Tag: aerosol

Open For Business – Rinley’s Writer Supplies

As the city’s newest spot to stock up on paint, Rinley’s Writer Supplies has quickly been established as the go-to for the local graffiti community. That comes as no surprise when it is the brainchild of a veteran painter who knows the local scene and what people want, ensuring Rinley’s is truly a store for writers. We visited Rinley’s small-but-well-stocked Sydenham location and caught up with owner Noose to chat about his graffiti experiences, how Rinley’s came into existence and the realities of selling (and stocking) spray paint…

One thing I’ve learned from meeting a lot of graffiti writers is to never to expect what someone is going to be like…

Hard out! I’ve had that here. I don’t know if you know the dude who paints mushrooms, but I met him recently and he was like, I don’t associate with anyone who paints, don’t say who I am or what I look like or whatever! I was so surprised. I was asking him about whether he paints the mushrooms where you would actually find them, and he was like, yeah, kind of, it was a little bit of a road map, which I thought was quite cool. He was a really interesting dude.

There are painters who have been deep in the culture for years and then there’s those who get into it almost independently, who subvert the traditions a little…

I think the scene has changed dramatically as well. I was definitely an asshole, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, it just stagnates your actual growth as an artist when you’re like, that guy went over me, I’m just going to go hard out and make sure I go over them. It means you don’t paint anything good, you’re like, what’s the point, you’re going to get gone over anyway…

Was your introduction to graffiti through hip-hop culture or through another influence?

Skateboarding bro, just being down at the skate park. That was when the older generation were painting walls down there all the time. I was down there every day bunking school and I’d see them painting all the time and I’d try and talk to them. The reception was very gangster and like, what do you write, Toy? It was quite aggressive. So, I was like, OK, that’s how you have to be, you have to have beef to be someone. There was also the whole YouTube explosion around the same time. I started in 2007 and that was when movies like State Your Name and a bunch of big New York graf videos had just came out and had the attitude of, if you buy your paint you’re a toy, and graffiti is a full contact sport. So, I was like, you have to be able to fight and do all these other stupid little things, which is so dumb looking back on it now.

Various artists, 2021

I don’t know if you’d agree, but my feeling is that there are definitely benefits to a less rigid view, a willingness to change and go with the changes…

People like that get better so much quicker because they’re nice people to paint with, because they have opportunities to paint with people who are better than them and they want to paint with them. But if you’re an asshole, everyone will be like, I don’t really want to paint with that guy, he’s going to cause drama, and it’s going to affect the thing that I’ve got going on…

Starting in 2007, you have obviously had experience from both the pre-quake and the post-quake scenes, how do you see the difference?

Pre-quake, if you didn’t have a good tag and you didn’t have a good throw-up, you weren’t allowed to piece. It wasn’t going to happen. Your stuff wouldn’t last, you had to build your name to that point. You also couldn’t paint freights at the time, because of the fear of FILTH and other crews like FAT, they very much held down that scene. There were real repercussions for messing with the thing that they had going on. But post-quake a lot of those dudes left, so this younger generation had a bit of a free for all, there weren’t these scary dudes holding a tight grip on the scene. Obviously, the amount of abandons (empty buildings) as well meant it was just a free for all, it was crazy.

The city was fucked, so people were happy that there was something going on. For years there were three pubs in the city you could go to late at night, there was the Town Ball, that tent one, maybe Dux Live in Addington, so it was pretty grim… Any kind of colour that you added to that was seen as good, you could just paint like there were no laws.

Do you think that environment led to an ongoing change in terms of the perception of graffiti or do you think that bias is still there? Ōtautahi has this reputation for our murals – graffiti has fed into that so much and yet it doesn’t necessarily get the same shine, do you think that’s improved from what it was?

I feel like the level of graffiti that was painted pre-quake went down post-quake. Pre-quake you had the likes of Dcypher, Lurq, USK, Sender, the Wall of Fame by the Colombo Street over-bridge. Then there was the big buff that happened with the train tracks and a lot of that was lost, so it just turned into a tagging and throw-up spot and people stopped piecing and doing productions for quite some time. It wasn’t really until some of those festivals happened post-quake that it was, like, oh shit, we’re getting good recognition for the bombing that everyone’s doing, but we can’t compete at all with the piecing…

Dcypher, mid-2000s

That echoes what happened in Auckland with the Rugby World Cup buff in 2011 and years of history were wiped away and that vacuum was filled with a focus on bombing and tagging rather than piecing…

It opened up a spot. It was like alright, those sick pieces and burners and stuff are all gone, now it’s our time to take that spot, let’s just do something quick and fast, like a big stomper or something to claim that spot to use it later to do something. As opposed to being like, shit, let’s do something as good as that or attempt something as good as that…

What names stand out for you in that post-quake era?

Definitely BC crew, JFK crew, Ikarus obviously, Yikes. I feel like When Dcypher came back it was on for DTR. Freak and all those guys were still doing amazing stuff, but you know, its Dcypher, he gets things going…

B.C., circa 2012

You talk about JFK, who were super active post-quake – you are a member of that crew, right?

Yep, I am. When JFK was formed, you had to be painting quite heavily to be in it, but there was also a lot of thought about where you were situated in the city; I got put in because I was in Addington, Deok was put in because he was in Hornby… It just made going all city very easy, so that’s why it covered the city quite quickly, there was a bunch of dudes in New Brighton, a bunch of dudes in the east, there was a bunch of dudes out west…

JFK, circa 2013

Who else stands out?

Post-quake, 100% Skum from JFK, he was just insane. He was the PK before PK. I remember Skum, Germ, Jot, all those dudes, were going hardcore. Slepa, I think he was kind of going hard pre-quake and kind of died off just after the quake, but yeah, all those dudes were going crazy…

SKUM, 2016
JOTER, circa 2014

Fast forward a decade or so and we are here today sitting inside your store Rinley’s Writing Supplies, how did Rinley’s come about?

I got caught two years ago and basically, I couldn’t paint Noose anymore, they knew who I was. I had just had a kid. I was going through the whole court thing, where I was put on a year’s good behaviour. At the same time, I was also getting some legal work, and I was saving all the money from that because I wanted to try to do a project, like try to get legal walls for people and to find people new places to paint, do that whole thing. I was getting more jobs doing Chorus cabinets and saving all that money. So, I had bunch of money sitting there and I was like, I can probably open a shop with what I’ve got. I had already thought of the name Rinley’s, I was going to make markers and paint. The name at first was Rinley’s Black and Chrome, it was just going to be black mops, chrome mops. But that sort of changed over time. I messaged a bunch of paint suppliers, shopped around and was in chats with Montana and they were just so on the ball with replying to emails. They were so good to deal with, I was like, this is like a no-brainer, I’ll just take the risk and do it. I sent them a whole bunch of money and three months later all this paint showed up…

Going back to that idea of racking paint to be a real writer, how have your personal experiences shaped Rinley’s and how you have gone about setting the store up?

I wasn’t a racker. When I started the cages came about that made it harder. I was just on the cusp where you could rack from The Warehouse when I was starting. I was just buying paint, and I was buying shit loads of it. I was spending basically my whole wage on paint at one point…

BORE and NOOSE, 2016

Where were you buying paint?

I was using Embassy hard out, but when Ironlak went, it was a matter of necessity to shop around, so I ended up using Gordon Harris for years. Before I started Rinley’s, I was using Tom’s Emporium.

Tom’s has stocked Montana, you talked about how Montana as a company were really good to deal with, but it also has a strong reputation for quality…

Yeah, Embassy had Montana years and years ago, when I first started, and I loved it. The smell is nostalgic, and its good paint. But honestly, the main reason I chose Montana is how good they are to deal with. Their paint is as good as any other paint you can get, but the level of service and communication when you’re sending large amounts of money overseas is second to none compared to some of the other places. They see a small place like this, and they see the potential. They don’t see it like just some small fry who only want a small amount of paint compared to someone else.

You’ve started Rinley’s at a manageable scale in terms of the shop itself, but you’ve got a big range of cans in a small space!

I think what was happening with a lot of the paint shops was that they were looking at four different, say, burgundies, and they looked at the middle tone and they go fuck, it is close enough to the other ones, let’s just get that and we will step down to the next shade, whereas artists still want those off shades. For someone like Yikes or Dcypher, who do crazy technical pieces, those slight changes in shade mean a lot. For me just painting pieces and stuff, it doesn’t mean as much to me, I can go from a burgundy to a bright red pretty easily, but it’s just like a necessity really, like there’s just nothing better than having a full range that you can just look at. The other thing was when you go into a lot of paint shops or even skate shops to buy paint, they’re all behind a cage. It’s almost like you’re burdening the staff to get the cage open, you feel like you are being watched and you can’t be trusted. That’s why I’ve got this set up, where the door is shut at all times, but I’ll let you in, you pick your own shit, you can compare colours, you don’t have any other awkward encounters. I just make this shopping experience better, because painters aren’t all deviants, a lot are quite successful in their jobs, they don’t deserve to be watched like a hawk to buy paint…

Rinley’s Writer Supplies

Which is all an off shoot of essentially criminalising spray paint…

Which was the stupidest law anyway! People can buy all these pens, there’s no law on the pens. You can go fill up a weed sprayer full of paint, you could go get a fire extinguisher right now from Bunnings, fill it with paint and have the most destructive tool you could possibly have, but for some reason spray paint was targeted. I’ve read the legislation around the time that it was written (early 2000s), I think the perception was that graffiti writers are all lower-class kids, so let’s make it hard for like 15/16-year-olds, not actually knowing that many of them were fully grown men. Which is stupid because they would have seen that in the court papers…

With the rise of urban contemporary art, people are using spray paint as a part of a much broader creative practice as well, but the product is stigmatised by putting it behind cages and making it an awkward experience for people to have to go and get something unlocked and then be watched… 

Well, the other crazy thing with the law was that if you are walking around the street at 12 o’clock in the daytime with a bag full of spray paint and you got pulled up by the cops, you’ve got a legitimate alibi as to why you have that spray paint, you do that at 12 o’clock at night and you’re a tagger. Who is to say that you’re not a night worker? I’ll open late for people, like if you want to buy paint late at night, holla out, we’ll sort a time out and you can come and grab it. A lot of the dudes that do come in, they work late, they don’t get the chance to come into paint shops during the week. Not all of them are out painting graf, some are just using it for canvases or whatever they want to use it for…

It’s interesting, I know of a few people who have gone into studying criminal law or things like that, because of experiences associated with painting graffiti. Were you already aware of some of those things from being a writer, or is that stuff that you kind of dived into because you knew that opening the store would potentially bring up some of those issues?

I kind of knew a bunch about the laws just from being caught before, but then I obviously had to look into it from a business point of view; am I liable for selling someone spray paint and then they go out and do a throw up and chuck a Rinley’s tag alongside it? Am I going to get in the shit for that? Which is why you need things like public liability insurance and stuff like that. I mean, if that was to happen, they could take you to court and it could get thrown out, but you’ve just wasted thousands of dollars on lawyer’s fees just to try and argue point which should be pretty straight forward…

Do you have excess stock in storage?

Everything is out at the moment. We will have stuff in storage from this next order, especially in the Montana Gold range, because this (the current stock) is only half the Gold range. We’re doubling the next order in the Gold range. It was just a wee bit of a concern because Gold hadn’t been here for so long, I was worried that people would be like, it’s a dollar fifty more than Montana Black cans, The people that have used it have all said the same thing: the cans go longer, the coverage is better, they’re easier to use because they are low pressure… Even Dcypher said all the stuff he did for Project Legit using Gold has held up insanely well, and that’s like 15 years ago now. So, for people that are wanting to use aerosol for large-scale murals, that’s the shit to use.

Rinley’s Writer Supplies

What’s your time frame for re-stocking? Have you figured out the best way to keep well stocked?

Because it’s coming from overseas, it’s like three and a half months. I am lucky, my partner is a fucking genius when it comes to running a business how its supposed to be run, she’s a superstar at that kind of thing, so yeah, she’s got that side covered. We’ve just placed another order, a massive order as well, to try and time with summer.

You ultimately have a very specific audience, so I assume it’s less about growth as it is about building customer loyalty and a solid reputation…

I’ve had probably a message every other day asking do you ship? do you ship? But at the moment, I’m not interested in shipping because I’m concerned that if I do start shipping, locals come in and they are like, oh shit, man you’ve sold out really quick and it’s like, yeah, I’ve sent a 500 can order to Nelson or whatever. I want to cover local first… and put Christchurch on the map internationally as best as I can…

NOOSE, 2024

You’ve got more than just paint as well – tell me about some of the other products you stock…

I pretty much only import stuff that I like! We’ve got a range of markers. The reason I got the silver Uni Paint PX-30s is just because they are the best silver marker you can get. The Sakura Magic’s are just a good black marker and then the Sakura Solid Paint Sticks are cool because they are a little bit different. We have various mops from Krink to Fadebomb and eggshell stickers too.

I see you also have some books, some collectibles and some art for sale as well…

When I had opened, I didn’t have a lot of things up other than the spray paint, the caps and the markers, so a few friends were like, I’ve got some shit that I want to sell, can I put it in your shop? And I was like yeah definitely! It was pretty empty up there, so a mate’s put up his Transformers VHS tapes he wants to sell, he had a custom shoe he wanted to sell, Skum from JFK has like a whole bunch of random buses and canvases that were done in like 2015 or 2016, so we’re selling those, and then the books. I got Fresh Press from the guys up north, and then just like a few other books that I had collected over the years that I’ve read probably 10 times and won’t read again…

You’ve got Flip the Script by Christian P. Acker, I love that book…

Yeah, it’s a bloody good book. The Mike Giant book is really interesting as well. I look at that quite a lot now, just because it reminds me a lot of old Christchurch graffiti. I’m not sure whether or not it was the Art Crimes page from years ago that he was uploading to, and people were taking influence from, but it’s kind of crazy how similar his style and even some of the colour combos and walls that he did remind me of old Christchurch pieces, like how the letters hit the ground… I also listen to his podcasts and stuff and from the sounds of it, he was sharing photo stacks around the world with people quite regularly, so whether or not those stacks ended up here, it was an interesting time back then, the internet was around but it wasn’t used the way it is now…

Having been part of the graffiti scene for so long, does opening Rinley’s feel like a new phase in your graffiti story?

I started in 2007 and I really didn’t want to be coming into my 20th year painting not having done anything, so I wanted to do something at least. I fucked myself getting caught, so I couldn’t do anything impressive graf wise, I wasn’t going to risk getting caught again, having young kids and a missus that was fucking stressing out, so Rinley’s was the answer…

Having been caught, what are your thoughts on how the city approaches graffiti?  

Every time they like have some new programme that will stop tagging, they never work! The only thing that does work is giving people space to paint legally. I think the Council now, especially with people like Mel Hillier at the Graffiti Projects team, she understands that, and she can see now that there is a group of people that do just want to paint good shit. They might not necessarily want to go onto painting three-storey high buildings with crazy murals, but they just want to paint nice pieces, they want to chill, to be able to have beers or whatever just down at the wall and just make a day of it…

BORE and NOOSE, 2015

You know, the city has all these places where people can be physically active. There’s never a problem about basketball courts or pump tracks or skate parks, why is it such a big leap to have a place where someone can paint a wall?

As someone who’s fucking shit at sport, shit at skateboarding, I did it for years and got nowhere with it, the one thing that you are kind of alright at, painting pieces, you’re shunned for!

When you frame it as a chill thing, where you can spend a day with a group of mates painting, having some beers, having a good time, where’s the threat in that?

Everyone that comes past and sees you painting, I’ve never had a bad interaction when we’ve been painting pieces. As soon as the sun goes down though, that’s where the perception changes, even if you are doing the exact same thing after dark, people go, tagger! Which is crazy, just paint in the day and you’re right!

NOOSE, JFK, 2024

Problem solved! Thanks man – lastly, when can people shop at Rinley’s?

Nine to five, Monday to Thursday, nine to six, Friday, and then nine until twelve, Saturday and Sunday. But from October I’m probably going to be doing appointment only across the board as we are having a baby. But I’ll be low on paint by that time anyway, so I don’t think it will be a massive problem…

And people can find out more on the socials?

Yep! Follow us on @rinleys on Instagram and Threads!

Reclaimed – A Pop-Up Show by Jacob Root (Distranged Design)

Jacob Root, a.k.a Distranged Design is proud to present Reclaimed – a pop-up exhibition of new works on old surfaces at a temporary space at 4 Cranford Street, opening 6pm Friday, July 12.

Reclaimed will present works painted on up-cycled materials, including pallets, window frames, and used timber, providing a fitting textural surface for his exploration of aerosol – the artist moving beyond traditional stencil approaches and into freehand spraying, thick brush stroke portraits and experimental stencil techniques. We asked Jacob a couple of questions about the show…

Stencilling can be interesting as a technique, you kind of need to find new approaches as you refine the process – what new influences have you developed for Reclaimed and how did they come about?

I think the main influence of trying new techniques was travel, but also the amount of murals I’ve done over the last couple of years where I didn’t have the opportunity or time to cut stencils, so I had to get better at freehand spraying. After it started clicking I just really enjoyed it more, as it’s more hands on painting rather than cutting stencils for hours on end. Also the fact my hand and arm cramps and aches for hours after cutting stencils, it didn’t seem like a long term plan as my only way of creating artworks.

Material surfaces are really important for stencilling and by extension aerosol, too, how much work has to go into making the ‘canvasses’ for Reclaimed?

So far a lot has gone into messing around and rebuilding items, which I’m really loving. Driving around scavenging items that I can beautify by rebuilding, sanding, then painting on them has been incredibly satisfying, and the edginess and grit of the canvases I’ve found compliments my style. I’ve got a lot more to do in the next couple of weeks leading up to the show though!

What is the location for Reclaimed and how did that opportunity come about?

The location is 4 Cranford Street, it’s a new build by Duogroup. Duogroup are the building owners of the wall that Rightbrain and I painted our Sir Ed Hillary mural on, so I decided to get in contact with them and they were kind enough to jump at the idea and let me use their space.

Reclaimed is made possible by the support of Duogroup and the Inkster Company.

Make sure to catch Reclaimed – opening 6pm, Friday, July 12 and open until Sunday, July 14.

Exploring Aerosol – A Masterclass Workshop with Wongi Wilson

Back in June, we were lucky enough to work with local aerosol legend Wongi ‘Freak’ Wilson, Toi Ōtautahi and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage to deliver the free masterclass workshop Exploring Aerosol. Hosted at the iconic CoCA on Gloucester Street, where the white-walled upper gallery provided a stunning setting, attendees were given the chance to learn from Wongi’s mass of accumulated knowledge. Learning about the building blocks of graffiti as a gateway to can control, from the simple tag to the more developed three-dimensional effects of a larger piece, guests were let loose to explore techniques as Wongi presented his insights. The afternoon session dived into Wongi’s approach realism, from landscapes to his mastery of hands, the crowd in silent appreciation of how his images came together.

The free workshop was one of the first of a series of classes targeting practicing artists and providing the chance to expand technical skills. In developing Exploring Aerosol, the goal was to enable artists to develop aerosol techniques while also exploring how the spray can might be used for a variety of forms and styles, elevating the tool to a broader perception. With an energetic response (with limited spaces, not every applicant was able to attend), we hope this was just the first of future workshops that might explore the toolbox of urban art…

We want to hear from more people interested in these types of workshops and initiatives – let us know in the comments or via email to [email protected]

And That Was… October 2020

I know what you are thinking, it’s almost December, right? And you are correct (actually knowing what month it is is a reasonable feat in 2020), this edition of And That Was… is a tad late. The truth is we had a sweet guest contributor lined up, but due to unforeseen circumstances, it just didn’t happen. We are still hopeful of working with said guest, but we will keep that under our hat for now. However, what that means is a quick sidestep, a play called on the fly, a plan B, and now, here is And That Was… October 2020, with a few favourite things from a not so special contributor…  

DTR Re-Paint the Giant Cans

The giant spray cans at One Central have been under the guardianship of the DTR crew and they have regularly been refreshed by various crew members over their recent history. The recent refresh combined work by Dcypher, Ikarus and Wongi Wilson, including stylistic mash-ups and a stunning female portrait seemingly tattooed with graffiti tags and throw-ups, creating an effect evocative of the Mexican dia de los muertos…

The Beths

Call me old fashioned, but I still like a live band. And in my opinion no-one is better in New Zealand music right now than The Beths. To say I was excited about their James Hay gig mid-October would be an understatement, and from the moment the stage curtain lifted, I was not disappointed, with their infectiously tight, energetic indie rock and understated charm. My night was topped off with a high-five to singer/songwriter Liz Stokes at the merch table.

Slap City Crew Get Paste-y

The last few months have seen the Slap City crew get busy across the central city, with diverse pastes appearing in busy conglomerations. The arrangement of works is always fun and revels in a sense of camaraderie. The flurry of activity from the likes of Teeth Like Screwdrivers, Vez, Cape of Storms, Bongo and more reflects the infectious energy of being part of a buzzing collective.

Dcypher, Yikes and OiYOU! Go Big!

Truth be told, I’m not sure if the massive Novotel mural was completed in October, my records are not entirely fool proof. But the massive scale of the Antarctic themed work (one of a pair by the artists with OiYOU! to celebrate the city’s role as a gateway to the Antartic) means it is a literal can’t miss and I’m sure at worst I am only a couple of days off. From the overwhelming size to the playful details, it is an impressive piece of work by some of Christchurch’s best, and I couldn’t leave it out.

Bols’ Retro Wrestlers

Let’s finish off this month’s list with a revelation of my inner geek… I grew up in the era of professional wrestling’s glory days. Not the violent, Limp Bizkit epoch of the Attitude Era as it’s known, but instead the over the top pageantry of American superheroes and bad guys of the eighties. It was a time when the concept of kayfabe (the idea that it is all real) was held firm and as a young kid, it was serious stuff. For that reason Bols’ nostalgic paste ups highlighting the dubious tropes and stereotypes of that era hit the mark, a reminder that not all childhood memories are as innocent as we might remember…

What are your thoughts on October’s highlights? Let us know in the comments… 

Bulky Savage – Welcome to Crushington

Earlier this year I received an email connecting me with Bulky Savage, a New Zealand-born artist living in Berlin, who was seeking a wall to paint while home visiting family. We traded some messages and attempted to find some options, but ultimately it appeared that nothing would quite line up. Intrigued by a Kiwi artist now based in an epicentre of urban art, I dived into his Instagram to become familiar with his work. His quirky menagerie of characters, seemingly indebted to the influence of cartoons, were immediately endearing, while literal washes of colour added vibrancy but also a suggestive symbolism. Imbued with a sense of playfulness, they were equally comfortable in the digital illustrative realm as they were on the streets.

Fortunately, B.S. was finally put in touch with the owners of Riverside Market and before returning to Germany, finally got the opportunity to produce a mural to mark his temporary homecoming. The wall painting, featuring one of his recurring hollow-eyed skull characters and a flow of colour echoing sloshing paint, is on a somewhat secluded wall in the laneway beside the bustling market. However, that seclusion doesn’t stop it from being a striking sight once you are introduced, beguiling in its seemingly open narrative, with confectionery-esque colours set to flood the ground.

While we had only exchanged brief pleasantries via email, when we finally chatted face to face (or at least via a Messenger call, as is the way in these pandemic times), it was quickly apparent that B.S. was instantly affable and an hour quickly passed. We discussed Berlin, his entrance into the street art world, his experience here in Christchurch and importantly, the state of the world and the modern economy…

While I’m sitting here in Christchurch, you are in the morning sunshine of Berlin, how did you come to live in Germany?

I grew up in Auckland. my dad is English but has been in New Zealand since the late seventies, and that’s kind of how I managed to be over here, with that [British] passport, but who knows how much that’s worth anymore…

So, at what age did you leave New Zealand, and what drew you to Berlin?

I turned 23 very shortly after I left New Zealand. I just wanted to get out. Our tiny little home in the middle of nowhere is great, but it is very hidden away, so I just wanted to see what was going on in the world. Europe was obvious and I had the passport, so that made things a bit easier. I wanted to learn another language, so I wanted to go somewhere in Continental Europe. I bumped into a bunch of German people as I was leaving New Zealand and again while I was travelling, and Berlin came up. It was always a blip on the radar, but I didn’t know anything about it except that it has always had good music. But by my second day here, I was just like, yeah, this is cool, I could do this for a bit. I did spend two months living in London when I ran out of money. I couldn’t get a job in Germany, so I went to London and worked for two months and squatted and got some cash together before settling here.

My impression of Berlin was that there is a palpable energy to the city. It was busy and there was a grit that wasn’t evident in Munich, for instance. 

There is a little bit of everything here in Berlin, something for almost everybody. You either love that chaotic kind of energy like you said, or you don’t, certain people just don’t get on with it, but yeah, it totally grabbed me. I never really had a trajectory until I got to Berlin and saw the street art everywhere, and I was like, this is where I need to be!

So much of Berlin’s history can be seen and felt in the streets. The streets speak in many ways, re-presenting different eras and epochs, and that lineage almost informs the graffiti and street art in Berlin with a potency that some cities lack. While muralism is often charged with complicity in gentrification, in some ways urban art itself has been gentrified, but in Berlin it felt different.  

Yeah, I guess that is always one of the conundrums of being part of this kind of art scene. It does kind of run both sides of the gambit. It is part of the problem and the solution! Berlin was definitely a bubble within it all, at least for a while… Gentrification has become more of a problem recently as the city folds a bit to the mighty Euro and murals do get absorbed into that as well. But yeah, muralism is only one layer of the street art and graffiti scene and there will always be people telling stories from the streets here.

A lot of people have said that Berlin’s a place for lost people. You get a lot of people coming here because they don’t really know what they’re doing with themselves. They spend a couple of years here and then figure it out and go and make money somewhere else. I guess I never got out, I became entangled with Berlin. But it’s become part of my art style and my lifestyle. I guess it’s also spoiled me, I’m not really sure that I could go and do what I’m doing somewhere else, in the same way anyway.

You explore a lot of different creative activities, so how would you describe what you do? Do you define yourself by any particular discipline or medium?

I like to say that I’m an artist who does street art sometimes. I bore easily, but if I’ve got different things to play with, I can always move on to something else. I really like photography, but everybody does photography, so it’s a much more difficult market to break into. I do digital stuff, and I’m trying to get back into painting with paint brushes again and things like that. But spray cans particularly are my jam. I’ve gotten good with those and its really nice to feel capable with something like that. That’s the problem with being multidisciplinary, it’s really frustrating working with things where I’m almost there, but I’m not really there. It’s nice to work with something where I can be like, bang, bang, bang, it’s done the way I wanted it. That is very satisfying.

Bulky Savage at work on a collaboration with @abwasserschwimmer for the record store Latitude in Berlin. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)
Bulky Savage at work on a collaboration with @abwasserschwimmer for the record store Latitude in Berlin. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)

There is something about the material qualities of aerosol that seem a particularly good fit for an urban environment like Berlin. One of my enduring memories in Berlin was stumbling across a Blek Le Rat stencil, it had almost all been painted out apart from the feet of the character and his name, but I always remember being struck by the way that the paint sat on this brittle concrete surface. But there is a lot of discussion going on now with artists about how to balance environmental concerns with the reality of aerosol, is that something that you think about?

Sometimes. There are always concerns with all sorts of different things for me, not just environmentally, but also keeping myself sane, so I have to balance out the impacts that I have with keeping myself happy. That might seem selfish sometimes, but I live in Germany and Germany’s pretty good at taking care of that stuff. There are proper waste bins for spray cans at a lot of the walls you paint these days, which is good. I hope they get taken care of properly, you don’t really know, there’s only so far that you can go when it comes to things like recycling. I can put all my stuff in all the right boxes, but I don’t know what happens after that. I’ve heard that they don’t even recycle themselves, certain things get sent to China, stuff like that. That is completely out of my control, so I try to not worry about that as much. Its great now that they don’t have things like CFCs, I’ve had people come up and say what about the ozone layer, and actually, you know, technology, baby!

Aerosol really informs the entire process, the final image, the process of making that image, even the conception of that image, it’s a defining tool for a lot of artists, and one that is so hard to replicate…

You can’t get that effect with anything else; air brush is close, but it’s also not. I have been working on an exhibition; it was planned for the first week of lock down. I wanted to make smaller scale works, so I’m using stencils, but I had to use spray cans because I want that beautiful gradient and that granular effect that you get from aerosol. There was nothing else I could use that would work like that…

It was initially adopted by graffiti writers primarily for mobility and efficiency, but increasingly, it’s actually the aesthetic that has become the attraction. The mastery that has been achieved over generations has become what drives and defines its continued use. When did you start using spray cans?

In New Zealand there were a couple of people on the periphery of my friends that were getting into street art. Cinzah was best mates with a girlfriend of mine at the time, and I went along to a couple of his shows and he was doing some paste ups and things. I was like, this is kind of interesting. I really love his style, it’s fantastic. But I was already on my way overseas, so by the time I got to Europe, that was really my first proper introduction to spray cans. I think it was maybe two or three years after I got to Berlin that I really started playing around with spray cans, so I guess around nine years ago. They are a difficult tool to master…

You mention the influence of street art, were you attracted to the act of painting in the streets? Often that is the biggest leap, because it is a decision imbued with more significance as you get older, when you’re more aware of a lot of the mechanisms in public space…

I hadn’t considered it before, but when I got to Berlin it was so pervasive, I felt comfortable getting out and being part of it. I just went out on my own. I made some paste ups because I couldn’t use spray cans at the time, but I could draw. I was all about drawing to begin with, I still am to some degree. I’d gone into a little gallery which is not really around anymore, it was run by this guy EMESS, a stencil artist, and I talked to him about the kind of stuff I was doing, and after that I went out and made my own paste ups. I went out with a sponge, totally the wrong gear! One of those pieces was still around recently actually, it stayed up for like eight years, which is pretty impressive for a paste up. Then, finally, I started doing street art workshops and teaching people how to do stencils, and that was when I really started playing around with spray cans a lot more, just taking it from there and putting it onto the walls as well. I did the illegal stuff here and there, but I’m not sure that I would have done it anywhere else besides Berlin. It is a lot more relaxed here than it is in most places. But the illegal side of it wasn’t really a draw card for me. A lot of people, particularly in graffiti, love that side of it, going out, getting into spaces that you shouldn’t, running from cops, that kind of thing. I guess my parents raised me to be a ‘good boy’, or at least put the fear in me! I was much more into the actual creation and painting part of it. I’ve got a bunch of friends who paint trains and things, and it’s great, but I just don’t have that in me. I like taking my time. That’s why I’ve gotten into murals, spending a couple of days painting is really rewarding to me.

My Parents are Bread, paste up in Berlin. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)
My Parents are Bread, paste up in Berlin. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)

Even if the illegal aspect wasn’t as attractive, were you still interested in how to situate a work in space and the encounter that you can create with an unsuspecting public audience?

When I was still doing paste ups and things, I’d like to have bits on corners of buildings so you could see it on one side and then pop around and there’s another part of it as well, leading people in certain ways. Interacting with outside spaces is a big part of the street art scene, and now, when it comes to murals, I still like that idea. I don’t want to put big messages into my art. I like to just have something that will pop and grab people’s attention, something a bit out of left field that will make them wonder what’s going on there?

Design and illustration are increasingly tied to urban art, as an interconnected pathway and through the iconographic approach of post-graffiti, the creation of an instantly recognizable and relatable icon. Has your design background influenced your work?

I studied design at Massey University in Wellington for a couple of years because I was young and foolish. I basically thought that was how you made money in art. But really, I’m more into the ‘art’ side of things. You can see that my work is very graphic, although I would say maybe more Pop Art these days. But the graphic design thing, I didn’t only do it because of the money side, I love graphic design as well, and it has definitely influenced my style.

There is an unmistakable, recurring quality to your work, notably with the hollow-eyed character, did that develop as an intentionally recurring presence, or was it something that just kind of emerged and endured?

I think I drew the first iteration of that character just before I left New Zealand. I used to work at Cosmic Corner and I did a drawing of that little character one day at work. Characters and cartoons have been a massive influence throughout my life. The Simpsons were my favourite thing growing up, and you can see the shape of Homer’s head in that character. I just kind of absorb things from everywhere. While I was traveling, I started to really develop the characters and then I came to Berlin and that’s when I was like, this is where I can take them. Over the years, I just played around with them and they took on their own personalities. There is the big fat businessman who keeps losing his head, there is the little sad guy, the introspective guy and then the crazy worm guy. They are all sort of similar, and I guess through a slow process I have imbued them with bits of my own personality.

Do they occupy their own universe or are they part of our world? The Simpsons live in Springfield, which is famously never revealed on a map, it is sort of a contained universe, but they are also part of the broader world through storylines and their pop culture status. I guess as soon as your characters are added to public space, they start to occupy our world as well, right?

I have given them this world they inhabit, which is kind of like Springfield, I guess. It’s called Crushington and it is this relatively colourless place. There’s a Crushington in New Zealand as well, which is funny. If you look at some of my line drawings, there’s this kind of desert-like landscape, these big open spaces influenced by New Zealand, where you’ve always got that big horizon line, whether it’s the sea or the mountains. There is also a little bit of Colin McCahon in there. I love Moebius’ style as well, the desert line he uses, I stole that bit. But I like how you were saying The Simpsons are part of our world, but they’re not, because I feel the same with my characters. For the most part they are two-dimensional beings in our world, and I really want to get into sculpture over the next couple of years and bring them into a more three-dimensional form. I want to play with that idea and bring them from their world into ours, because there is this second space they inhabit where they are more like what I know. I haven’t really shared it so much, but I’m going to have an exhibition about Crushington at some point soon…

Crushington Characters for the Love of Three, illustration.
Bulky Savage, Crushington Characters for the Love of Three, illustration. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)

Kaws has shown with his Companions that there is so much potential to explore those three-dimensional incarnations, different materials, various scales, and even playing with the perception of high and low…

That’s one of the things that always drew me to the street art and graffiti world, if you want to do it, you do it. You can take that style, or you can take from there, take from there, take from there, and that’s why I think it’s been such an interesting movement, you have all these people coming from different backgrounds and different influences coming together and making something completely different. It’s exciting…

The waves or oozing colours are another recurring element in your work. Do you want to dive into that imagery a little bit? Metaphorically, of course…

I really started with those in 2017. I did an exhibition called Bit Sick, playing around with the B and the S of my name, and it was about how crappy 2016 was, and how sick I was of everything. I’ve always been someone who just goes with the flow and the waves were an aesthetically pleasing sort of rolling vibe, but also fit with the theme, because in that exhibition I had things about being sick of art, sick of commercialism, sick of America. Of course, 2017 came through and really shat on 2016, and things haven’t really got any better since!

By 2020 you must be more than a bit sick…

Well, you know, it all flows and rolls downhill! The exhibition that I’m working on at the moment, which was going to be out already actually, was very timely as well, it was all about not seeing the bigger picture and being focused on these little pieces, as interesting and attention grabbing as they are. Again, it is making us all feel a bit sick and now quite literally making the world sick. It’s really just about being over things as well; the state of myself, of the world, just expressing my feelings at the time. But there’s not going to be any characters in the exhibition, it’s just going to be the waves. They have become really fun to paint with spray cans as well, the shapes, the really nice blends as well, giving it a sense of solidity, so that’s become more of a focus…

Detail of a Bulky Savage collaboration with @tenhun in Berlin. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)
Detail of a Bulky Savage collaboration with @tenhun in Berlin. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)

I’m thinking of the idea of a purge, or a cleansing, and once you take away that figure, the idea of size and scale changes. If the wave becomes the sole focus, it becomes something else, right? When you see it come out of a figure, you automatically scale it relative to that figure, when you just see that wave filling an entire frame, that can be either overwhelming or it could just be a close-up of a small trickle. There’s something about that idea of the bigger picture and smaller details, and that social element becomes strangely more pertinent when you take them away from the figure. So, tell me about your experience painting here in Christchurch earlier in the year?

I’d never painted in Christchurch before, but my parents live just outside of Cheviot [a small town north of Christchurch], so when I go back, I fly into Christchurch. I would just get to see little bits of it as we drove through, or if we visited somebody there. I remember going there when the city center was still completely locked down after the earthquakes, but this was the first time I got to spend a little bit of time in Christchurch for some years, and it was cool. I saw a lot of opportunity there, personally, as much as the earthquakes were terrible, I love seeing old destroyed buildings, maybe that’s why I’m in Berlin. It’s not something that you really get to see in New Zealand, so I really liked that. I liked the show of power, but then also how the city has risen up from the ashes of it as well. The city is really interesting at the moment.

I found it incredibly interesting that Christchurch became this microcosm of a big city; you had shiny new buildings, you had broken buildings standing there empty and covered in graffiti, becoming spaces for people to explore. Different people could do different things. If your mindset was to explore those broken spaces, you could do that, if your mindset was to sit in a bar and drink a cocktail, you could do that. There was this interesting juxtaposition of old and new and broken and shiny. One thing that does is reveal a lot of the power structures that go into making a city. Christchurch has become interesting in that regard, and graffiti and street art have a role here as both dissenting voices and part of the rebuild as well. It shows why these forms of art have become such a dominant visual voice the world over, because they can adapt to different environments. How did the mural in Christchurch come about?

In a very winding way. Knowing I was coming back to New Zealand mid-last year, I started reaching out to people in September or October, mostly through Instagram. I got bounced around. I got in touch with Preston [Hegel] down at The Exchange, he was doing some cool stuff and was like, oh maybe you could talk to this person… I got bounced around between a bunch of different people before I got put in touch with the guys from Riverside Market at the last minute. I just said I’m going to be coming down in like two days and they said: Sure, we’ve got a space, you can do what you want. It just fell perfectly into place. I was slightly freaking out that I wasn’t going to be able to get a space to paint, and coming from Berlin, I was just like, what is this?! Where are my walls?! In Berlin, if you want to paint, you just go and find a wall. I have a wall that I can just go and paint anytime I want just down the road. I wasn’t necessarily looking to leave a massive mural, I just wanted to find somewhere to paint, if it could stay that would be a bonus, if not then c’est la vie. It worked out great, those guys were really nice, they were just like: What do you need? Here’s money for the paint. They paid me for it as well, which is fantastic. It was this very last-minute design, because I was like, let’s see what the wall’s going to be like and go from there…

Bulky Savage's mural at Riverside Market, central Christchurch, 2020. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)
Bulky Savage’s mural at Riverside Market, central Christchurch, 2020. (Photo supplied by Bulky Savage)

The wall is quite high and relatively narrow so that obviously played into the design and I guess allowed you to use those recurring motifs in what seems like a natural fit…

Well, I had ideas floating around in my head of what I wanted to paint. I’d actually thought of having it the opposite way around, with the character at the bottom and all this stuff coming up out of it. But there was this big generator at the bottom of the wall, so I just flipped it around. Most of the time I tend to let the wall tell me what the piece is going to be, so I guess that’s good practice for when it comes to spaces like this one.

There are little references to food in the tattoos on the character, but there was no input in terms of what you had to include, that was just something that you added in?

Yeah, the guys were just like, do what you want. Which was amazing, because when you’re being paid to do something, a lot of the time they are like, it needs to be like this and fit inside this box. But I was really given freedom with it and I guess maybe that was why I thought if they’re still letting me do this then I’m going to throw in these little references to the space. I always like to let the tattoos kind of tell a story. I love tattoos, and part of the reason people get tattoos is to express little things about themselves or their experiences. I quite like incorporating them into my art in the same way, so if there’s meaning to be read from what I’m doing, which generally I try not to do, then it can be read in the tattoos…

Any artist would love that freedom to create something that is your own, but how do you think your work communicates to the crowds that go past, is there an intentional aspect that they should read, or do you encourage them to come up with their own narrative?

Yeah, story and narrative are really interesting for me. I love cartoons, I love stories. Life is stories. But I don’t want to preach, I like the idea of leaving something really open. We are human beings, we make meaning out of everything that happens, whether that’s actually what it is or not. So, instead of trying to push people towards my view or what I want to say, I prefer to leave that open and more abstract, so that people have something to play with. I often talk about Stik, the London street artist, who got famous for doing stick figures, but because they are so basic you can project your friends or your relationships or anything onto them because it’s such an open canvas. These very hyper-realistic pieces are beautifully done and technically fantastic, but there’s a bit of a distance because it’s just a picture of somebody that you don’t know. So, I like a more open experience…

Did the freedom of the mural energize you to strike out and do anything else while you were here? Is there anything hidden around Christchurch that I might not have stumbled upon yet?

No, to be honest I was a little bit out of shape and the mural was exhausting. I think I did about 19 hours in two days, and on the first night I was just completely burnt out. I was thinking about going and painting on the cans while I was there, but I just burnt myself out, I just went to bed! But I would love to come back and do some pieces in other spots, when and if that ever becomes a possibility…

Are you a Kiwi living in Berlin or a Berliner from New Zealand?

Good question! I’ll always be a Kiwi, but Berlin’s definitely become home for me. I would like to be able to split my year between the two places, because my heart is somewhat split, half of its here, half of its there, particularly with my parents being there. I love New Zealand, it’s refreshing. New Zealand people are almost the opposite of Germans in a lot of ways, very easy going, very open and welcoming, whereas you know, Germans are a lot more strict. That’s harsh, its an over generalization, obviously! But yeah, I love coming back to New Zealand, and just talking to the bus driver. It warms the heart. Christchurch in particular is looking interesting because there’s so much space, so many opportunities there at the moment, which was really good to see.

A small part of the reason for being away for as long as I have was because we had the John Key government which was in no way supportive of arts and artists, and as far as I’m aware, it’s still not super easy to be an artist in New Zealand when it comes to support from the government and things like that, but maybe that will start to change…

With lockdown precautions in so many places, it’s clear that people have been relying on art; on music, on film, on a range of forms of art, to get through isolation. And yet at the same time, no one ever positions the arts as vital, they talk about tourism or other industries, which is infuriating because if anything this situation reinforces how important the arts are to humanity. But we seem to have to go through this every time something significant happens, it was the same after the earthquakes as well. There’s still a real need to acknowledge artists’ ability to make their living doing what they do because what artists do makes life better…

Yeah definitely. I wouldn’t want to claim that my art enriches people’s lives, maybe it does and that’s fantastic. I always tend to feel a little bit selfish about my art, it’s something that I need to do, it’s very much my own expression and when someone can connect with it, that’s fantastic. Knowing that people have bought my stuff and have it hanging on their walls is nice, but again, the money side of it is not why I make art. I’d like to be able to just make art and not have to worry about the commercial aspects of it, you know? Universal Basic Income baby! People always think we need to make money and that becomes a driver and that’s when art loses a little bit of itself. I need to eat, so I have to make art that’s going to sell, but it would be nice if we learn something from this whole thing about what’s important for people, for people’s health and mental health. I run a little gallery and art shop space here as well and it’s interesting and frustrating thinking about what sells and what doesn’t and what you need to do to make money from it. I always feel still slightly grimy making my art into easily package-able things, being channeled into commercialism. Down with capitalism!

Follow Bulky Savage on the following platforms:

Web: www.justmorebs.com

Facebook: @justmorebs

Instagram: @bulky_savage

Cover image credit: Antonio Castello

Photo Essay – ‘Street Stencils’ by BOLS

At the risk of losing the graffiti purists in the room, while the rebellious and dynamic aesthetics of graffiti were an awakening of how art could be more than what I had experienced as a child, it was stencil art that was a better fit for my personal mode of expression. There are numerous reasons; from the punk aesthetic of early styles, to the specific yet expansive potential of the process. It still embraced the physical nature of aerosol (hard and soft lines, over sprays), but there were also the intricacies of cutting, breaking down an image, and the plates that became stratified objects of interest themselves (from plastic sheets, to light card, or even cereal boxes, the chosen material reflects an important aesthetic decision). Importantly, there was also a conceptual aspect, beyond the stylistic and procedural; something harder to express but imbued within the apparent urgency of street stencils.

While I have spent many hours in small studio spaces cutting and spraying stencils, frustrated at the things that go wrong, exhilarated at the discoveries that unlock new directions, there is something about the presence of stencils in the streets, sprayed directly on rough concrete or worn surfaces. Street stencils are a contemporary incarnation of a primal mode of expression, utilising new cultural references and tools to navigate the current landscape, while exuding a sense of a longer, often political, always existential, lineage.

While it may be the accessible, iconographic visual language stencil artists have harnessed (such as the pop culture imagery almost universally favoured by stencil artists still finding their style) that attracts many, for me, it is this connection to history, the sense that a stencil still represents rebellion, revolution and anarchy. Furthermore, the mechanical nature of the process renders stencils democratic; anyone can cut a stencil and produce an image. Of course there are stencil ‘superstars’, but there are also countless anonymous stencils, reveling in that anonymity and the act of painting in the streets.

The following images have been taken from the last decade, from Ōtautahi, around Aotearoa and even abroad. Some are by well-known artists, others are completely anonymous. Some are fresh and sharp, others faded and obscured. Some are sprayed on surfaces that make the image harder to comprehend, others play off the graffiti covered walls. Some are figurative, some use phrases, some are explicitly political, others harder to decipher. But each is an example of someone acting out, becoming part of that lineage and grasping the inherent qualities of stencils…

A stencil of a fox in clothing spray painted on a plastic barrell.
PORTA, New Brighton, Christchurch, 2012

The name of Blek Le Rat, the famous French stencil artist sprayed on a wall
Blek Le Rat, Berlin, Germany, 2011

A stencilled image, pixellated like a retro video game, that appears to be a portrait with the word Like underneath
Like, Berlin, Germany, 2011

A stencil of a man with a noose around his neck, precariously balancing on a chair to stop his choking
Dotmasters, London, England, 2011

A stencil of a small giraffe on a concrete wall
Unknown artist, Christchurch, 2012

A famlous stencil by Banksy, an army sniper takes aim from above a shop, but behind him a child holds a paper bag, blown up and ready to surprise the sniper with a bang
Banksy, Bristol, England, 2011

The words Read Lenin stencilled on a graffitied wall
Read Lenin, Rome, Italy, 2011

A stencilled image of a person holding something in their hands, looking closely at it.
Unknown artist, Barcelona, Spain, 2011

The words Stop Wars is stencilled in the style of the Star Wars logo
Stop Wars, Rome, Italy, 2011

A crowd of protestors are stencilled on a wall under the words Cultural Resistance
Unknown Artist, Rome, Italy, 2011

A graffitied wall featuring stencils, one of which is a skull and cross bones, the other a portrait of a young boy
Unknown artist, Brussels, Belgium, 2011

The words Tromaville Health Club, a reference to the trashy 1980s Troma films, is stencilled on a wall
Tromaville Health Club, Brussels, Belgium, 2011

A stencil of a face with large glasses on a footpath in San Francisco
Kay, San Francisco, United States, 2011

A stylised skull stencil with the words Dead God above
Dead God, Christchurch, 2018

the name Franz is stnecilled in a diamond shape
Franz, Wellington, 2019

the instruction to Post No Bills is stencilled on a concrete pillar
Post No Bills, Wellington, 2019

a mid production stencil with the various stencil plates stuck around it
Bols, Christchurch, 2019

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Chimp – Organic Matters

When I heard about the Justice and Emergency Services Precinct mural being painted by Wellington artist Chimp earlier this year, I must admit I had to dive into social media to find out more about the artist. When I explored Instagram, the deft skill evident in his aerosol depictions of faces and native birds, infused with energetic insertions of graffiti and other eclectic forms, was immediately endearing and made me wonder why I hadn’t been familiar with his work. A few days later I made my way down to the large stretch of wall on Lichfield Street to watch Chimp in action. I stayed back and intently watched him paint. I was taken by the impressive technical prowess, the way it seemed he was sketching on the wall, layering back and forth to create tonal qualities that would be neglected by a viewer only witnessing the finished project. After seeing his friendly interactions with passers-by, even though I was wary of interrupting his progress, I went over and introduced myself and we started chatting. Chimp was friendly, down-to-earth and welcoming, even with a massive task in front of him and a deadline fast approaching. We tentatively made plans to try and catch up before he returned home and to record an interview. Unfortunately, due to the need to put in long hours on the wall and conflicting schedules, we missed our chance. Instead, we reconvened online and over a flurry of e-mails we chatted about the Justice Precinct mural, the differences between Wellington and Christchurch, and Chimp’s varied career so far. As a result, this interview is months in the making, but still worth the wait, providing insight into an unexpected contributor to Christchurch’s urban art, someone who it will be worth knowing about as his profile continues to grow on a national scale…

How does an artist from Wellington find himself painting a huge wall at Christchurch’s new Justice and Emergency Services Precinct? How did the commission come about?

I was originally quite surprised to hear from them when the email came through from the Justice Department. I thought I may have been in trouble or something before I read it! They had seen my work on social media platforms and liked it. It was quite flattering to hear from them and I really appreciated the opportunity.

I imagine most people would be a little wary of an unexpected email from the Department of Justice! Did you have to think about it for long? Obviously different artists will have different ways of analysing and reconciling who they work with, is that something you had already thought through with commissioned work generally, or was the Department of Justice a slightly different proposition?

It was a bit of a surprise, but I was mainly curious as to what it could be about. We organised a meeting to talk about the possibilities of the project and it sounded like an awesome opportunity to expand my work into the South Island. Having a lot of family in Christchurch made it an easy choice to head there.

What type of entities have you worked with in the past, and how do you reconcile the compromises you often have to make with work for high-profile organisations? Do you separate commissioned public work into different categories based on what freedom you are afforded, or do you try and ensure you can balance the client’s wishes with your own vision?

Just before the Christchurch Justice Department contacted me, I had recently completed a mural for the New Zealand Parliament Buildings. Throughout the design process, I find it easiest to see what the client is wanting in terms of the topic of the design and the aesthetic they want within the design. Sometimes clients reference parts of my previous pieces that they have seen. From there I create a design and send it through to the client and we alter it back and forth. I find this process the best for me to ensure that there is a balance between my vision and the client’s ideas. With the Parliament job, for example, they had said that they liked my birds incorporated with the graffiti art, so I sent through a design and they seemed to allow a lot of artistic freedom as the design only had a few minor tweaks from the initial concept image.

Glitch 3, Parliament Building (Basement), Wellington, 2017 (Photo credit: Alana Frost)
Glitch 3, Parliament Building (Basement), Wellington, 2017 (Photo credit: Alana Frost)

Speaking of that distinctive personal style, how did it develop? Is it from writing graffiti or working on the street, or is it something specifically developed as an approach to mural work? 

My parents were very supportive of things that I wanted to try while I was growing up, so when I decided that I wanted to move my drawing to painting on a larger scale, I was allowed to develop my style in my spare time on scraps of wood in the garage. That being said, working on a small piece of wood in the family garage to working on large-scale outdoor murals like the Christchurch piece definitely required years of practice and development in larger outdoor environments

Is your imagery based on a specific narrative or is it perhaps a reflection of the public nature of muralism, something that fits that responsibility? Who or what has influenced your style? Your Instagram profile acknowledges hip hop, and I think of the likes of Tristan Eaton and Martin Whatson as possible reference points too…

The images and ideas I depict are often unique to each space and each wall. When creating the content of a work, I try to tailor the design to the space and the surrounding communities of that particular area, while still developing my personal style and visual language. I often try to project my own ideas and narratives within a piece, but it is up to the audience to interpret their own meaning behind each unique design. I often listen to hip hop as I am going through the design process as the lyrics inspire me with narratives, quotes and ideas that I can interpret visually as my own. In terms of visual artists, Tristan Eaton is a big influence, as is Pose MSK, and James Dawe, they all experiment with composition, colour, and mixes of rendering quality.

Your work is highly refined, how have you developed your aerosol technique over time? Do you conceptualize your can work in a certain way? Because when I was watching you paint, it appeared quite methodical, very certain, like every mark mattered, working over areas, layering paint to create tones…

I love the depth created by complicated works and have great respect for artists who can balance it all into a resolved piece. I try to design separately before beginning a final painting, mainly because having a full understanding of what you are attempting to create once you are actually at the wall aids productivity and allows me to focus solely on generating quality rendering while having the confidence of knowing that the composition and colour choices work. In saying that though, there are some details, particularly line weight variations, such as fat cap flairs and ultra-sharp outlines, that cannot be generated by pencil or marker but only by aerosol. This allows the piece to grow somewhat organically especially once you are standing up throwing and extending your arm completely, rather than seated, drawing or on the computer. Time and practice have given me the experience to develop my own techniques for painting, I appreciate that spray paint is traditionally a self-taught obsession.

Fantail, Upper Hutt, 2018 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)
Fantail, Upper Hutt, 2018 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)

As part of that self-taught element, how much do you draw from other influences; from looking at what other artists are doing, the effects they are creating, or their process? Or do you think in technical terms, like the actual physical potential of aerosol as a medium with very particular qualities, and work on technique based on that understanding? Your process, building form and tone through layers, is, to my mind, very painterly, and suggests you have an understanding of how the aerosol medium can be used…

My original drive and passion for graffiti and street art was rooted in the development of style, so I have tried to establish my own. I do think I take influence in every form though, whether it is subject, composition or technique. When teaching yourself all the influences you reference are based all on your own taste. I personally go through obsessions with different artists’ styles. For example, when I began painting with aerosol and focused on letterforms, I was influenced by Peeta’s sculptural abstract forms, but there wouldn’t be much evidence of that in my work now.

Spray involves building a skeletal sketch form, blocking in tones and layering details. Before I was getting opportunities to paint big walls I honed my skills painting canvases with aerosol only, no stencils, as I wanted to be able to paint everything freehand. This meant it took me a long time to produce sharp, well-proportioned work. But the skills I built up translate to big walls well. If you can paint a detailed portrait on a canvas with spray, the rendering quality on a wall is amazing. Brushes never gave me motivation to produce work because it felt like a chore. Even when I was just starting out, cans were addictive because you can throw so much paint around quickly. To me, it feels like the most powerful medium of creation and destruction.

However, as I grow as an artist I want to produce things that aren’t really possible with freehand spray, so I am looking at screen printing and have been producing digital work longer than I’ve been spray painting.

Tell us about the concept behind Organic Matters, the Justice Precinct mural? Are there symbolic reasons for the choice of specific bird life and flora? Does the absence of the collage-style fills significantly alter the way you conceive of the wall and how it might respond to the space it occupies?

Organic Matters is a play on the term organic matter. I’ve used this title to mimic the important activities going on within the Justice Precinct buildings while relating back to the natural subject matter. Using all native local birds and flowers, with the exception of the cherry blossoms, which refer to the gardens of Christchurch. For this particular client, the professional nature of the location and the range of people that will see the mural, the less provocative, stylised realism fills worked better than the graffiti collage style I often work with. Yes, taking away a part of the subject matter I use affects how I conceptualise a work. Instead, the design focused on expressing my style and originality through composition, line, and colour, rather than the higher visual contrast created by mixing subjects and rendering styles.

Organic Matters, Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Lichfield Street, Christchurch, 2018 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)
Organic Matters, Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Lichfield Street, Christchurch, 2018 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)

You mention the type of people around the Justice Precinct as influencing the style. How were your interactions with people who passed as you were working? It is a very central spot, but also possibly populated with a diverse range of people at varying times…

The feedback was great. People who appreciate graffiti and street art were stoked with the process and can work, and everyone appreciated the birds, particularly the identity and life projected through the eyes. I had good chats with road workers, with people coming out of the police station, officers, lawyers… Overall it seemed like the people of Christchurch are very supportive of their growing urban art scene!

Organic Matters (detail), Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Lichfield Street, Christchurch. 2018
Organic Matters (detail), Christchurch Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Lichfield Street, Christchurch. 2018

Did you have a preconception of the city before coming down? Were you aware of the scene down here, or at least the profile?

I have a lot of family in Christchurch, so I have visited many times growing up. But this was the first time as an adult. I’ve admired the street art festivals in Christchurch since the quakes and the graffiti scene seems to have exploded with the derelict spots providing canvases everywhere.

Did you explore the city? Or did you hit the ground running on the wall? Any favourite pieces or spots?

It was pretty much just two weeks of painting the wall, with a couple days of rain to relax and try some of the different places to eat in Christchurch. I would have liked to have painted with the locals and had a go on the giant cans [on Manchester Street], but it was straight back to University classes the day after I got back home. B List Tattoo looked after me with paint supply and even organised shipping the leftovers back for me, so that was awesome.

Even without getting to spend time painting with any local artists, how did you perceive Christchurch from Wellington in terms of the way urban art is part of each city? What is your take on the scene in Wellington?

I would say Christchurch’s scene is exploding with all of the exposed walls that can be seen from far away with all of the empty lots, whereas Wellington has tighter alleys and more hidden gems. As street art has become more accepted there has been significant growth in commissioned work while the streets are always being painted with fresh graffiti in both cities. Christchurch seems to be celebrating street art more than Wellington for the amount of large scale work being done and the dedicated events like Spectrum.

Social Woes, Wellington, 2017 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)
Social Woes, Wellington, 2017 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)

Wellington’s smaller spaces would be more conducive to certain interventions, while you can see the natural fit of larger murals in Christchurch… I have always felt Wellington was a bit more varied in what you can find in the streets, that there was a wider range of approaches, would you agree? And what about the geographic lay-out, with the spread of the city, are there different scenes in different parts, like from the central city to Upper or Lower Hutt?

I think with the number of international pieces in Christchurch, as a result of the various festivals, there is a good variation of style. Although Wellington does have visiting styles too. I would say that urban art is more condensed and apparent within Wellington city. The Hutt has graffiti scenes which fluctuate, however, the buffing is relentless. Waitangi Park is the only free wall I’m aware of in the region which evolves constantly, with several abandoned spots which are also ever changing.

Mother Nature, Wellington, 2017 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)
Mother Nature, Wellington, 2017 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)

You are currently studying, but not in the perhaps more expected visual arts field, is it some type of engineering?

Close, I’m actually studying industrial design. It sort of sits between graphic design and engineering, which involves creating product form and understanding function. It is a four-year degree with honours and has taught me a lot about empathetic understanding and catered design. I gravitated to industrial design from graphic design partially as a result of the overwhelming number of students studying graphic design and an interest in car design. Imagining a graffiti artist with an industrial design degree also seemed like an interesting thing to do!

Haha, sorry, I was a little bit off the mark there with engineering! Is there a valuable practicality that you can draw on when painting murals?

The main thing I have taken from industrial design is a greater understanding of creating emotion through form and how subtleties can be used to express ideas. Also, my perspective sketching is getting much better and I have one semester to go. Any creative degree educates you on critiquing work and I have personally found it an experience of exiting an ignorant bliss that I began creating art from and realising a harsh balance of self-critique and confidence.

So, once you have finished, will you still compartmentalize the two; visual arts and industrial design? Or in some ways will they move closer together? Will you likely freelance as an artist and designer, or focus on one or the other?

Industrial design is a niche area to find employment and I think it takes full dedication and drive to make it happen, just like working as an artist. I can see myself designing products under my own brand, if I found an idea worth pursuing in the future. I manufactured and sold skateboards under the brand Planetary from the age of fourteen until I was seventeen. But I would say my ambition is firmly in my work as Chimp and spray paint currently.

What were you doing with the Planetary brand? Was it deck designs? Clothing? What did it encompass?

Planetary was the first brand or alias I ever worked under. I built downhill skateboard decks intended for the twisty roads of Wellington and skateboard racing. From there I started trying to produce spray paint graphics but lacked the skills. So that led to the aerosol campaign. I learnt a lot and sold quite a few boards but found selling handmade functional products to a niche market quite stressful.

What has kept you occupied since the Justice Precinct mural, and what have you got coming up? Any plans to come back to Christchurch?

I’m currently working on a t-shirt design for Kathmandu, within the same artist line that Wongi and Shraddha produced designs for. I have a new piece in Moonlight, a group show in Auckland held by The Designers Institute and RAYDAR. My piece is called Between the Raindrops. A design I submitted for the QT Museum Hotel competition was selected, so I will be painting a room or two there. I am quoting a few jobs around Wellington at the moment that I’ll be able to get onto once University is finished, and I have a handful of private commissions I need to get done!

Between the Raindrops (progress shot), Aerosol on Canvas, 2018 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)
Between the Raindrops (progress shot), Aerosol on Canvas, 2018 (Photo Credit: Alana Frost)

That’s a fair bit going on! Did the Kathmandu t-shirt opportunity come about through the Justice Precinct mural?

It sure did!

What can you tell us about the t-shirt design? Was there a specific brief to respond to?

The brief was quite open, but the key points were encouraging or capturing a sense of adventure and comparing the countries and culture of Nepal and New Zealand.

And the QT project must be pretty exciting. That involves DSide, right? What have you proposed for that?

Dside was one of the judges and I was humbled to be chosen. I put together a few different options, but you’ll have to wait and see the outcome.

You also mention the group show, do you exhibit studio pieces regularly, or is it secondary to walls?

I’ve had one solo show and been in several group and duo shows, but I get more satisfaction designing for bigger spaces that everyone gets to see. Spray paint lends itself to a large scale too. Once you’ve learnt to paint small details with a can, the larger work starts to really pop from the detail that you can fit in.

So, do you think of studio work as separate to your wall work, or does it function like preparatory work, feeding into your outdoor practice?

They are certainly intertwined. Sometimes the experiments are done on public urban walls and sometimes at smaller scale privately. Ultimately both help me learn and the more you paint both the easier it is to adapt to either.

Thanks Chimp, I know people have really responded to your Christchurch wall, so hopefully we see you again down here soon!

Keep an eye on Chimp’s work and various projects on social media:

Instagram: @chimp.one

Facebook: @chimpartist

Web: http://www.chimpartist.co.nz/

 

Photo credits: Feature image: Sam Gorham, Organic Matters (detail): Reuben Woods, all other images: Alana Frost

Cinzah – Something Bigger

Napier artist Cinzah has a calm, relaxed demeanour. But that laid-back manner belies his busy schedule. The artist, whose work spans muralism, fine art, illustration and beyond (in 2012, along with his friend, filmmaker Karl Sheridan, Cinzah produced Dregs, the first feature-length documentary film about the New Zealand street art scene), is a regular in festivals around New Zealand, Australia and further afield, exhibits his studio work, completes commercial commissions, and in addition serves as the regional director for the Sea Walls New Zealand mural festival, working with the international PangeaSeed Foundation, a not-for-profit ocean conservation organisation. Add to the mix a young family, and you get the feeling that you might be able to do more with your time.

I first met Cinzah in 2012 while he was shooting through Christchurch on his way to Dunedin to film for Dregs. I was able to hang out, watching while he painted a wall in a dishevelled post-quake New Brighton well into the night. Some five years later, we were able to catch up as he painted another wall in New Brighton, this time for the event Street Prints Ōtautahi. There was a fitting quality to his Street Prints station, returning to the seaside village, but this time under very different conditions and surroundings. We sat down at a rowdy suburban pub, and between bursts of classic rock cover music, reflected on Cinzah’s varied experiences, his distinctive style, and the street art and mural culture in Aotearoa…

So, Cinzah, like many of the other Street Prints Ōtautahi artists, it has been a pretty busy few weeks, you basically arrived in Christchurch straight from the Street Prints Mauao event in Mt Maunganui. With such a hectic schedule have you had a chance to think about the different environments? Although both events come under the Street Prints umbrella, just from a physical point of view, they seem like quite different locations in which to be painting, have you reflected on the change in setting and the distinct qualities of each event?

We kind of all just arrived and hit the ground running. It’s been flat out from Street Prints Mauao up in Tauranga, straight down to Ōtautahi. But yeah there’s definitely differences, in terms of the geographies. Tauranga, Mt Maunganui, it’s a very beachy town, with summer vibes you know, it is very tourist-orientated, whereas down here,  the architecture’s completely different, the mix of gothic and Victorian English styles and straight up rubble and construction stands apart from the Mount. Obviously, things are still in repair and there’s a lot that’s still going on, it’s also really interesting to see how the quake and rebuild has affected the local graffiti scene, with the last few years of festival-produced works, large scale commissions as well as the juxtaposition with unconventional, un-commissioned, guerrilla works and interventions, like the array of graffiti.  It’s good to see all the different elements of the culture are alive and thriving. There’s basically no graffiti in Mt Maunganui, apart from what we’ve produced over the last few festivals there. (Laughs) So yeah, that’s an immediate difference…

There is an echo for you specifically at least, painting by the sea in New Brighton, you’ve still got the ocean air…

Yeah, exactly, except that it’s arctic! The easterlies are chilling my balls! (Laughs)

Welcome to Christchurch! (Laughs)

Yeah! (Laughs)

There’s also a nice personal narrative for you because in 2012 you painted in New Brighton during a brief stop-over in Christchurch. Looking back, how has the area changed in terms of your personal recollection?

There’s a lot more art. More public works, graffiti, interesting uses of abandoned spaces, some good cafes, and Fiksate Gallery is an awesome little addition to the hood.  When I came through in 2012, there were the odd piece around, the main mall was all just shut shops, there was basically nothing open. I started painting one little semi-abando (abandoned building), which had been partly demolished, and I remember one guy coming out, I don’t know if he had one of the businesses there, but he basically gave me permission to paint the entire street: ‘Oh yeah, you can paint here, or you can paint here, you can do this shop or that shop…’  It’s great to see positive changes here, there’s a lot of potential for this neighbourhood, its good to see people inhabiting these spaces and the community taking ownership.  New Brighton is heading in a positive direction.

Cinzah’s piece in New Brighton, 2012. The building was eventually demolished in 2013.

You have a lot of festival experience; do you have a process for getting to know cities and places? Is it just hit the ground running and get a vibe as you go, or do you like to spend a little bit of time exploring before you start painting?

Definitely, if the schedule and life allows, I like to have a day or so on the ground to acclimatise and adjust to my environment and the surroundings. I like to get out within the community and meet people and talk and get a feel for what’s going to work in that environment, what sort of work would suit, depending on what is going on around there, and also just to get a feel for whether the community is supportive. Is art really going to add to that environment or will it detract from things that might be happening there?  I usually have a preconceived idea, or concept mocked up before arriving, but I like to allow room for this to breathe, grow and be influenced by my surroundings and experiences that may present themselves.

There is a definite responsibility, right? It feels as though within the muralism movement there is a growing recognition of the need to respect and engage with locations and the communities, not just the people, but with the local cultural, social and even spiritual histories and narratives. Have you found your thinking around these issues has had to grow as you’ve been more involved in events? You offer an important perspective as both an artist and as a festival organiser…

Yeah, definitely.  You’ve got to look at the motives behind an event.  What is the purpose of the festival? Is it just a beautification project? Does it have a specific mandate to engage people into deeper discussions socially, politically or environmentally, or is it contributing to an act of gentrification?  More and more cases of this are popping up globally with big developers and corporations that have an ulterior motive behind these events, pushing out homeless to allow for new hospitality hubs and ‘arts’ districts, where artists can no longer afford to live.  It’s important to do your research before getting involved in a project.  I’ve always considered my environment and held this responsibility fairly close to heart, although I’ve been walking this walk a lot more frequently lately with my role within PangeaSeed, working in small communities, with local iwi, tangata whenua and so on. Art can be considered invasive on some notes when a festival rolls into a town, produces a bunch of work and leaves, without following certain protocols or doing the proper research. As a result, the locals can be left feeling startled, without the opportunity to express their unique voices and stories. The work needs to be well considered and thought out, it’s important to engage with the local communities, and create work that is relevant, that acknowledges and speaks to it’s audience.

With that changing ethos, and the strong socio-political foundations of many festivals, it also raises questions for both artists and curators. Do you select artists who already engage with specific concepts that suit a theme, or present a challenge to artists with an interesting visual style to expand their work into new areas? As an artist how do you respond to a brief that is possibly outside of your existing approach?

With Sea Walls, first up, the artists we work with need to be good people, produce good work, and be easy to work with. We often approach artists that dabble in the environmental arena thematically, although it’s a bit of both.  If someone has killer work, and can tackle a massive wall, but hasn’t experimented with work that relates to the mandate of PangeaSeed, that doesn’t limit their opportunity. We have a massive family of over 200 contemporary muralists from all around the world, and this whānau continues to grow.

Personally, I really enjoy responding to a brief, it’s good to have some boundaries to get the ball rolling, to spitfire ideas off.  Working in the public arena artists have an integral role to deliver a message with our work, it’s an amazing opportunity to really say something when you’re thrown a giant canvas smack bang in someone’s town.  It can definitely be challenging at times to work within a guideline in a festival environment.  With these two Street Print festivals, Tauranga’s theme was: ‘He aha te mea nui o te ao / What is the most important thing in the world? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata / The people, the people, the people.’ I think that theme really hit the nail on the head for Mt Maunganui. The works created a really strong identity for the area and paid homage to many important local figures, it really connected with the people that will be living with these works.

Graffiti and post-graffiti have traditionally been about a search for personal style, and that’s where this challenge really becomes apparent: evolving a personal style to make it engage with issues or ideas raised for a specific event or commission…

Tauranga’s theme lent itself perfectly to the majority of the line-up. Portraiture was pretty dominant, there was Fin Dac from Ireland and he paints his female portraits, Adnate was over from Melbourne, his work often focusses on indigenous people with a hyper-realistic kind of approach, Mr G, Askew, who has been going in different directions recently but still has elements of figuration and portraiture within what he does, Claire Foxton, I could keep rattling them off… A huge amount of the line-up were portrait artists, so that becomes a really fitting interpretation of the theme behind the festival. But I think when you throw somebody in who maybe has a graffiti background, like writing letters, or somebody who has more of an abstract approach, or just doesn’t paint figures, then you’ve got a whole other super interesting hurdle, you’ve got to think outside the box as to how you approach things.

Cinzah’s Street Prints Mauao wall, Mt Maunganui, 2017 (Photo credit: Cinzah)

A lot of that comes down to public reception as well, right? Because it is generally easier to understand portraiture, and that human connection, I mean that’s why it has always been such a prominent theme. So, it’s not so much that it’s not possible when you’re dealing with graffiti letter-forms or abstraction, it’s just that possibly achieving that immediate level of understanding is more difficult…

Exactly, it is instantly recognizable or relatable, but art is all subjective, it is all open to the viewer in terms of the interpretation of the work.  People make all sorts of calls as to what my work is about. Sometimes I paint things that are super obvious as I want to deliver a strong, direct message, other times it’s a little more expressive and abstract and that’s when you get all sorts of interesting responses to the work.  In San Diego I painted a 35 metre long wall depicting local shark species, with a massive 100,000,000 type piece in the background, as this is the estimated number of sharks that get killed annually for the global finning trade. I couldn’t really be more upfront and obvious with this work but that was the intention, to be in the public’s face and to educate on the most basic level about this issue.  I still get tagged and messaged all the time on social media about this work, people have spread the mural all around the net and it’s become a really strong conversation starter. The works I’ve created for these two festivals are definitely more abstract or symbolic with their meanings, a little more in line with some of my personal studio works and gallery based stuff.

It really shows the growing maturity of graffiti and street art muralism as public art: the ability to engage with and explore themes that haven’t necessarily been part of the culture previously, so this is allowing that growth and evolution to occur, even if it is challenging some of the bedrocks that people still hold dear…

Yeah, definitely. I feel like it adds a whole other level of substance behind the work, it doesn’t make it so much about the artist, it is about a greater purpose and you are addressing something bigger than yourself and it is not flying in on an ego trip and making work that you think is fucking rad and leaving. There’s a little bit more guts behind it, I think.

With Street Prints Ōtautahi, you are painting in New Brighton, you’ve got others painting in Lyttelton, other artists are dotted quite disparately around the central city, is it strange to be somewhat isolated when you are part of something that is essentially a shared experience as a group of artists? You told me about the amazing programme you put on for Sea Walls artists [including cultural excursions such as sailing on waka hourua with Te Matau a Maui, visits to significant local geographical and cultural landmarks, and even giving artists the chance to swim with sharks in shark tanks, giving them a personal connection with the often misunderstood animals], and with Street Prints Mauao, you all spent a night on Motiti Island staying with Mr G’s whanau, these types of experiences must be important elements now, especially with so many festivals and the need for a sense of legacy and identity…

I guess having an extra-curricular programme pulls everyone together. We are all staying at the same place, we’re eating together, we’re hanging out together, we catch up every evening, so you know there is a real community vibe with what we are doing here, but definitely, the map is kind of dotted out, I’m out here like you said, there’s a couple in Lyttelton, others are more central, which in some ways means you’re kind of pushed off the map, out to the side, although I’m really happy about it, its great the festival curators considered other areas that might kind of get left off the map, because of the geographic lay-out of the city.  Talking to a lot of locals while I’m painting, they’ve been saying: ‘Oh you are out East side, this is great! Don’t forget about us out here!’ People have been saying it is really brilliant you are out here, because New Brighton needs a bit of love, it needs an uplift, so it’s all been really positive, and I don’t mind because it is a well-organised event, I’ve got my own wheels, so I don’t really feel like I’m miles out from everybody else.  It’s a different vibe altogether from Tauranga.  Mt Maunganui was a really close circuit, which creates a really seamless legacy of work after the festival, I’m not sure how this will hold up with the separation of the works…

Fill us in a little bit about what your piece. What is the concept? Paint us a picture with words…

The work that I’m painting has got a large moth that’s migrating towards a big golden sphere which could be read as the moon or the sun or whatever, but the concept I was thinking about was how to translate what has been happening here and the idea of the reconstruction of a city, with basically a new beginning, a new birth, a new undertaking or some sort of transformation. So, I was thinking about different ways to interpret that, I was thinking about the life cycles of insects, from eggs, or larvae, to caterpillar to pupa or chrysalis to adult, it’s more or less about transformation and the symbolism of having the perseverance to push forward, to follow the light side and keep progressing against all odds. Follow the light! (not Jesus, unless you’re into Jesus) I want the work to inspire hope… It sounds cheesy, super fucking cheesy! (Laughs)

Cinzah’s Street Prints Otautahi mural, New Brighton, 2017

That’s the problem with painting with words, right?! (Laughs) Because the wall looks awesome…

Yeah, just go look at the picture! (Laughs)

In terms of your work more broadly, for me there is a storytelling element that is suggested through almost mystical or mythological imagery or iconography rather than overt narratives. For instance, the animals that you depict, like serpents, moths and even manta rays, for me, they have symbolic associations, but they don’t need to be explicit or obvious to the viewer, and when they are combined with the graphic, decorative style, including the use of gold, there’s a really suggestive quality to the imagery, is that a fair reflection?

I think you’re on the money there, I’m naturally really interested in art that has a narrative, is telling a story, often from different cultures’ folklore and mythology.  My works are inspired by life, what ever is going on around me at the time, from physical as well as metaphysical experiences.  Some of my works have an iconographic feel, possible due to the use of gold. In my gallery works I use 21 carat or 23 carat gold leaf and actually I’ve done some murals where I’ve used gold leaf in them as well, although due to budget and time this piece is basically straight fat gold chromies.  I love the way gold catches the light, it has this other quality to it. I like the idea of creating icons, although I wouldn’t say my works are inspired by religious icons… because I’m not religious at all… (Laughs)

I see them as more elemental, more mysterious, almost ancient symbols that are open to interpretation. With that said, I can totally see them on illuminated manuscripts or something…

Yeah, that’s really awesome to hear because I am inspired by mythology and folklore, and I think it is really interesting to see how ancient civilisations have interpreted events throughout history. I like to weave my own little narrative, and create my own little plots within my work…

You mention your use of gold leaf in your studio works and of gold in different forms in your street works, do you feel like the relationship between street and studio is stronger than it was in the past, or are they still quite distinct for you personally?

Yeah, I feel like they are quite distinct, but at the same time they cross over a lot with subject matter, and lately more thematically as well. I think it is getting more and more seamless, heading in a direction where it is becoming more and more entangled between each other, and I do really want to explore different techniques that I use on my paper works, but on a large scale on walls, maybe limiting the colour palette or potentially going completely monochromatic and seeing how that translates to a large scale. I used to paint really loosely and really gesturally, like the piece I did back here in New Brighton in 2012 with all these loose splatters using Astro caps, Blaster caps and home made jobbies, just making a big fucking mess, and it is so much fun! And I guess over the years I’ve become more and more refined with the mural work and got tighter and tighter and tried to apply as much detail as I can, while holding a really strong graphic approach. I really enjoy painting the way I paint now, but at the same time it can become a little bit clinical, so the direction I’m heading probably brings a little bit more of the looseness and freedom of some of my ink washes and gestural studio works, potentially experimenting with using more acrylics. I mean I don’t think I’ll ever really stop using aerosols all together because I just love them as a medium, but from an environmental point of view, and for the body, they’re not the greatest…

Detail of Ethereal Flow, a studio work (Photo credit: Cinzah)

That’s a question a lot of artists are facing right? The paint companies are starting to explore how to combat that, but it is a difficult dilemma because there is a quality to aerosol painting that is really distinct and really attractive, especially when it forms such a strong part of the culture that has raised you.

Absolutely.

When you were here in 2012, you were in the midst of shooting Dregs, your documentary about the New Zealand street art scene. If you were making Dregs in 2018, how would it differ? Do you think the scene has changed dramatically?

It was definitely a snapshot of a time. It’s a little capsule as to where all the different artists were at that time, I mean, I haven’t watched it for years and I don’t know if I will watch it again! (Laughs) But, it was a really amazing experience to produce that documentary, looking back, it is really awesome to have that period and everybody’s views, practices, goals and aspirations documented historically for the New Zealand scene, before Dregs there wasn’t really anything produced in a feature length format. It is interesting looking back and seeing where all the individual artists were with their careers and their projections of their trajectories of where they wanted to go. I remember one of the questions we asked was: Where do you see yourself going in the next five to ten years? Looking back at each and every artist, they’ve pretty much all done it, and that’s really awesome to see! (Laughs) It would be really rad to do a part two, and visit the same lineup, get some proper funding and go and see all these artists internationally to celebrate where all the ‘Kiwis’ have got to…

It is interesting because if you look at the size of the culture in New Zealand, and even the sense of isolation that is still felt, the talent that’s developed here over a relatively brief period is incredibly high…

Absolutely, there’s such a strong scene in New Zealand, we’ve got some incredibly talented artists that are world class, and I think nowadays you’re seeing the rest of the world kind of realising that. You are getting a lot more of us that are working internationally, getting flown out for different events and so on, which is really awesome. When we were making Dregs, I had a turning point, I was internally fighting with the whole Kiwi tall poppy syndrome of ‘you don’t make it until you go overseas’,  I had this huge desire to go and travel and to paint internationally, but at the same time I thought, fuck that! Why do you need to go to New York, or travel to these other places to prove yourself and to prove your talent back home? So I had this idea to flip that and to bring the rest of the world to New Zealand and I didn’t really seriously plan to do that you know, it was just something that I thought would be a really amazing thing to achieve, but I guess that thought stayed with me subconsciously as down the line I ended up being involved with PangeaSeed and bringing Sea Walls out here, and over the last two years we’ve brought some of the top contemporary muralists from around the world to New Zealand.  Recently there have been a number of events that have brought amazing talent to our shores, including this event right now which has a really strong line up of national and international artists.  We’re getting a lot more attention down on this side of the world…

In many ways, the world is, at least logistically, a smaller place, right? From a Christchurch point of view, to think back that the likes of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, Tilt, Buff Monster, Sofles, all these artists that you see in book and magazine pages, have all visited the city is amazing, but in many ways, you appreciate that they are just normal people who came up in the same way. And in that way New Zealand is an attractive place to come, because I imagine a lot of them didn’t expect to end up here when they started painting in the streets…

Exactly.  When I started out there was no way I ever imagined I would have been to the places I’ve been with my art, and it still blows my mind, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities that have come about my way, and like you said, vice-versa, having these guys come down here and be involved, and meeting these guys and you’re completely right, everybody’s just normal, awesome, regular dudes that are doing the exact same things we’re doing but on the other side of the world. For them, New Zealand is this remote, isolated, exotic island nation at the bottom of the world that a lot of people would really love to visit, so to throw them that opportunity, it’s just as exciting as it is for us to head to America or the Caribbean, or to Europe or whatever…

To finish, there is one question I’m obliged to ask, just to keep up a tradition you started: Potato or Kumara?

Argghhh! It’s still kumara man! Haha, I had forgotten about that question! Awesome!

Cheers Cinzah!

Check out more of Cinzah’s varied projects:

www.cinzah.com

MrCinzah on Instagram

Sea Walls Napier 2017 – https://vimeo.com/216788917

Sea Walls Napier 2016 – https://vimeo.com/172784145

Sea Walls Mexico 2014 – https://vimeo.com/102981926

 

 

Mr G – Faces and Places…

Mr G’s David Kidwell mural, intersection of Tuam Street and High Street, central Christchurch

Mr G has had an adventurous few years to put it mildly. His monumental portraits, such as his Prince tribute in Minnesota, and his depiction of Kiwi hoops icon Steven Adams in Oklahoma, have raised his global profile. While his 100 Portraits project has seen him paint up and down New Zealand (including a stunning portrait on a vertical cliff face). His refined style has adorned surfaces in an array of locations far outside the normal resume of a New Zealand mural artist. He was recently commissioned to paint a large portrait of Kiwis (the New Zealand Rugby League team) coach David Kidwell here in Christchurch, building excitement for the Rugby League World Cup by honouring a local lad ‘done good’, while also adding to the city’s collection of murals. The work illustrates Mr G’s dazzling technique, and his ability to imbue a sense of personality in his subject’s likeness. Kidwell’s portrait exudes a warmth, even as the grey-scale palette perfectly plays off the exposed concrete surface. We caught up with Mr G at the site of this new work, the intersection of High Street and Tuam Street, to chat about the mural, his technical approach and his connection with the communities in which he paints.

RW: So Mr G, first things first, how are the Kiwis going to fare in the Rugby League World Cup?

Mr G: (Laughs) Yeah, you know, I’ve always backed them and stuff bro, and I guess for me I’ve kind of been a league fan off and on throughout my life. I played league for a bit when I was in Intermediate in Kawerau, for the Kawerau Raiders. There was a period there where I was a full-on follower. I’ve just come back from Sydney as well, living there for 5 years, and you know, it’s like a religion over there…

Especially in Sydney right?

Yeah, I followed the Doggies (the Canterbury Bulldogs club) over there, and I have done some work for them, and the Wests Tigers as well. Friday nights were pretty customary to stay home and watch the games!

Well, after such a controversial build up, the Kiwis made a good start last night anyway against Samoa… [The rest of the tournament did not bode so well, but that’s another story…]

Yeah, it was a good game!

But let’s get back to the main reason we are chatting, you are here in Christchurch painting this tribute mural to the coach of the Kiwis David Kidwell, how did that come about?

I got approached by ChristchurchNZ, they were looking at doing something quite unique to help as an activation for the Rugby League World Cup. They were aware of what I’ve done in the past and stuff and so they approached me. I’m pretty fussy when it comes to doing any kind of commercial gigs and all that, they need to align true to what I’m about as well, and who I am as a person. I’m all about supporting people that I respect, so I though, I’m keen for that. It’s a good opportunity for me.

And this is the only piece being painted? There are no other murals being painted around New Zealand for the World Cup?

Yeah, it’s just this one.

Being quite particular with commercial works, I would suggest that after the last couple of years and the amazing projects you’ve been able to undertake, you now have the profile where you can be a bit more selective, or has that always been something that you’ve been careful about?

Yeah, I guess for me, I’ve chipped away at it to a point where I’m able to do that you know. I’m grateful for that. But obviously its hard work and all that, but as an artist you know, for me,  I’m always just trying to keep my work honest, and authentic and as a reflection of what I’m about really. I kind of filter any jobs or enquiries that come through, through that filter first man, and just go from there.

I read recently that you don’t necessarily agree with your work being pigeon-holed within the term ‘street art’. For me, I think your work is indicative of the contemporary mural renaissance that is going on around the world, which should be acknowledged as providing a different context to the complicated narratives of ‘street art’, would you agree? I mean obviously artists are always wary of being placed within restrictive definitions, but the muralism movement provides some breathing room, do you see yourself more as part of that emergence?

Yeah, for sure man, but the thing is I’ve got a body of work that I’ve been chipping away at on the downlow really for a while, that as an artist I feel is, you know, an accurate representation of what I’m about. So you know I’m getting into whakairo, which is Maori carving, and incorporating some of those elements that aren’t anything to do with street art. You know, actually my background is strong drawing and portraiture and you know, I’ve done a lot of acrylic painting, and a lot of canvas work prior to doing street art per se, but the thing is with the street art medium and the scale and you know I guess the way everything’s heading right now, it just gets everyone’s attention and just because you’re holding a spray can people think, oh wow, you’re a cool funky street artist! I don’t get caught up in all that man. For me I prefer to paint in really remote rural locations, where no-one’s around, it’s just cows and just peace and quiet and just me and the wall.

That’s something I’d like to come back to actually, but first I wanted to ask, because you mentioned your multi-disciplinary background, obviously people recognise how refined your aerosol technique is, is it almost like drawing now with a spray can for you? It certainly looks like it is…

Yeah, for sure, it’s the same approach you know, for me drawing is the foundation. Like there are a few street artists out there that sometimes I think they think the work that I do I’ve got like one secret trick that just makes it look really cool. But the reality is that it is just a lot of drawing, a lot of sketching and understanding principles like value, form, shading, lighting, all that sort of stuff, you know chroma, which comes into play with lighting, and how that effects realism in general, and all that sort of stuff man. If you have a well-rounded holistic understanding of all that stuff, I guarantee that will take your game to the next level, when it comes to photo realism anyway. I’m always learning, I’m always studying different artists’ approaches, learning from some of the old school masters and all that…

Do you find that there is always something to pick up regardless of the medium, that there is always something to explore in other artists’ diverse approaches?

Yeah, absolutely.

One thing I’ve always appreciated with the spray can, much like with a pen or a brush, or a pencil I guess, is that it is an extension of the body. When you’re working at that larger scale as well, do you find that it is a important to actually be in tune physically to be able to paint a work…

Yeah, absolutely, for sure man. You know, for me using cans, sometimes I feel like a little kid with crayons, because you’ve got a fixed palette, you can’t really mix colours with the freedom of oil painting, but it is quite playful in a sense for me as well.

When you are up on a scissor lift, you’ve got that time to think a lot, you must be reflecting a lot about how you are going about your process…

For sure, I think for me the learning is in the doing, with all this stuff, or with life in general really, the learning is always in the doing. You can only read text books so much, or whatever, or tutorials. But yeah, it’s like, it might just be little things but the learning is in the doing man.

In some ways, that relates back to the urban art movement, which is very much a DIY movement right? It’s not about being shown something in a class room first, it is about being out there and doing it. But then it sounds like your learnings come from lots of disparate places, which I feel is really valuable.

One of the things I have noticed, on your social media posts in particular, is how much you engage with the communities in which you work. There always seem to be group photos of you with members of these communities. It seems like I’m always seeing photos of you involved in different things, like I saw you tasting oysters down in Bluff!

Yeah! (laughs)

That obviously is really important for you, and is that…

Yeah, tasting oysters is really important!

(Laughs) How has that become more and more a part of your working process? I would suggest you need a certain profile to be able to do that, although social media helps with that, but is that social engagement something that has slowly evolved to become really important and central, or has it always been there…

For the community side of things my wife and I, our hearts have always been involved in community work, in some way, shape or form. When we first got married, which was sixteen years ago, we were youth pastors, so we’ve done a lot of street outreach and stuff. When we were in Sydney we would help feed the homeless in Parramatta. We believe, well we don’t believe, we know bro, through experience that there’s just a lot of hurting people in this world, and we’ve been through stuff as well, and so we’re able to connect with people, especially in smaller towns. I was brought up in Kawerau bro, where the population’s 5000 people, and it has had a bad rap for most of the last twenty, thirty years. My wife was brought up in Te Puke. We love people, and that’s a genuine aroha for people in general I guess, and I think it is just a natural overflow of who I am as a person, the type of person I am you know, they’ve got to be mingled and intertwined with art in some way shape of form, and my art making as well.

That portraiture is such a central theme in your work (obviously not the only theme, but a key theme) reflects that as well, right?

Oh yeah, portraiture can touch people’s hearts in a way that nothing else can really, you know, because you’re representing a person’s life and story. In some moments its been very powerful, you know, I painted one in Ruatoria, of Moana-nui-a-kiwa Ngarimu, he actually received a Victoria Cross, for his service in the Maori Battalion in World War Two. I painted his portrait on his homestead in Ruatoria, and his family were just so honoured and overwhelmed. Ruatoria is a small place, so yeah, the family just came together, they put on a big feed for me as well, sang a few waiata, gave me a koha as a gift. I was overwhelmed bro, deeply touched, and for me that’s the stuff that does it for me, using my art to touch people’s hearts in a real way. I don’t care if no-one knows about that stuff but it’s just very meaningful.

Coming back to the point that you brought up earlier, specifically the opportunities you have to paint in smaller, rural townships, do you feel the difference in terms of the relationship to place when you are painting in those types of areas, as opposed to an urban space like Christchurch? Is it quite a marked difference?

I guess for me, a lot of the small towns in New Zealand, they feel kind of left out, you know, by a lot of big gigs, or events and stuff, so you know, they get me rocking up there, painting a Farmlands mural and they treat like I’m a big celebrity or something you know, and it’s quite funny! But it’s beautiful bro, I love connecting with the young kids who like getting you to sign their scooters and all that. When I was in Paeroa, I signed an old lady’s walker, so you know, there are so many stories, there are so many characters you come across. I think for me, my type of art is a real adventure, like the cliff stuff (Mr G painted a vertical cliff face in Parawera near Te Awamutu) as part of painting a hundred portraits around New Zealand (Mr G is painting a hundred New Zealand portrait murals around New Zealand with the intention of producing a book documenting the experience and works), it’s all part of the adventure of what I do man, it’s not just painting a portrait, it’s the location…

It’s tied into the experience…

Yeah, it’s who it is and how that connects to the people there and all that sort of stuff, so I just try and be purposeful with what I paint and who I paint, and respectful as well.

I know you’ve got the dedication of the mural coming up soon, so to finish, you’ve mentioned you’ve come to Christchurch a few times, but this is the first large scale piece you’ve painted here?

Yeah, my first large scale, decent piece that I’ve done. The last couple I’ve done here were just like free time, play around pieces, so this is the first decent one I’ve been able to do here man. It’s been cool, like given how much Christchurch has been through and is still going through, you know, I guess for me it’s a cool opportunity to be able to come down and paint Kiddy (David Kidwell).

What’s you take on how the city has changed over those visits, and in particular, some of the artwork that has appeared over that time, is there anything that has really captured your attention?

I just love it all man, you know, I think it is great using the art to bring some zest and life back to the city, and encouragement back to the community. Art’s really good at doing that. I think, if the artists and their motive is to do that, then all power to them man and you know it’s a great thing.

It is important to take the time to really understand where you are, which is obviously something that is really important to you, and it’s the mark of the best artists, being able to gain a sensibility of the environment in which their working and embrace that and represent that in their work as well…

I think that is important bro. I think that even for myself, like in Maori culture if you go to another region, you’ve got to acknowledge the land and the people and all that, respectfully, and not just do whatever I want. But, it has been cool here in Christchurch, I’ve had an awesome time meeting everyone as well, and you know a lot of (David Kidwell’s) family and friends as well, so it has been cool.

Thanks so much for your time Mr G, I better let you get to the mural dedication…

Postscript:

As we walked around the corner to the site of the dedication I was witness to a fleeting interaction that exemplified Mr G’s approach. Two rugby league jersey wearing fans wandered into the lot surrounding the mural. Immediately Mr G greeted them, my first impression that he had known them for years, until they asked if he was the artist, to which he replied: “Yeah, I am…”, before formally introducing himself and beginning a conversation.  This willingness, indeed eagerness, to engage with people, to make sure both he and his art connect with the audience, a sentiment that rang throughout our conversation, was here evident in his actions, heart-warming proof of Mr G’s attitude and approach.