for a glimpse, then back inside until the next stop would allow me a few seconds more to grab another look….
The first names I remember seeing in abundance were Pim 17, Prime, Fly, Elf, Buf, Fuel, Ice 3, Jano, Envy, Sir Beau, Kick 4, Set 3, Chico147, Kis42, Tilt, Doze Bos, Chane, PiC, Choci and others and the one that towered above all in his sheer prolific domination of the city was Robbo 484.
Let me try and get this over to those who weren’t there at the beginning…..
Okay lets just say I was going down into the tube at Liverpool Street, amongst all the tags you’ see ROBBO 484 in paint in the prime position right next to the ticket box, about seven foot up, you walk to the platform and wait for the westbound circle line train, when it comes in you see the front and outside covered with Robbo R letters.
You get in a carriage the doors close and on each panel above the window is a Robbo tag.
As you travel along you notice Robbo tags on almost every passing platform, you get off and change onto another line, on the walk to the platform more Robbo tags, the train rolls in and… wow amazing… a Robbo full colour piece on the side, you decide to wait and watch on the platform, out of the next five trains that pull in three are covered in Robbo throw ups, you decide to go to the surface for a cup of tea, up the escalators on the curved ceiling about twelve foot from where you stand on the metal step more Robbo 484 tags.
You come out on the street, walk a couple of miles and get on at a different tube line, en route in the high street you see massive Robbo silver pieces along the high streets and on the sides of the flats.
You get to the next stop get on the train on the completely different line, more Robbo throw ups on every car of each train, you look out of the window into the tunnels, more Robbo tags out of the tunnels then overground, on warehouses you whiz past ROBBO in huge silver letters, EVERYWHERE, ALL CITY KING…and this all by 1987 which he kept up for many years.
I didn’t know who he was back then, just that he was this omnipresent enigma with apparent super powers and balls of steel, but his early pieces and infiltration of every train depot on every single line on the Underground system, his painting of trains in multiple European cities including Amsterdam, his painting of a New York subway train well after Mayor Koch’s Graffiti clampdown and his continuation of high level bombing of the London Underground system meant he was not only world renowned but known by every person who had even the remotest interest in graffiti in the late eighties, nineties and new millenium.
He painted countless panel pieces, numerous wholecars and even painted the legendary Christmas wholetrain with Drax WD. Long before the internet photos of his trains were circulated by post the length and breadth of the country, his name spoken in the hushed tones of awed reverence in the decades after he became King though he never made a penny from his efforts or even wanted to.
Cue Banksy’s entrance to the London scene in the early 2000s, at his introduction to Robbo, Banksy’s reply was…
“Never heard of you…”
Says it all really, to say you’ve never heard of Robbo in the graffiti world after all the countless risks to life limb and liberty he took to become so well known and to birth graffiti as a serious democratic movement that was open to everyone, a King, is an insult, like saying “I’ve never heard of you” to the Queen or the President of the USA…. calculated and arrogant pure and simple.
Despite being mainly a ‘bomber’ of tags, silver-dubs and throw-ups, which may well have been perceived as an eyesore to many fine art buffs, he did countless amazing pieces, his contribution to style and to the movement that we have today cannot be underestimated, there would be no “New Contemporary Art” if there was no Robbo and others like him.
Although very much ‘classic’ New York graffiti inspired he was already by 1985 making waves in the London forefront of style as is demonstrated by the following piece, when most people were still mastering the art of writing a tag.
That piece survived intact, on the back of British Transport Police HQ, no less, his sworn enemies, who had the respect for him to leave it intact for 25 years.
Apart from a few scrawls but was largely still legible and a clear demonstration of how what is now the biggest art movement in the world was pioneered in its infancy.
That is until Banksy in his infinite wisdom, destroyed the piece in the Christmas of 2009, by turning it into wallpaper, the ultimate disrespect. Robbo, by now a family man and long retired from graffiti, came out of retirement to settle the score by doing to Banksy’s ‘adverts’ what he had done to Robbo’s sacred relic, an example of the earliest proliferation of what is now the biggest art movement in world history, it should have been left for the enjoyment and education of future generations no matter how much it had been worn away over time
Somehow, despite Channel 4 making a documentary about it and millions of genuine graffiti artists around the world being outraged by it, and it being the first thing that springs to mind for millions when Banksy’s name comes up in conversation…..there is no mention of it whatsoever on Banksy’s Wikipedia page!!!!
WHO WRITES THIS STUFF???
Shome mishtake shurely…..
PS
Why is there a Banksy ‘flower chucker’ at 00.00.09 in the trailer video????
Why did Pure Evil persuade Robbo to do his show in his gallery when he is Banksy’s loyal mate and was appalled at Robbo’s destruction to Banksy’s works???
He was so furious at Robbo’s retaliation against Banksy pieces in fact, that he was actually getting people to phone me up in early 2010 trying to find out Robbo’s real identity.
Now he’s trying soooo hard to be bestest buddys with the ‘big boys’ in the underground graffiti writing world after years of putting graffiti writers down then going on about how superior ‘street art’ is……
Success dependent on the organised brutal suppression of the work of other artists, while maintaining a veneer of respectability is utterly unsustainable therefore transient, therefore no success at all.
Yet that has become the accepted ‘modus operandi’. Here is my compendium of wisdom on CENSORSHIP , as published in the current issue of LSD Magazine, preceded by an introduction, and followed by a piece of film….
The battle against censorship in art in these times, is a long and lonely road beset with hazards. However it is a battle that has found me, not I it; and one I accept alone.
However certain giants of oldskool graffiti and now the broader underground too, have recognised my plight and shown me tacit support and thus added to my strength to continue my personal struggle for artistic freedom, and there I have found something of the true spirit of human empathy and expression.
However it must be said that even without such support I would gladly continue my path.
By accident of birth I found myself able to draw and paint, by longing for expression I found myself on the streets with crude anarcho stencils then by the mid eighties the train yards with my dreams on metal in motion and colour, then acid house parties with ultraviolet paint, then in the studio with oil and easel where I laboured for 20 years amidst a stack of books and immersed in the study of the Old Masters, then back to the streets.
Here I found many from those train yard days too had moved on, and like me still had little voice in an art world supposedly freed for “the people” by the new wave of ‘street artists’ if you believe the PR, as I did for a while, but in reality I found the art world in the stranglehold of a voracious cartel.
They saw its’ potent symbols, identity and lexicon merely as a vehicle for profit, be it of narcissism or cash, and saw myself and others like me who held their meaning dear, as a threat to be pushed aside, silenced and ignored, or charmed, duped, bribed, gifted and flattered into acquiescence.
In my search to show my own work outside the confines of this closed shop which rejected my every inroad outright, found me allied with other oldskool writers who shared my alienation; those who shared aspects of my story, continued to make art and thus identified with my plight.
At that point a journey was embarked upon, in the true DIY ethic of the punk rock I grew up on; to build something from the ground up and set up our own gallery, then a notice was pinned to my wall warning me against such an act, which was ignored, then a car was driven at me. How scared the cartel must be of the reality of art to act this way!
London writers of our generation experienced something no other artists ever have or ever will.
Not only were we the first proper ‘wave’ to saturate the trains but we were, in these heady days witness to the most concentrated awakening of consciousness in the history of the planet, even stronger in its’ pure intensity than the hippy explosion of the 1960s….acid house, the full unforgettable syncopated sensory plunge into the inner world and holographic universe in its’ purest form.
With the biomorphic shapes and ever mutating motion of graffiti lettering and clattering of wheels on tracks resounding in our heads we were then thrust into the hallucinogenic meltdown squelch of the Roland TB303 synth and relentless kick drum, in an ancient shamanic dance, now laser lit, that broke down our very DNA and reassembled it in under the strobe as brave new beings.
The B.P.M of Jack the T.A.B now forever in our bones, was a dance that accessed the ends of the universe and the building blocks of life itself and brought the shapes alive in a synaesthesiac time warp of sound which we reassembled as art.
Think Drax’s abstract wholecar hallucinogenic zigzags and loops that shook, rattled and rolled with the funk of the underground, possibly the most viscerally stunning and ‘primeval’ of these utterances which propelled the magical art of the ancient sacred cave screeching and clattering through the tunnels of the Circle Line, think of Fuels epic, heroic, mythical and prolific visions of numinous otherworlds, Nu Age lava lamp styles, and spontaneous quasi-religious poetic scrawls which set apart his hard won crown as an unbelievably prolific outsider and fearless groundbreaker, of Cherish’s aztec jelly-mould styles, Acrid’s spontaneous abstract panel pieces, Mean’s ‘dancing’ letters and experiments in spatial distortions of perceptions of the street and in the flowery spiralled tags and squashy throw-up letters that abounded all over the system from everyone from Bus One to Drop One….
Graffiti and the ‘invisible world’ go hand in hand from the earliest engravings on caves, but in London in 88-90 as the golden ages of acid house and train graffiti emerged side by side the two cross pollinated in a style never seen and have left a legacy that grows, albeit often hidden, to this day.
These writers I held in awe, some I painted with then, others I paint with now, others I’ve never even met, they and many more are those that awoke my curiosity and unwittingly guided my path, that lit my way inspiring my search for my own voice in art just as much as the surrealist and visionary painters such as Ernst, Matta or Blake. They all had the vision and pluck to rise against the conventions of graffiti or the art of their time and take it further, into the ‘otherworld’ as opposed to contemporary stylistic convention or current profusion of stage managed saccharin gimmickry, as did Blade and Futura in their own way in New York.
Some of these writers, those with the inclination are continuing their investigations, imaginations freed by the movement, electricity and industrial energy of dirty London train graffiti, freed by the spectacular inner pyrotechnics and spiritual inner joy of “The Experience” still working out their visions….others like a fine wine or lively cheese have matured, taking their influence from their life in the outer world , the enlightenment of travel and the information age and their ruminations on our culture, their continuing legacy, or of literature and their epiphanies in Eastern mysticism or the delirious ravings of the romantic poets…
The spiritof the individual is that which drives such people and which gives life to the pioneering uncategorisable works that are created in the awakening’s wake….we are many and we have many creative years of our lives ahead of us….
Is it street art? Maybe not, as the current use of the term has lost its’ value, but we were and still are street artists, the original street artists of this generation..
Is it fine art? It can be, yes, but freed from the stuffiness of the academies, the hierarchy of art’s cartels, and the rules of the classics.
Is it graffiti? That depends where it is and what its saying, but we’re all writers, whatever medium we use and its’ fluid dynamics once it met ‘jack the groove’ leave a legacy and flow that carries into whatever art we may make…
London’s scene uncovered a timeless dynamic and fused it with mass transit, lighting a fuse in many a mind. that meanders through the infinite illumination of the information age and the dusty tomes of arcane lore….
Is it a movement?
No! It’s a continuous and ancient undercurrent in human culture that took on a hearty mutation and new direction and after incubation and ponderance among many individuals is rising its’ head.
We need no labels, but we do need awareness, if we are to transcend the current serpentine hierarchy of control with its’ false flags of freedom, empathy and anarcho-meritocracy under which it aggressively infects, maligns and attempts to ‘own’ and thus censor every new growth of culture with its’ covert influence, contrived infiltration and complicit continuation of their monopolist values which celebrate denunciation of free thinking and original expression in favour of imitative, non-challenging, anti-cerebral, overtly commercial empty gesture and fake posturing.
That is what I was, (at the time unknowingly) trying to challenge by setting up a space in Brick Lane. I got out of train graffiti in 1989 and while still painting the odd piece I pursued the hallucinogenic mythical experimentation, as I re-emerged and hooked up with old comrades and certain old heroes who I now count as my friends, it confirmed my suspicions how much there was so much more to come from this dynamic still, how much was being ignored and deliberately censored, how we writers, far from the way they had been portrayed by the street art cartel were often the most intelligent, honest, open minded, poetic, enlightened and the most socially and politically aware.
All the things elements the collective wore on their sleeves as commercial false flags we carry in our heart as our life and purpose….
Any schism is not graffiti versus street art, it is of the authentic versus the synthetic, the individuals against the collective, freedom versus censorship, spirit versus mammon.
I attempted to escalate this spirit to the next logical level, into physical space, as an accidental by-product in my own search for somewhere real to show my own discoveries in paint, a place where the phenomenon that gave my work life and from which new ideas continually emerge, could be appreciated, contextualised and given due consideration for everything it was, is and will be for many years to come.
But such expression did nothing to glorify the cartel so was banned.
While I would not consider myself an Objectivist and would most definitely consider myself a proud (though discerning) altruist in opposition to many Randian thinkers, I maintain this speech given by Howard Rourke in the courtroom scene from The Fountainhead to be one of the most remarkable edicts of truth in the history of expression.
My apologies for not updating my blog for a few months but I have had more ‘computer problems’.
I have yet again been the victim of a targeted hacking attack by representatives of the “urban art cartel” those heroic, freedom loving, anti surveillance, pro human rights, pro individualist, champions of the outsider, the dispossessed and downtrodden yes those guys, who this time even sent me a “greeting card”.
However this has proved to be yet another, albeit significant milestone in a catalogue of Pyrric Victories in the cartel’s campaign of monopolist domination through intimidation, censorship, hacking, threats, mismanagement, smears and stalking against myself and other artists, webmasters and dissenters, in total diametric opposition to their carefully crafted projected personas.
They accessed files detailing the full extent of all events, which I have methodically accumulated and set down, and as such, would seem to indicate people’s involvement, directly and indirectly, in the campaign against our intended gallery in Brick Lane showing visionary fine painting by oldskool London train writers.
As a result certain key players in this campaign have since taken significant steps to distance themselves and attempted to forge alliances via a charm offensive. Others have continued the threats, re-enforcing a hundredfold the resolve of myself and my allies.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Buddha
They also accessed material I had been preparing for LSD magazine and attempted to negate the value of its’ content ……I withdrew the piece from the magazine.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed)16th president of US (1809 – 1865)
On that note I’ll hand over to the stunning intro written by the publishers, those wily wordsmiths and enlightened empaths, those pioneers of freedom in deed and thought, Wayne Anthony (Class of 88) and Sirius 23; to the current issue of the planet’s finest mag, which you will find embedded below for your reading pleasure…..
As the creaking autocracies of the Middle East and North Africa rumble, stumble and begin to tumble, we are assured by breathless commentators worldwide that the internet has finally come of age as a political weapon, and that social networking channelled through the prism of protest has heralded a glinting, nascent dawn in people power, connectivity and a new egalitarianism in which traditional hierarchies dissolve into the digital.
There can be no doubt that we are entering a new paradigm in human interaction and the chemical bonds that held 20th century conceptions of society together are slowly turning liquid in the virtual flame. Formal institutions, unions, and rigid organisational frameworks are being relentlessly subsumed by the underlying laws of physics – that a cloud of cosmic matter will inexorably and exponentially begin to self organise into an ever more complex organic system. And thus we see the chaotic platform, the medium, the base elements of the internet attract into ripples of order so sophisticated, we’d tip our hats to God for such intricate design if we weren’t already kneeling before the empowerment of the Enlightenment.
The tiniest act can start a revolution or end up valued at $25 billion with virtually no investment, no permission and no control. In the biting irony of our times, the most resolute, sophisticated and well funded control structures in the world have given birth to an open source reality where physical dominion is all but vaporised and individuals have a potential power never before witnessed in history. Geography is looking like a dated relic of a clumsy 3 dimensional age, sub cultures coalesce in a quantum vortex of cyberspace, magazines like this are possible, artists and musicians go viral and local expression suddenly has global reach.
And yet we have to be more vigilant than ever before. It is certainly true that in the recent sweeping seismic shifts in the Arab world, social networking has been used to an extraordinarily powerful end, and the internet has been used to turn heavy handed censorship and 20thcentury bullying tactics on their head. But can we really say the same for the West?
The online profile most of us hold so dear may be the triumph of the world according to advertising. We may deplore the numb acquiescence that has seen the hysterical corporatisation of our public spaces and claim to despise the capitalist constructs of aspirational advertising, but whether we like it or not, our egos have in many ways seized the day. The sudden ability to control public perceptions of our identity have encouraged us to see the world through the spectrum of advertising and present who we would like to be to the outside world far more effectively than many of us can manage in person. Of course we have always advertised in some sense – fashion alone wins that argument, but as we encounter the multi dimensional realities of information and connectivity, are we missing out on new, non linear, synapse shattering angles of perception through which to hone our interpretations of reality.
The internet was once seen as the absolute victory of the individual and the subculture over the vertical structures of ‘old’ society, and even now, the war being spoken of is the power of corporations and governments to pressure threats such as Wikileaks by terminating access to digital funding and host servers. But it is critically important never to underestimate the shifting nature of control, and the real threat that faces us all. Repression, oppression and the ham fisted simplicity of shutting down organisations and banning dissent may be losing the battle against the virtual in the old school militaristic regimes of the Middle East, but in the West, that kind of identifiable enemy is the least of our worries. Infinitely more ingenious is the new, equally virtual form of mass manipulation….unrestrained freedom.
Take one part sense of security and blend vigorously with the skin deep sincerity of advertising culture and you have an endless stream of freely shared subversive opinion that results in very little beyond self congratulation within the subculture.
We can Save the Whales, Support the Myanmar Monks, protest against local gentrification and register our disapproval of swingeing budget cuts all in 5 minutes on Facebook. We’ve made a difference, we’ve presented a gleaming hologram of our better selves and as the armchair militancy of the comments come rolling in, we can all bask in the glow of our own power without ever actually doing anything. As long as we can talk about it and let the world know where we stand – that’s us done for the day – let’s get some youtube vids on the go. There’s nothing quite like the sense of being free to render you completely ineffective.
None of this is to dismiss the awesome power of the internet and social networking – this magazine would be a hollow idea and nothing more without them. And obviously there is nothing wrong with defining your online identity through what you wish for yourself rather than who you actually are at work on a rainy Tuesday.
Support the Whales – great – not everyone can fight pitched naval battles with Greenpeace. There is no conclusion, there is no answer…just an awful lot of questions that it’s so tempting to forget we should ask.
And the overriding, fundamental aspect of this and any social and political debate is summed up by Faust’s greatest biographer, Goethe… ‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’
Control is a serpentine, shape shifting force that defies categorization and often exists as a self organizing system itself – almost as a form of social gravity rather than necessarily within nefarious individuals, and it is never, ever as visceral as when we surrender to it unknowingly and voluntarily.
The might of a thousand invading armies will never have the same raw, magnetic, all conquering hypnosis as a dose of consumerism and the expression of your own personal consciousness through a colonial language you always assumed was your own.
See my article on CENSORSHIP on page 232 and I interview anarcho punk legends the Disrupters and Prem Nick on page 380, plus there’s the usual array underground talent from around the globe…….
Here’s a trailer for a major new documentary coming out soon about Street Art and graffiti in Brick Lane, looks to be interesting, featuring a broad array of artists.
I will be talking about lots of different stuff, providing an alternative point of view and doing some painting too…..a certain old school King of London train pieces will be making a unique appearance and ranting also, and will feature his current canvases which are actual portals to other realms, as the best art often is, so really don’t miss this one…..
The people behind it are Six Oranges who usually make films about human rights issues and have just released a wonderful documentary called ‘Tres Tristes Tigres’ (Three Sad Tigers) about poor Bangladeshi construction workers who get ripped off, which is absolutely excellent, if heartbreaking. I’m lucky enough to have a preview copy, its doing the rounds of the festivals at the moment and has already been nominated for a Goya award (the Spanish Oscars) good luck guys.It’s also been awarded the Best Short Documentary at the VII Certamen Documental e Video Secuencia Cero (Vigo, Spain).
“Construction boom in Middle East brought 832,000 workers from Bangladesh. The labor abuse and illegal contracting, accepted by Bangladeshi government with tolerance of International Labor Organization, has brought thousands of broken families and hopes of workers destroyed for good.”
This is a portrait of a street and an area – as seen by artists, particularly street artists, and others who live and work or even just visit here. I wanted to shoot a social documentary which would frame the street, its life, and the complex web in which it operates. I wanted to hear the area’s "official" stories. And of course the other side of those stories.
I started filming in the fall of 2009. Seems a long time ago. And so this little trailer is a quiet announcement that we are serious about the final edit now…Watch this space I guess. Filmed in London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid. Yeah.. Brick Lane is a long street.
Thanks to all the artists. For your participation and most importantly for your art.
I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has shown me support and encouragement during the ongoing campaign of stalking, harrassment, threats and intimidation, which began shortly after I announced my plans to open a new art gallery in East London.
These events seem to infer that certain people in the ‘street art’ establishment are prepared to use thugs, threats, hackers and dirty tricks. You can read all about this here.
I have had many messages of kindness and support from readers of my blog and people in the art world which have given me great comfort at this difficult time. Thanks to those people.
Thanks also to my family and friends and the bloggers and websites who published the events, put out calls for information, expressed their outrage or linked to the article describing the events including Fatcap, Canned Goods, London Street Art Design, Vandalog, Graphotism, Artshout, Graffiti Spotting and many more…
Thanks to all the guys from London’s graffiti writing and broader art communities who have lifted my spirits with their kindness and support.
Thanks also to the police who have been kind and understanding, know what’s been going on and are taking it seriously.
I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive to go to the police with news of developments, but to their credit, they were very interested in what I had to say and seem to be taking it very seriously.
They requested I keep a log recording any information including unusual sightings and descriptions of people I believe may be involved, events, photos of the threatening artworks which have been appearing from various sources; anything in fact, which could be seen as aggressive or a warning and could possibly be directed against me.
This log remains in my possession and has, of course been backed up and passed to trusted allies but will hopefully never see the light of day.
I had assumed the police would not be interested in veiled and ambiguous threats.
However I have been informed by officers that taking into account the circumstances (especially if these threats continue or anything ‘untoward’ or ‘unusual’ happens to me); that these would become a basis for an investigation.
I was no angel in my youth but it’s at times like this that you realise there are a great many kind, good hearted officers on the force who are genuinely doing a great job for the right reasons and are the last resort when people find themselves the innocent victim of attack, intimidation and harrassment.
These basic tenets of our society is what our proud British freedom of expression and human rights is built on.
All I want is to get on with my life and let other people get on with theirs with no hassle or problems.
I haven’t posted on my blog for a few months, here’s why.
I have been subject to a campaign of intimidation and aggression after announcing plans to open a gallery at Brick Lane and painting legal graffiti on prized spots. Now I realise I have unwittingly been put in an unthinkable situation.
I would be happy to engage in healthy competition of innovation, skills, banter and wit, but whoever is opposed to my plans chose the way of the bully. Now the situation has got so bad that I am going public with the information.
Let’s start at the beginning…..I painted anti-war slogans and punk logos since ‘82, then in the New York style from ‘84.
Being from a working class background I left school aged 16 in ‘86. I didn’t have the privilege of an art education so worked as a messenger boy in the City of London just as the Underground railway was overrun with graffiti for the first time.
My passion for graffiti got me fired from my round in early ‘87 and I continued writing on trains through London’s graffiti heyday until 1989 when I stopped illegal work and taught myself to paint classically in oil, continuing to paint graffiti legally.
When Banksy and others recently enabled vandalism to be accepted as an art form, and visionary painting by untrained outsiders was finally acknowledged, I thought my time for recognition was here. My calculation didn’t take into account the carefully controlled hierarchy that exists in the London scene.
I had no intent to subvert anyone’s status and only wished to embrace diversity in all its forms and participate in the community. So after being completely ignored by the major players in the ‘Street Art’ establishment I decided to go it alone in 2009 and curate my own space in a Georgian warehouse at the top of Brick Lane, the hub of the art community, specialising in work by oldskool graffiti writers and intuitive visionaries.
I told many in the neighbourhood about my plans. This news was met with a sign posted on my wall at the beginning of August 09 “Art Gallery Not Needed- London…Breathe/Stretch/Relax/Perforate”and signed ‘Sinom de Plume’
Sinom de Plume is a corruption of the French ‘Nom de Plume’ meaning Pen Name or literary double, a fake name adopted by an author.
“Breathe/Stretch/Relax/Perforate” is a corruption of the Yoga instruction ‘Breathe/Stretch/Relax/Rejuvenate’. In that simple substitution of one word for another the author turns an instruction in transcendence, humanity and hope into a tool of censorship, oppression and threat.
I was shocked that anyone could feel such a way against me for doing something so creative and positive but was even more determined to continue with my plans.
By late September 2009 I began to paint with the infamous and upcoming MuTate Britain Collective who embraced my art and long history in the scene , welcomed me with open arms, gave me enormous walls to paint and hung my work in some of the best spots in their ‘One Foot in the Grove’ show under the Westway in Ladbroke Grove. I was asked to invite some oldskool legends from London’s ‘Golden Age’ to come and paint their perimeter wall, which was delivered in fine style.
It’s all detailed on the previous posts on my blog. I felt delighted to be recognised at last. As the MuTate Britain extravaganza was going on in Portobello Road, West London, building work was being done on our proposed gallery in Shoreditch, indicating to people, I presume, that we had ignored the warning notice.
The work was finished in late 2009 and myself and my girlfriend went for a well deserved holiday over Christmas. As soon as we got back in late December, refreshed, invigorated and excited about the year ahead, the real intimidation started.
I began to notice an old car decked out in tinsel and driven by a very large man hanging around our building.
One quiet evening, the 2nd January 2010, I was putting out the rubbish in the bin on the street corner; his car, which had been waiting in a side road, performed a reverse handbrake turn at high speed and then drove straight at me down the dark and empty street at full speed with hazard lights flashing. He screeched to a halt inches from my feet, I thought I was going to get run over and managed to stumble out of his path to my gates and get in, terrified and shaking as he sat parked outside the gates.
At this point I knew something was seriously wrong.
I needed a drink and had nothing in the building so after 20 minutes left cautiously for the nearest pub after checking out of the window that he had gone. As I was drinking my pint and to my horror, the driver of the car walked up to the window, stared at me then turned on and disappeared into the night. I got home and called the police who said it was a rare and exceptional incident and gave me a crime number.
Two mornings later I awoke and looked out of the window, the barbed wire preventing access to our building had been pulled aside and the grey slate tiles leading to our windows were broken as if they had been walked across, even the roofing felt was ripped. The damage was verified as new by the caretaker so I called the police who attended and registered it as an attempted burglary.
Three weeks after it had been repaired, the barbed wire was ripped aside yet again, with fresh marks on the tiles.
On Sunday 7th March 2010 I found that my computer had been hacked. I consulted my IT guy who told me that it was an attack by professional hackers. They had installed a ‘Trojan’ and ‘key loggers’ (devices which record every stroke of the keypad) set up multiple user accounts with full privileges including ‘impersonate user privilege’ ‘’modify firmware privilege’ among countless other stuff including a ‘tunnelling proxy’ and encrypted zones, things I knew nothing about and had hardly even heard of.
They have ignored multiple opportunities to steal money from paypal accounts, preferring to access my emails.
This was repeatedly listed in my PC’s ‘Events Log’ as Outlook Events-
‘”C:Users\Me\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst The store was last opened on a different machine”
…but I have only ever accessed my mail from my own PC; I am convinced this carefully targeted hacking is linked to the previous incidents. Any hacker who installs key loggers then ignores constant access to cash would probably be after something else,as is indicated in my events log.
They have also had access to…
My writing and rants, directed at an art scene which ignore myself and countless talented others while celebrating ‘instant artists’ and hype.
My personal emails to my girlfriend full of pet names, secrets of our personal life and ‘coochie coo’ sweetness.
My gallery plans, manifesto, logos, and communications with artists I was planning to show when we opened; and confidential website information.
Personal private photos of my family
Shots from my girlfriend’s modelling portfolio.
Intimate photos of myself and my girlfriend.
My broad collection of ‘adult movies’ of multiple genres; classic hardcore, roleplay, lesbian, ‘Barely Legal’ and JAV (Japanese Adult Video) always verifiably legal and taken from carefully moderated sites.
My archive of graffiti and art photos and scans of my sketches of future works.
Intimate details of my illnesses, medications and medical conditions.
Details of my history of substance misuse, now seven years clean.
Highly personal emails to family members in times of illness, joy, distress and even argument.
The vast variety of websites I read when trying to understand political and religious points of view from all ends of the spectrum when researching topics current in the media.
My unpublished writing analysing the meanings behind mine and others’ work, written in the context of the history of art and civilisation.
After discovering and eventually putting a stop to the attack by shutting off my system I left the building next morning and was followed yet again, this time onto a train.
I cannot see what I could possibly have done to warrant this attention and threat; I am a good, kind and honest man who has done no-one any wrong, have tirelessly helped others throughout my life and have countless people who will happily vouch for my character and personality.
All I have done is paint legal walls with the owners’ permission according to the rules of graffiti, make a few impassioned comments about art on the web, and try to open a gallery in East London that gives a platform for highly talented and innovative artists excluded by the establishment.
I ask nothing except to be allowed to live my life in peace. I am reconsidering my plans to open the gallery in the face of these experiences. It seems I have ‘ruffled feathers’ for whatever reason.
I send out this statement to raise awareness so that people know what is going on. I re-entered the scene full of optimism ideas, and happiness which I have shared with all who let me participate. I thought things would be very different to this.
Thanks to all who enjoy my art, have shared good times and given me support and encouragement. I hope my next communication will be on a happier note.
Elate / Jon
18th March 2010
Additional note: Comments accusing me of being Schizophrenic and imagining the whole thing have already appeared on a well known graffiti site, in an obvious attempt to discredit me.
