A selection of albums we were listening to in 1993. Not all of them were released that year but this is essentially my life’s soundtrack in my early teens.

1993 was one of the most pivotal years of my life when I look back on it. As I mentioned in the last post it was my first year of High School and I attended Western Springs College in central Auckland. It was there that I met a lot of people who really helped me refine my tastes in music and art. The school itself always held a reputation for celebrating creativity and so my mother felt it was the natural choice of the secondary schools in walking distance. During that time, there was no strict school zoning as such and so Western Springs had students from a wide range of neighbourhoods, which varied from lower, working and middle class areas through to reasonably affluent parts of town. The school population was made of people from Western Springs, Pt Chev, Mt Albert, Kingsland, Morningside, Sandringham, Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, St Marys Bay, Herne Bay, Freemans Bay, Westmere, Avondale, Waterview, New Lynn, Glen Eden, Devonport, Takapuna… The list goes on. Aucklander’s will appreciate how crazy a mix that is.

Aside from Bonus and Bart, there were many other taggers and people at Springs that would come to emerge as personalities within the Auckland graffiti and Hip-Hop scenes. Risk (DFH, MCF) was two years ahead of me and was already famous amongst our peers for his versatility in tagging styles and his fearless approach to skating. He seemed impervious to pain – one of his party tricks involved bottling himself repeatedly without even flinching. Ironically, he is now a glass artist. I recently saw an article on him where he was quoted as saying: “I used to be famous for breaking it not making it!” which I thought was brilliant. Early in my 3^rd Form year, Risk and Bart invited me to skip school with them and chill in the park for the afternoon, smoking weed and tagging in vivid all over an over grown flax bush. Perhaps it was the smoke – actually I know it wasn’t but I just sat there in awe of their ability to pull out tag after tag – each different to the last. They did them linked, backwards, upside down… They made it look so effortless – like it was breathing to them.  Actually, a fair number of the Auckland KOA kids went to my school. From memory there was Erupt (also a class mate from Kowhai Intermediate), Rapid, Junkie, Varns, Kurupt and Avias. A few of those guys made my first two years at school pretty hard but eventually became good friends during 4^th and 5^th form.

Gasp RFC was a year older than me and in my form class. He had been writing Rocket the year before that, mainly with a kid from my area called Dylan -he wrote Sneak. Dylan played a rather major role in motivating me to actually get out tagging – I mean properly, as in at night with real spray paint. I came up with a few names that year – my first name I tagged about was Scribbles, sometimes shortened to Scribs. I even played with the name Scribe (imagine that!). The reason I absolutely had to have a name with ‘S’s’ in it was because of the yin-yang S’s that were current at that time – popularised mainly by the crew ‘Ebony Society’. Our early tags were mostly around school, down at the spacies at the Morningside shops or along the tracks at the local train station.  Eventually I moved on from those names and tagged Twice and then Meth (totally bitten from Method Man… Shame!). That was until sometime towards the end of 1994 or early 1995 when I finally settled on the name Askew.  I got that name from a Freestyle Fellowship lyric in the song Park Bench People. I chose to stick with it immediately loving the symmetry that was possible with that letter combination.

Chilling with Dylan. I don’t know why we each have a pair of headphones on. I also can’t begin to tell you how much my mothers fluro green, purple and pink paint job on my bedroom walls tormented me!

Those that know me well will tell you that my first element was MC-ing. Ever since 1990 when I was in standard 4, I had been trying to make music. I started out making 4 bar tape loops from the beginning of my favourite rap songs and writing verses to those. I then acquired my Stepfathers rather basic drum machine and started sequencing beats on that. I also learnt piano since I was Eight years old and used to practise on a Synthesizer. It had a sequencer on it and so what I did was make my bass lines and general melodies on that. The main concern though was that the drum sounds were unauthentic and I knew it, so I would manually synch the drum machine and synthesizer (which took work!) and then rap over the top of those in my bedroom. To encourage me my Stepfather set up a simple PA in my room with a microphone to practise with, even though they had to deal with the annoying ruckus that ensued. I often tried to rope all my neighbourhood friends into rapping with me, going as far as to write all their verses for them. No one had the same enthusiasm for making music as me and so it became a solitary pursuit… That was until I started High School and I found a tight bunch of friends with a kindred love of Hip-Hop.

Within the first few months at WSC, I met Danny England and Guy Davey-Heap. For starters, they were infinitely more knowledgeable about Hip-Hop than I was and it showed. These kids were ahead of their time in regards to how they dressed, what they listened to and the way the conducted themselves. They were from Ponsonby and Grey Lynn and had attended Ponsonby Intermediate prior to Springs. There was certainly a lot of sizing each other up before we struck up a friendship and because of my naïve and generally scruffy way of dressing I know I was being judged. These guys wore flash sneakers and Workshop jeans, fitted hats and starter jackets. They always rocked backpacks and listened to walkmans with big Sony headphones. I wore a pair of imitation name brand sneakers or Chuck Taylors that were falling to pieces. My jeans were my Stepdad’s, I borrowed them because they were baggy and so I thought they looked cool, even though they were probably stonewashed and tapered.

We started talking because we all had a love of the Hip-Hop Music but it has to be said that they had far more discerning tastes than I did. For example, I would listen to everything from Public Enemy to Mc Hammer and everything in between regardless of whether it was commercial or otherwise. Rap was Rap to me and I was by no means a snob about it. They were elitist’s, they listened to groups like EPMD, Gangstarr, Pharcyde, Black Moon, A Tribe Called Quest, Leaders Of The New School… They knew their shit. I soon Learnt that Guy’s older brother was Oli Green from Urban Disturbance (early 90′s Hip-Hop group consisting of Oli Green, Zane Lowe and Rob Salmon) and a lot of the influences and tastes were trickling down from him to my crowd. (This is a whole other post so stay tuned).

Through Danny and Guy I met one of my very good friends Vents RTR, who was also much into all the same music and Fashion. He was two years ahead of us but had grown up with Guy, so he would often give us the time of day. Eventually we all became a very tight knit crew and our focus shifted quickly from just socialising to making music. This was the start of our infamous ciphers at the Ponsonby Community Centre. Danny’s mum ran the place and on the weekends she would allow us to use the facilities, sometimes we would literally camp out there from Friday night until Sunday afternoon. Between Danny and Dylan we had a complete DJ set up consisting of one Technics 1200 turntable and one miscellaneous belt driven turntable off a home stereo system plus a very basic mixer. I had the PA and a microphone and that was all we needed, the platform was set. We used to drink terrible cheap alcohol like Gimlets Vodka and Lime, Screwdriver and Bahamas ’62 and rap for hours. Occasionally we would be blessed with a visit from some of the older guys, for example I remember Che Fu during the Supergroove days rapping the verses that eventually became immortalised on DLT‘s track ‘Chains’. It’s almost surreal to fathom that when I look back now – considering how iconic an artist he is. Oli Green came to one cipher and drilled us about how to ‘really freestyle’ and told us we needed to bring something more honest with our subject matter and delivery. That is advice that could benefit many local artists still today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Usually most nights ended when we were literally too messy to even talk, let alone deliver a coherent verse. Perhaps Danny and Dylan would have an argument about who was the DJ for the group and Dylan would storm out with his portion of the equipment. Either way, some times we would walk back to Kingsland and Morningside and drop some straights along the way, likely in Spraykote ‘Azure Blue’ or some ‘Dazzle’ – That’s what graffiti was to me then. It wasn’t structured or overly ambitious, it was just part of our chosen ‘lifestyle’.

I have to credit a small handful of people for really changing my outlook on graffiti around that time. Firstly, my friend Vinnie who wrote ‘Duck’ and another friend Liam who wrote D.Dare (after comic character Dan Dare) but eventually he changed it to Skare. They were the first people to show me ‘Subway Art’ and my first friends that started really drawing pieces with any real vigour. About this time Cripes (MCF) started attending our school – and he was another one with a very natural style and a lot more understanding of what graffiti was supposed to look like. About this time we actually consciously started thinking about doing pieces and wondering where and how to acquire enough paint to do so. About the same time, Webs was coming to a similar conclusion and he did a few basic bits and pieces around. This in turn motivated me to find some paint and do something slightly more elaborate than a tag – I did a filled in scroll with tags inside it and drop shadow. It could possibly have been the wackest thing ever painted in spray paint. Through Webs I met a kid named Shawn, who had spent some time at school in New York. He was interested in the same music as us and also dabbled a bit with graffiti. He introduced us to his friend who would eventually become known as Ikon RTR. From that point, literally everything changed.

To Be Continued…



Download this free A3 Poster of the finished wall and details here

Photos pillaged from the internet except the first one which I shot in 2006.

It’s arguable that the movie ‘Colors’ was to adolescents and teens my age group what the aforementioned movies were to the youth of the 1980’s.  In 1984 after ‘Style Wars’ screened on TV One, there were literally kids spraying and B-Boying the following day. After ‘Colors’ came to VHS here in New Zealand, it seemed there were ‘Crips and Bloods’ overnight. Some gang names I remember were MSC (Morningside Crips), TCG (Tongan Crip Gang), SOS (Sons Of Samoa), OHB (honestly can’t remember what that stood for!) and GBK (Ghetto Born Kings). It seems almost funny to say them now because they certainly don’t strike terror in my heart like they did back in those days. Writing this post has been an interesting process because it has forced me to dig a little deeper and delve into the origin of these types of gangs in Auckland and how that shaped the environment I came up in.

For the most part, it was undeniable that there was plenty of imitation at it’s worst. It seemed people chose their allegiances purely by which colour they preferred. Of course, it wasn’t all that simple and plenty of other factors contributed – some can be traced back to historic racial divides, geographical, cultural and religious factors and of course New Zealand’s rife gang history.

In New Zealand we love to pull out the old ‘Highest Per Capita’ quite frequently. Usually it’s something like ‘the highest STD rate per capita’ or ‘the highest youth suicide rate per capita’ or ‘highest teen pregnancy per capita’.  It almost never relates to something positive like ‘greatest amount of geniuses’ for example. Perhaps this all just comes with being such a small nation but apparently we boast the highest number of gangs per head out of any country in the world.  According to Wikipedia we have roughly seventy major gangs with around 4,000-patched members despite only having a current population of 4,000,000 people. This can leave a person wondering what the fixation is? How do we get to this point?

Photos all found on the internet. I would give credit if I knew who to credit… But thanks.

A selection of New Zealand gang patches

To get to the heart of this you must consider that New Zealand is a nation steeped in tribal and warrior tradition. In Auckland and Wellington particularly, the influence of the indigenous Maori and migrant Polynesian culture is paramount and woven so thoroughly through the general psyche of our population regardless of whether people are aware or not. Concepts of extended family and our approach to hospitality for example borrow greatly from Polynesian culture but extend right across the spectrum of our society. I believe over time this has become a defining Kiwi cultural trait. The other thing that I feel has been lent from Maori and Pacific Island culture is the particular type of ‘staunch’. This is very hard to explain to outsiders but Kiwi’s know what I’m talking about. It is almost inexplicable. It seems to draw its power from ancient custom and is particularly unique to this country and perhaps the pacific islands.

One possible suggestion why gang culture resonates with our youth here you must consider the parallels with Polynesian tradition. Now I enter this spiel with a lot of trepidation. I don’t want it to be perceived in the wrong way, this is not the only factor but it could be a key contributor. While European families built prestige and status with elitist and capitalist ideals, the Maori class system (for example) has forever been governed by mana. This is the concept of pride and respect, which can be inherited or earned. Financial status has little bearing, for example the young will show respect for their elders. People with presence or who achieve in their chosen path are treated with the utmost dignity regardless of what they earn. One could work a menial day job but be a great speaker, thinker, musician and be given the same respect as someone who has millions of dollars, maybe even more. The warriors in life are also bestowed this type of respect. The physically strong, imposing and fierce also have a kind of mana.

Throughout the 1840’s Maori and Pakeha fought intense battles over land and unlike most indigenous people fighting colonial rule, the Maori were a formidable opponent. Despite lacking the modern weapons and technology of the English their knowledge of the land, adaptability to a variety of terrain and skillful tactics played a major part in dictating the shape of our nations culture today. One key thing that Maori relied on tactically during battle were their fortresses or Pa. Creating a barrier against artillery shells, the English were often forced to fight hand to hand rendering weaponry advantages useless. This makes me think about what a Pa symbolises. I think to today’s fortified gang pads and some comparisons can be drawn.

Some of the major ethnic gangs of New Zealand wear their patches and related tattoo’s on their faces. This obviously borrows in part or greatly from the tradition of Ta Moko (traditional Maori tattooing, often on the face). Moko was generally reserved for high-ranking people or those with a high social status. In a way, the aesthetic of these gangs is like some Mad Max type urban warrior. Interestingly some of the major gangs were born from the feeling of displacement Maori youth felt during the urbanisation of New Zealand.

Paintings of Maori dignitary’s with Moko by Charles Frederick Goldie.

Displacement also played its role in the origins of the Pacific Island gangs of Auckland city. The ‘King Cobras’ the first major inner city gang in Auckland, mainly consisting of Samoan members although not strictly. The 1950’s was a time of prosperity and rapid urban growth, this promoted an influx of Polynesian migration, the opportunity for gainful employment was alluring and it often enabled Pacific Island people to support family back home as well. Like all recent migrants to any society, Pacific Islanders fell prey to racial prejudice from the more established racial groups, Maori and Pakeha alike. The King Cobras were most likely spawned from a reaction to this but fast became one of Ponsonby’s most notorious gangs.

Incredible image from ‘Polynesian Panthers’ book of activists rolling a Police car on Onslow Road, Kingsland during the 1981 anti Springbok tour protests

Image of King Cobras and associates outside Ponsonby’s Gluepot in 1990. This is from the book ‘Urban Village’.

If I could recommend any additional reading I would suggest you get these two books, ‘Polynesian Panthers’ by Melani Anae with Lautofa Iuli and Leilani Burgoyne from Raupo (Reed) publishing and ‘Urban Village’ by Jenny Carlyon and Diana Morrow from Random House. Incredible books and explain things a lot better than I have here.

Through the 1980’s there was a general shift in social influence in New Zealand society from one that was inherently British to something much more Americanised. Eventually the majority of popular media and entertainment became American dominated and this impacted our society greatly. The demographic of Auckland was possibly not too dissimilar to a lot of major US cities in appearance. As youth looked to television and popular music for their role models it makes perfect sense that the Pacific Island and Maori kids mostly identified with the African American and Latin American figures they saw. When considering the impact of the American street gang culture and how that came to be, you must also recognise that Eastern Samoan has been an American territory since the turn of last century. Samoan people from that region fought for the US in WWII. 60% of the American Samoan population live in the US, particularly in the West Coast, including Hawaii. Look also at one interesting religious factor, the popularity of the Mormon religion in Samoan society. Western and American Samoans alike, travel to do their ‘mission’ in the US and also inhabit Mormon strongholds like Utah. This meant that a lot of Samoan kids I knew were culture-bearers of sorts, bringing back knowledge of music, dance, fashion and graffiti. One such example is Mangere writer ‘Finer FDKNS’ lived in Los Angeles during his teens and was one such culture-bearer. On his return to New Zealand he brought photos and knowledge of tag styles from LA and is subsequently considered the godfather of the ‘Straights’ tag style now synonymous with Auckland graffiti.

Despite the popular perception that the adoption of the ‘Crips and Bloods’ was solely from ‘Colors’ there was also a fair amount of direct influence from kids having observed things first hand. The SOS or ‘Sons Of Samoa’ were a Blood gang that originated in Carson, California.

Historically the Tongan people have maintained the legends of early expansionism and it is common belief that they once governed the entire of the Pacific Islands as their empire. This notion is still considered controversial as it relies greatly on oral history, as this was the only documentation method of Polynesian people prior to European colonisation. Regardless though, there have been racial divides between Tongan and Samoan people referred to in the folklore of both cultures. These tensions have flared up in different ways through history and recent New Zealand society presents no exception to this. Like Samoans, Tongan people also migrated to Los Angeles throughout the 1970’s. Some Tongan youth aligned themselves with the predominantly black gangs like the ‘Raymond Avenue Crips’. Eventually they sought their own independence though and so you find the origins of gangs like TCG or ‘Tongan Crip Gang’. I couldn’t explain the exact mechanics of how SOS and TCG established themselves in Auckland in the 1990’s the emergence of this style of youth gang became the catalyst for a lot of violence between these two communities.

Some examples of TCG Flat Top style tags from around 1991. Photos by Ikon RTR

Outside of the major cities, the adoption of Red and Blue by the Mongrel Mob (red) and Black Power (blue) has often meant youth gangs identifying themselves as either Crip or Blood have served as their feeder gangs. It is not uncommon to encounter entire towns that wear one or the other colour to show allegiance or avoid conflict.

When I was 11 years old and in my first year of Intermediate school, I was immediately struck with the types of pressures you would expect.  These years are so important in the formation of the person you become. You become exposed to social hierarchy’s that don’t exist earlier in life, you discover niche sub-cultures for the first time and start to explore music and fashion tastes that come to define you through your teen years. For me, only one type of music spoke to me at this age: Hip-Hop. It’s hard to fathom how much of a minority that made me, being one of the only white kids in my neighbourhood to be visibly ‘into’ this music. It may have been the combination of my extremely naïve idea of what constituted Hip-Hop fashion, the fact I was far less ‘gangsta’ than the Pacific Island and Maori kids or possibly that only a year or two prior I could be seen walking around the same streets in full makeshift superhero outfits – but some days it felt like I had a giant target on my back and a neon sign above my head saying “bully me”. It may have read “Stock me for my shoes and cap” but I never owned anything even close to cool enough to warrant that.

I liked Hip-Hop because I saw the creative side of it. I saw art, dance and music. I think the other kids in my area saw that too but mostly they saw ‘Gangsta’. For some of them, legendary reputations were built off rolling people or fighting well. For a guy like me, although I had plenty of fights out of necessity I was never particularly skilled with my ‘knuckle game’. I had to find other ways to survive and participating in the creative aspect of Hip-Hop came to function like a defence measure once I started exploiting it right. I can’t take full credit for this realisation either, I have to acknowledge someone else for planting those seeds of thought for me: Bonus KOA, who I met in 1991 at Kowhai Intermediate.

Bonus was a year older than me and possibly the only other white kid from around the same area that was into Rap music and graffiti. Back then he was a reasonably short and scrawny kid, quick witted and street smart. He had a way tougher upbringing than me always tended to gravitate to mischief. I don’t think he tagged Bonus back then but he was tagging. I remember him putting in requests with me for to draw gangster looking characters and he would give me instructions like “oh put this label on his overalls” or “give him shades like Eazy-E”. One time he was like “man, you should get into graffiti, you’re good at drawing, imagine how bad you’d be at graffiti!” and I was like, “Yeah man, that’s a good idea!” I could totally see already what he was getting at because in the context of the conversation we had been having, he was telling me it was my ticket to get some street-cred with the other kids we knew. I said to him “You should like draw me up a tag alphabet so I can see how all the letters are done.” And he did. The next day he gave me a piece of lined refill with all the tag letters done in TCG flat top style. I was really stoked but almost immediately started having grand plans of how I could improve on the letters and went home and started drawing pieces based on his tag shapes. I chose the name ‘Krewl” as my first tag.

Auckland KOA roll call at Mt. Eden station from 1993. Photo by Ikon RTR

New Market cinema carpark stairwell in all it’s former glory circa 1994. Photo by Ikon RTR.

Being that I was only 11 at the time I never made a serious commitment to doing graffiti after that short stint. Jump forward to 1993 and I was starting High School, attending Western Springs College. On my first few days of school I was reintroduced to a handful of 4^th formers who had been the 2^nd formers at Kowhai when I was in 1^st form. With their one-year head start at high school life, a lot had happened and I learned pretty quickly I had a lot of catching up to do. For starters, most of them now had tag names and Bonus alongside his friend and partner in crime Bart (R.I.P.) were amongst some of the more prolific writers in the school.  The originally had their own crew IGz or Immature Gonerz but by the time I was reintroduced they were representing the now infamous KOA (Kiss Our Ass) crew. KOA was also a well-respected Sydney crew and I’ve always been a bit vague as to whether there was a direct correlation between the New Zealand and Australian chapters or if it was looser than that. Either way, members of the Australian KOA and the KOA that Bonus represented both played major roles in 90’s Auckland graffiti culture.

To be continued…

In this episode Berst One conducts a thorough interview with me about the motives and technique behind my current approach to painting. We speak in depth about what it is for a Graffiti Writer to embrace being an artist, the influence and thinking behind our current aesthetic and shed some light on some local graffiti history and how that has impacted the piecing style of today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Images from L to R: “Hip-Hop ’86″ by Lost Art, “AaronB” on the old Astor Hotel, Auckland 1996, “Merk” during the Wall Of Fame Project, 1995*, “Mean PFB” Auckland 1999, “Tank” Auckland 1998, “Loomit” Auckland 2000, “Mr Quink” Auckland 1997, “Acre” Auckland 1999. All Photos by Jamie ‘Deap’ McCready except * by DLT.

I feel it’s important to speak about my current thinking and motivations behind this block of writing. It’s a fairly daunting task to lay everything bare and typically I think writers tend to shy away from putting them selves out there in this manner of exposed situation but personally, I find it intriguing. In most forms of art, debate and discussion of influences is not only commonplace but considered an essential part of defining streams of work by giving it a reference point. In ‘Writing’ it’s often spoken about in very narrow terms, usually limited to tedious debate about ‘Influence vs. Biting’ and ‘Style vs. Technique’. I can’t even begin to explain how much these clichés pain me. Generally writers masquerade these clichés as some form of intelligent debate but don’t consider for a second how redundant they are in the bigger picture. At this present juncture I find these two debates as mundane as when mainstream media discuss ‘Art vs. Vandalism’ when introducing a news story or printing a newspaper article. I’m glossing over the issue a bit here and I will address it in more depth soon, I promise.

Before we enter into another huge discussion on the theme of ‘Biting’, it needs to be understood that what I said above is in no way intended to be a justification of such an act. It’s obviously a hot topic for me right now in the wake of recent events… Those that follow the blogs and love the scandal know what I’m talking about! It’s no secret that I became a major point of contention in the eyes of a few people and that has been put out there pretty publicly lately. I believe positives can always be made from negative situations and bringing these conversations to the forefront can become the catalyst for constructive debate. I really hope that it’s never come off like I’d downplay or forget those that have impacted me deeply. For this very reason I also feel that its time to shed light on all of my influences across the board. There are a lot of people dotted through out my journey that shared insights big and small that ultimately shaped me into the person I am today. I would like to attempt to pay homage to all of them as best as I can in some type of chronological time-line. The people range from Writers to illustrators, graphic designers and even just some interesting thinkers. Mostly they are from New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the United States and are people that I encountered locally or on my overseas travels. Just off the cuff I’d really like to acknowledge Smooth Crew, The Satele family, Fly, USP, Oli Green, Danny Haimona, AaronB and Merk and DAF Crew, Tank, Mystery, Kwink, Ikon, Webs, Kens, Duck, Mean PFB, Fury, Phat1, Addict, Dyle52, Exist, Acre, P-Money, Mike Weston, Otis Frizzell, Martin Emond (R.I.P), Daim, Loomit, DJ Sir-Vere, Can2, Atom, Wow123, Smash137, Revok, Ewok, Rime, Wane, Dash, Skinz, Doze Green, Futura, Chris Graham, Vans, Deus and Berst. Those are just the few more names of people that have shared their knowledge or opinions (whether knowing it or not) that have shaped or influenced my practices as an artist and person right until this day. There are many more I will remember along the way but I just needed to put those people out there from the get go, I owe them all that at least.

I am going to do my best to tell my whole story, share as many photos from the archive as possible and recount events as I remember them. This stream will take a while to unfold and may be interrupted with other tangents but ultimately I hope it will enable me to reflect on where I’ve come from to better understand where I am going from here.

Photo by Jamie McCready

I’m trying to direct this post into some sort of conclusion and bring closure to this particular body of work but to be honest it’s pretty open ended and due to continue. The main purpose of these series of posts was to identify some type of origin to the ‘awakening’ I experienced and my first forays into bringing some extra meaning to my paintings.

The truth of the matter is, as an artist, streams of ideas and the subsequent work that flows are not often so rigid, with a defined beginning or end. I have noticed though, through this journey that there are several streams of thought that have had a totally linear progression and when I’ve taken the time to sit back and re-observe, you can see them emerge and grow.

There are some aspects of this whole body of work that I have omitted at this point because they also belong to another set and are more relevant amongst those. Also there are plenty of overlaps along the way as well, but that’s just the nature of life really.

Here are some examples of other notable works I did in various mediums during the past two-year period.

This was a design I did for our Team Dynamite T-shirt range. It features the Pyramid dude clutching the Auckland ADK model train. It started off as a patch concept, potentially for some crew jackets.

This was an illustration I did that emerged as an A3 2 colour print. I released these as an edition of 50 and they were received really well.

Shortly before my trip to the US I did this T-Shirt graphic and printed up 100 shirts. I traveled to Miami and Detroit with more of these in my bag than actual clothes and attempted to sell them while panting at events there. I didn’t move as may as expected so there’s still plenty available at The Pit Bull Press.

I did this design as a play on the Auckland City Council’s ‘Zero-Tolerance’ campaign and the running tab kept on the city’s writers. My good friend Jimmy at Grand Scheme ran this design in their latest range. He’s doing big things this year! The photo is by Luke Shirlaw.

This design features the Pyramid Dude smashing Auckland’s Sky Tower Godzilla style. I entered this into AS colour’s Little Help Project a while back. Although I didn’t win the competition, after they canvased public opinion it was chosen as a public favourite and a small run was done. You can pick one up here.

There’s a lot that has happened between the point I did my first interviews without hiding my face and the point I ended up working from a very conspicuous studio space on one of Auckland’s main roads. With a really large plate glass shop window facing the street, people could walk or drive past and see me at work in my space. Initially I intended to run it as a small art gallery, in fact, I did show a few artists during the first year. Eventually though, I made two realisations; It was costing me money I didn’t have to put on the shows and it required being open and running as a functioning gallery – open to the public during the regular hours. This restricted my freedom in a way I couldn’t work with at that time. What I did really enjoy was working on illustration and design in that space although at time it felt like being in a fishbowl.

One day I decided to use the window in a different way, as a piece of art whilst also creating a bit more privacy. The idea was pretty much a play on the whole ‘being watched’ feeling of working in a fishbowl, married with the ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Illuminati’ concepts. I called this piece ‘Watching You’. It was made with a combination of sign-writers vinyl, which covered the entire window space with a small triangle cut out at the centre. Perched behind I stood a TV on a pile of old crates playing a DVD of an animated eye on loop. The clip was only made from 5 static images but would blink and look left and right. The table was turned so to speak and now I was looking back out at the world.

Public reaction was pretty funny, I wish I had made audio or video recordings of people outside, especially the girls from the local high school. They would scream and laugh as the eye looked about. Seeing as my studio was now completely concealed, many people would talk about it without realising I was there eavesdropping. I heard some ridiculous comments and even the odd argument. One day two guys arguing decided to knock and just ask me what was going on in my space. I answered ‘This is the headquarters for the Axis of Evil. Here we are busy making all societies ills a reality. We keep the poor impoverished while making the wealthy richer.” Needless to say they didn’t have much of an answer for that.

There was definitely someone that really objected to the animation in my window. Every day there was a huge glob of mucus dried in the centre of the triangle that I would have to scrub off. For quite a while I assumed it was either someone that didn’t like me personally or more likely someone that objected to the use of that symbol. I also wondered if it was as trivial as just being an obvious target for spit and nothing else.
One day I was working away and I heard someone gathering up a good bit of phlegm for the spitting. I quickly ran out the front door and saw a local ‘street worker’ lady spitting right at the window. She walked off muttering and talking to herself. She’s a regular character around my area and mad as a hatter so nothing needed to be said. I actually saw her doing it again a few days later as I drove past the front of my space. It was definitely her spit that I was cleaning off every day.

I was working one afternoon and I heard her muttering outside and then the sound of her writing with something on the window. I watched from the inside for a second and realised she was tagging with lipstick, rubbing things out, adding new things, basically just having a little jam on my window. It didn’t bother me, I grabbed my camera and watched her for a while and took some photos. We never spoke, she was in that crazy zone where I was just transparent as glass or pretty much non-existent.

I saw her on another occasion with her hand and face pressed up against the eye as if it was speaking to her directly. I think it was telling her to start tagging because within a week she started getting up around the area with ‘Jesus Christ’ tags. She also expanded her variety of names as she began to proliferate more and more. Her other names are ‘Moses’, ‘King David’ ‘Save’ and ‘Chantelle Rocks’ amongst other things. I’m not sure how the last one fits with the other religious references but hey, this is a somewhat special character. She divides her time between pulling $10 tricks on K’Rd and spreading the word of god with graffiti.

A week ago I saw her run into peak hour traffic, narrowly missed by two cars to thrust her hands onto a motorcyclist stopped at the lights, praying and appearing to ‘save’ him. He completely ignored her, just looking forward and pretending she wasn’t there. It was magic.

To be continued

Given ‘The Eye Of Providence’ is such a loaded symbol it goes without saying that it may evoke all types of reaction from passer-bys if painted large in a public space. As the initial reports of world economic crisis started to buzz their way around the international media, much of the debate between Dyle52 (Saves) and myself during our evening 10km runs seemed to become more relevant than ever. Considering that Dyle52 is a very devout and studious Christian and I am the product of 3 generations devoid of religion and parents who were into punk rock, it would seem unlikely how often we are on the same page about world events right? Amazing how two people with such contrasting viewpoints can arrive at the same assessment of world events. We spoke about doing a mural work that married some popular conspiracy theories with events prophesised in the ‘Book Of Revelations’. Considering my earlier references to St.John The Evangelist it made a lot of sense. An obvious stream was developing.

I found an image of a hand pulling the puppet by its strings on the Internet one day whilst surfing conspiracy blogs. I loved the image immediately and wanted to play on this in the wall. I drew up a rough plan for the wall only minutes before Dyle52 arrived to go paint.

So to break down this wall, firstly you have the title ‘The Fall Of An Empire’. This refers to the fall of the major economic power of our time, a popular interpretation of events prophesised in ‘Revelations’. In the place where religious and conspiratorial predictions align, many have speculated that this is the recent economic crisis experienced in the US. It makes some sort of ‘practical’ sense when you think in terms of the US as the major ‘Empire’ of the 20th Century but also the perceived ‘cracks’ in US stability, unpopular international regard for it’s previous leadership and foreign policy. All speculation aside though, as we all know logic rarely dictates the future, from the outside looking in the US can appear to be imploding from it’s own vices.

Fall Of An Empire, Askew and Dyle52 (Saves), Mt.Eden, Auckland, 2008.

The ‘Pyramid Dude’ stands in an imposing Godzilla-like stance, towering over the burning ruins of a city. The ‘S’s’ of our names are painted as dollar symbols, suspended from the puppet strings tied to his fingers. It’s a little over the top and its pretty sensationalist but we both felt world events were speaking to us respectively.

Where this gets interesting is that this work got removed… Not by the landlords, not by the City Council contractors either. This artwork was there at 6pm on a Sunday night as the adjacent business closed for the day and then it was gone by 7am Monday morning when they arrived back. That’s right, the wall was painted-out during the night by some completely anonymous person. Not only did they buff the wall, but did a reasonably professional job as well!

We came back a short time after to paint the sequel production. We arrived assuming that the art had been removed by the City Council but learned the true story in the morning just before we started painting. The store-owner was suggesting to me that perhaps I needed to consider painting more people-pleasing work. I can be a terrible ‘Yes-man’ sometimes because I was agreeing and telling him that’s what we had planned, all the while clutching my sketch of ‘Pyramid Dude’ wearing a US Army helmet, firing an M-16 off and about to throw a grenade, standing over his stockpiles of oil. It pains me to lie sometimes but I strongly felt we needed to up the anti on this one! Dyle52 painted the ‘Stop War’ letters while I handled the background and character duties.

Stop War, Askew and Dyle52 (Saves), Mt.Eden, Auckland, 2009.

To be continued…

‘The Eye Of Providence’ or ‘The All Seeing Eye Of God’ has its origins in religious imagery occurring in Egyptian mythology (The Eye Of Horus), Buddhism and Christianity (The Holy Trinity). Since 1782 it has featured on the reverse of the ‘Great Seal Of The United States’ and since 1935 appeared on the US one dollar bill. Most people would generally make the association with the ‘Freemasonry’ but more specifically ‘Masonic Conspiracies’. These conspiracies generally centre on politics (One World Order), religion (accusations of satanic practice) and culture (numerology and Masonic symbolism in corporate logos and entertainment).

‘The Eye Of Providence’ is obviously a symbol steeped in history, loaded with religious and political subtext but I have also often wondered why the triangle as a symbol really resonates with people at a totally primary level? Could it be that triangles are the strongest geometric shape and occur commonly in architecture? Or perhaps it’s that the triangle has appeared since early civilizations as the symbol of the trilogy or the triad that makes all existence possible. For example -‘The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost’. Triangles and definitely Pyramids often symbolise hierarchy, especially in relation to societal structure and the distribution of knowledge, power and wealth. Regardless of whether you subscribe to the notion of a structured ‘Illuminati’, ‘pulling the strings’ it has to be said that a ‘Big Brother’ concept married with the idea of ‘The Haves’ dictating their will upon ‘The Have Nots’ is intrinsically intertwined with this symbol.

Some examples of Freemason-esque design in local logos:

Auckland City Council, NZ Made, NZX, North Shore City Council

These are some examples of my first forays into discussing this subject matter in my work:

Most of these pieces feature either ‘The Eye’ not contained in the pyramid or just the pyramid. My main addition to the eye was the stylised ‘B-Boy’ eyebrow. I don’t think I was the first to have incorporated these ideas into my pieces by any means.

The Mighty Dollar, 2007. 1500mm x 2200mm, Spray Paint on Perspex with Fluorescent light.

The Mighty Dollar
This was a more serious work done as a commission. It started as a series of pencil and ink drawings with studies of various plays on the ‘Eye Of Providence’ and the popular conspiracies connected with power, money, faith and apocalypse. The central image features several intersecting symbols -‘The cross’, ‘The Star Of David’, ‘The Eye Of Providence’ and the pyramid itself is built from the words ‘The Mighty Dollar’, obviously a play on ‘TMD’. To the left of this is my interpretation of ‘Michael The Archangel’ fighting the great battle in Heaven. This is based on the Luca Giordano painting circa 1663. At the bottom centre of the work is my version of St.John The Evangelist on the island of Patmos. I looked at several paintings depicting this scene including the 1518 panel from St. John Altar by Hans Burgkmair The Elder and noticed the reoccurrence of the black bird, which I also chose to include. At the bottom right is ‘WWW’ a play on the conspiracy surrounding the fact ‘W’ is the 6th letter/number in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. The top right shows a battle between a snake and a dog. This refers characters I developed in my painting and illustrative work to show the two archetypal human personalities I’ve observed. It’s a very simplistic view but one I developed whilst redefining a lot of friendships and business relationships.

The Pyramid Dude
A healthy scepticism of mainstream media was a major motivator in my adoption of ‘The Eye’ into my art. Realising how skewed ratings-driven news media is as a concept I started to grow a real disdain for it. I also started to observe trends in our local media where sensationalist headlines tended to drive public opinion so much that it allowed highly ‘draconian’ legislation to be passed very easily. It seemed to me that if the ‘powers that be’ dress something up in the right clothes to make it a palatable concept, anything is possible. It’s political engineering and perhaps local media isn’t always as separate from that process as it should be. From this observation was where my initial ‘Pyramid Dude’ drawings drew inspiration.

The original ‘Pyramid Dude’ came like an epiphany to me whilst working on a T-Shirt Illustration for a friend of mine. It was such a simple merger of two iconic characters that encapsulated the issues so perfectly. Here you have the perfect vehicle for ‘The Powers That Be’ to dress their agendas as light entertainment or divert people’s attention away from the real issues. Also the extra play on it being so ‘Mickey Mouse’ was too hard to resist.

Photography by Rimoni

The ‘Life Is Just A Pyramid Scheme’ was the first time this character was painted in spray. This was a wall with Vents RTR, where if you notice, the character is gesturing to Auckland City and the Skytower.

To be continued…

Welcome to my new look site. I’ve been meaning to revise the format for a while and try some new approaches to blogging, sharing my inspirations, projects and process with you in a more in depth way.

What motivated this? Well, 2009 was a pretty epic year for me. I turned 30, something I didn’t think would mark such a monumental ‘coming of age’ but it actually did. 30 is one of those landmark ages where you tend to reflect on what you have achieved against what you may have expected to have achieved or perhaps what societies expectation of you is. Having chosen fairly young to take the path of being an artist, specifically a graffiti artist it’s needless to say that I don’t have much in the way of material wealth, assets or conventional accolades. I certainly haven’t lived a life that has afforded me a house or made me highly employable in the typical sense.

A couple of years back, I went through some hard times emotionally and I started to reflect on this a lot. I began to question my chosen path and wonder if it was all in vain. As I mentioned, I really had little to show for all my work. I often struggled to make ends meet and was still relying on my partner (a student at the time) to manage the cash flow in our household. I considered getting a ‘normal’ job but most potential employers didn’t understand ‘what’ I was as far as fitting me into a specific role. All the while I kept pushing myself as an artist, trying to work every angle. It was frustrating trying to approach galleries or speak with people within that world because there was always a hint of them not taking me seriously. I was starting to become consumed by that aspect, wondering why after all these years, with all this sweat, tears and perspiration, after all the stress, chases and injuries, even after all the attention to developing my painting technique and striving to be the best I could, why my work still felt futile when presented to the people I perceived as from the ‘art world’.

I reached a ‘epiphany’ of sorts when I realised its nobodies fault but our own (The writers) that we don’t get treated as credible artists. It’s almost entirely about our inner conflict about graffiti in the context of its place in the art world. I truly believe that is the heart of the matter.

What we (generally) lack as a community are these four main things: An understanding of art history, real concept development and research of ideas, being able to identify graffiti’s key point of difference within the realm of art and strong documentation that reinforces our paintings and contextualises them. Aside from that, it’s about presenting, sharing, debating and striving to evolve. It’s also about honesty, being true to yourself and finding your voice.

I didn’t go to art school. I didn’t have time to incubate good art practise during the span of my studies so this revelation may sound fairly rudimentary to some. Realising these things changed my outlook dramatically though. I found new ways to enjoy the journey. I found a new mechanism to set goals, develop my work, evaluate my principals and also explain my objectives to people outside of graffiti. This marked a massive change in how I feel about where I am at today. I look back at 2009 and I am blown away. I look at how far I’ve come and appreciate that. Mostly though, I feel excited about where I’m going. That’s where this new site comes into play.

In this main blog section of the site, I will share a lot about my projects, from the inspiration, the research, through to the drawings and eventual painting process. I will present this with writing, photos and videos. Once a visible ‘body’ of work is defined it will be summarised and posted in the ‘Works’ section. Basically you will see the ideas develop, this site will function as my journal for you all to see.

Thanks to everyone that has supported me thus far and stay tuned in 2010.