I started the magazine, back then it was a zine, it was just black and white, photocopied
images of street art and graffiti that I had taken pictures of in my spare time.
And yeah, I just printed I think 100, 120 copies of the first one and just gave them
away for free and the response was really great and then did another one, issue 2 and
then issue 3, I got a thousand printed and started selling them, issue 7, Greg, who's
not here unfortunately.
Greg is not here.
That's very sad.
I'm quite upset about that.
You realise that with a little bit of help from some key people, we could bring it all
together and turn it into a business which is to become.
My love of street art and graffiti came from when I was a bit younger and I used to do
a bit of graffiti and since those early days I've sort of been hooked.
I realised early on that I wasn't the best graffiti writer so I started documenting it
and that's how it's happened and that's how it is today.
If I see a piece anywhere, I'm just addicted to taking pictures and sharing them.
I literally used to live just on the other side of this building and round here is obviously
the centre of all things street art, certainly in England.
Living in this part of London, it's difficult to not be inspired by the artists on the streets
because there's always new stuff going on, the stuff that you don't like, the stuff
that you do like.
It's become obviously much more mainstream in the last few years but people can name
artists and walk around and see those artists work live and it can change from week to
week.
We're lucky enough that when we do our launches, which we launch quarterly, we have people
sort of waiting outside just to be part of this and I think what we do is basically we
allow people to own a piece of artwork which is a unique artwork which is specific to an
artist, limited edition, for a really reasonable price or at least we think it's a reasonable
price, right?
You know, I always like it if you tell the truth, you can never go wrong, you know, it's
not like it's right or wrong, it is what it is, right?
The thing I love about street art is that it's just got such variety, you've got guys
who use the placement and just use clever messaging, you've got people like C215 who
have just an incredible amount of artistic skill to be able to create something like
that.
It's not just the message, I think it needs to be aesthetically pleasing, I think it's
about where they place the art, the environment it's in.
It's something great in every artist and if you'd ask me if I think the way an artist
works is important to me, I probably would have said no before I saw something like Vils
where he chips away at the war where I wouldn't even have imagined that was possible.
So every time there's a new artist that I love, I love him for a different reason.
Generally when I go to a new city to make an invasion, I buy a map, it's the first thing
I do and I ask to everybody I meet to tell me where are the good areas of the city.
I really enjoyed meeting in Bader, Space in Bader and we went to Paris, went to a studio
and it was amazing, it was a bit of a dream come true because I'd always wondered what
he looked like, what he was going to be like and he turned out to be the most lovely gentleman,
wasn't he?
And he was just great and showed us around the studio.
Do you ever have any trouble at customs if you're taking these things?
Not really, the problem is now I cannot take them in the plane with me because after 9-11
I think it's a weapon.
One thing I say about in Bader, he was very kind and kept offering us a Coca-Cola or coffee
with a lot of kind of very caffeinated interview and he also stuck stickers all over my phone
and my laptop.
I didn't ask him to, he just did that as a kind of thing.
As a gift to you?
As a gift and nobody believes me that it was really him who did it.
Everyone thinks that I just put them on there but it was actually him so I want this on
tape so he got this from what it...
You stuck them on before you went out there, right?
He definitely did that so that's really cool, it's one of my claim to fame.
You touched in Bader.
I did.
You touched in Bader's face.
As I said, we've got our list of our favourite artists, we've got, you know, Retina is amazing,
he's got this amazing style, he's based in Los Angeles, it's a style unlike any other,
it's very...
It feels like sort of an Arabic font almost but it's kind of...
It's just...
We were really, really happy to have him in the magazine.
Personally a highlight of my V&A career was meeting this guy because he had this piece
over just off Brick Lane which was right near where I lived and that was one of the
first pieces of street art that every time I walked past it I just had to stop and look
and admire it for a second because I thought it was one of my favourite pieces of all time
and it was great to meet him and see a studio and to realise that street artists work in
massive studios that are all Bricks everywhere and it's all messy and the cigarette butts
on the floor and it's really cool to see that...
Stereotype exists.
Yeah, the stereotype does live strong.
It also feels like this has kind of come full circle now whereas before graffiti in
street art was very anti-establishment and it was very much anti-commercial, now a lot
of people see street artists posting their work on walls as advertising their work which
will be in a gallery a few months later so it's a very big grey area.
It's a question that we ask virtually all the artists who appear in the magazine because
it's something that lots of people have different opinions on and it's something that I've personally
not made my mind up yet because I find it such an interesting thing that it always changes.
Artists have different opinions and they use the street in a different way.
