All To Write My Name (45RPM BabMag Article)

For those who can't wait, here's the latest article I wrote for BabMag on celebrated Bristol based nutter 45RPM.

ALL TO WRITE MY NAME

“This was planned and persistent vandalism designed to show off to others similarly minded, with no regard as to the wider impact” 

- Judge Michael Leeming on the sentencing of SMT Crew.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

How do you unlearn subversion? Once you have been through the fence how do you ignore the gaps? Graffiti is dangerous not only because of it’s inherent ability to put its practitioners in the light of the law but because many of the most memorable moments it gives us are not the action itself, but all those beautiful stupid things that surround it and the wider viewpoint it gives us. The oddballs and addicts, the ways in and over, can you ever make a successful transition to mainstream reality once you understand how to cheat it? Would a 9-5 not ache?

“Once a cleaner walked into our hotel room and started screaming as i’d had a nose bleed in the night and was covered in blood...plus someone had drawn a hammer head shark over my whole body. Another time I woke up upside down on a fence as my trainer had split on its three prongs and I’d fallen on my face and knocked myself out. I have a million of these pieces of rubbish, someone once asked me what I would say to a kid starting out, those are the things I thought of.”

To look at 45RPMS work is to see a sea of colour and humour and to speak to him is to hear nothing but a genuine warmth, a boundless and unadulterated love for this culture but graffiti can will destroy your life if you let it and amongst the daydream haze of adventures he recounted in our conversation, you could sense the twitch of loss and gnaw of time (R.I.P Buzz, Wayne and Ekons) were digging. From funky letterforms to his endless throwup variations to his perfect phrase based characters he is an individual for whom art is everything, an obsessive creative who dedicates most hours to any number of outlets and has done for the best part of two decades. Now living in Bristol his time is spent between graffiti, illustration, photography and until recently getting himself into as many anarchic situations as life will allow.

"I’ve been painting since 1999, i’ve moved cities, i’ve lost girlfriends, good mates and jobs all to write my name on a wall for a handful of people to see. I’m always tired, scared, hungover or nervous, my hands are cut up and my clothes ruined but I’m a positive person, even in the worst moments."

This fascination with new possibilities, the opportunity to find / forge new pathways and curate his own life is at the crux of 45RPMs celebrated work but therein for him (as for many readers I assume) is the core of the problem. There is an absolute and vibrant fascination with language, place, people and the way not only that they are used – but can be used, talking to RPM you get the idea that painting is beyond just putting medium to surface, it is the key to a different world. To get a proper insight into this we need only start with his photography, this predominantly 35mm work may not be the primary outlet of his creativity but it provides perhaps a more illuminating glimpse into it; whilst painting may be a depiction of the hand, photography is surely a depiction of the heart and in his snapshots graffiti meets halloween costume meets street life meets weird tattoos in a 35mm presentation on not what could be (as his painting serves) but what actually is. Little light hearted incidences of importance, the every day hours between action that bleed comedy. Some graffiti photography can be beyond dull but 45RPMs viewpoint is infectiously inviting.

Within these photos lies RPMs letterform variations but more notably that which has bought him to the limelight in the past few years, his characters. These operate around representing in literal terms the little oddities that language births and start life as beautifully clean ink drawings whose influence is taken from either well known pieces of cockney rhyming slang (‘dog & bone’, ‘apple & pears’), subcultural lexicon (‘biter’) or simple unique takes on phrases (‘no fox given’, ‘a pizza the action’). Beneath simply stating your name graffiti is a love for how language functions as an action inherent to our encounter with the world and whilst not all writers take their name directly from slang there are huge similarities between slangs idiomatic, openly metaphorical inventiveness and graffitis stylistic exploration and the spatial possibilities of meaning. A good piece of graffiti is its own poetry and looking at RPMs characters, who not only take directly from slang but add in the visual / spatial element of graffiti you can’t help but feel there is an overwhelming enthusiasm for how we construct and value meaning.

This inventive playfulness acts as a common theme throughout RPMs work, his desire to explore and encounter the world in as many ways as possible shows through even when the form is simplified to pure weaponised style; the throwup. These to 45 are “graffiti at its purest form”; mobile, agile beings able to be executed anywhere to maximum effect in minimal time andtherefore perfect for the natural wanderlust of a writer. Graffiti strives at its heart to uncover, to understand the world in a more unique way and the throwup is one of its strongest weapons, providing immediate access to that adrenaline fuelled existence -  “when I'm painting one I don't think about anything but that throw up, its like a switch is flicked. Its just you and the silence, a hyper awareness to noise and movement that if your lines well enough become a dance”. But again it comes back to pure enjoyment - “how can you can walk past an Oker throwup and not smile?”

It is this utter concentration on the moment, this fleeting escapism of which all writers are aware which is unfortunately, the most troubling – because it is this which is the crux of the problem which so concerns RPM at the moment. The more time you spend in your own world, as all great artists do, the more developed that vision becomes, the more divorced you are from ‘reality’. Adding in softly near the end our chat he remarks “Bukowski said find something you love and let it kill you, I have”.
Bumping into an old friend recently he tells of how he stared blankly when they mentioned their recent BBQ and kids, replying “nothing” when asked what he had been doing with himself because how are you supposed to explain all of this? In the words of writer Buford Youthward “after all, when the sun comes up, graffiti is beyond documentation” The longer you go the more affinity you find yourself having with drug addicts & armed robbers, and what are we if not both of those?

45RPM is an artist who creates passionately and this enjoyment is obvious in all his work, you cant help but laugh with him, but in answer to this question of ‘what happens next’ I would say one word; adapt. Life is a series of chapters, utilise your skills in a different way and make the most of it. To those doubting their path remember it is not the destination but the journey that matters and to me it seems that 45RPMs work is a pure celebration of this idea. Allow yourself a moment of clarity, we are luckier than most.

We could all stand to learn a lot from 45RPM.

“I’m 36, single and without a mortgage but I wouldn't have it any other way, one day i’ll have to calm down so until then i’ll keep burning the candle any way I can.” 

- 45RPM

4:30AM

tonight went to go see the sugarhill gang, didnt like it though, seemed like it was middle age digging at the grave lot going through the motions making money from dead moments
imagine having never grow above something which made you famous in the 80s, imagine vanilla ice sitting at home a legitimate and caring artist but only known for one song
imagine how long those nights mut be, imagine how long and lonely are the one timers, knowing that theyre better than their lime light says.
because respect lost is defeat, you cant crawl back to strong and stable
nah that scars your fable, chris brown will forever be known for violence
what seems may be for now, but what could be should never be shadowed by its cloud
we respect it in our musicians and artists
i cant conceal a fate but i can change my ways and thats important in allowing growth
the ability to be wrong and move on, to change song
forever shedding effects in time and sentience
back to normal static relevance
embibed in the hive mind like resonance, shifting atwist beneath the crowds
a one type billionath of matter in a mind
we aint stopped that feet first ape
no rest for the wicked
for freedom we chase
ran right by god
didnt see him in the twisting turner blinker of a mirror, havent seen him around here
walked upright and straight into error

but i see him every now and then, in a day with too much coincidence or lining enjoyments lingering glare
i sense a certain beauty intransient in here
unexplainable, maybe self confidence in perfect objectivity, a pure state of stillness with the ocean

Ways Of Seeing (CHU BabMag Article)

Finally got round to picking up the new issue of Babmag for which I wrote an article on midlands 3D graffiti specialist CHU.

Here's the full piece.

Ways Of Seeing
The Work of Chu
by Murdok

“the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight” - John Berger

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” - William Blake

“Teenager leaves spectacles on floor of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art as a prank, leading some to think they were an exhibit” - The Guardian, 2016.

Pareidolia, the name given to the way the brain will interpret and find patterns in shapes where there are none presents us with an interesting view into our imagination when looked at through the lens of art & creativity. If these simple instances of mental trickery made in moments of fright or fancy can construct worlds that simply are not there then what does it mean for our wider engagement with reality? What have we built that does not exist? Or more excitingly...what perhaps, are we missing?

Born in 1971 in Blakenall, Walsall Chu is an artist of multidisciplinary interest whose practice incorporates graffiti, world record breaking mural attempts, print, installation, video game design and a large role in the digital 3D rendering world. As he puts it though, there is a common theme of giving the viewer “more validity…..a super-human power” running throughout his work, whatever medium it is executed in there is a paramount interest in breaking down barriers through the introduction of the spectator to, and immersion of them in any number of different alternate realities.

Having just passed into his 34^th year as a graffiti artist and with 20 of those spent organising events his client base mirrors this lifetime of dedication with such companies as Coca-Cola, Virgin Trains (alongside Jamie Hewlett), Glastonbury Festival (numerous times), Nintendo, Digital Arts Magazine and even Banksy (who hired him as a print and event consultant) all seeking out his talents over the years.

To encounter Chu’s cross platform work is to have a glimpse into worlds beyond our own, beyond the realm of pure 2D representation and dipped into fantasy. As a self-confessed video game addict and having enjoyed employment with Walsalls leading games developers early in his career Chu is well versed in the creation of separate spaces that both mentally and physically engage users in their experience. For his ‘Cubic Experiment’ project Chu constructed an enclosed, decorated cube that upon entering would create an all around artistic experience when viewed from a single point in its centre. Disorientating, even for himself (Chu found it hard to distinguish between wall, floor and ceiling during the process) the piece sought to merge his fascination with the material capabilities of illustration and the immersion of virtual spaces.

Bringing the possibilities of the virtual realm to the street has meant that Chu has explored and experimented (sometimes on a huge scale) with ideas of 3D graffiti for a long time, whereas traditional Wildstyle graffiti feigns affiliation with projection from a surface its primary focus remains the distortion of letters, not of space, which ultimately means any environment created is understood as being linked to that surface and unfortunately retracts any promise of proper absorption into it. Chu understands something deeper though, that when a graffiti artist builds their name and style they are building a world – this being what we value outside of technical precision, the ideas graffiti artists (and wider artists as well obviously) communicate through their work. The best artists are the ones that make us see in the world a different, undiscovered place and in the case of Chu, whose work seeks to go beyond simple aesthetic fascination and into that pure meditative, hypnotic state that comes with a complete loss of self in contemplation, we find just that.

But whereas the virtual realm is limited to just that, virtual reality, Chu’s work in its use of the confrontational methods of graffiti and mural art forces us to examine and explore these ideas through sheer accidental exposure alone. These ‘Anamorphic Projections’ whilst meaningless from one view are reconstituted through the use of a specific standpoint or device and are a sublimely powerful act when mixed with the forceful space taking that graffiti employs. The everyday pedestrian can find themselves transported into a different world by simply being in the right place at the right time, they are a launch pad to alternate ways of seeing and just like Pareidolia work their magic suddenly – their absorption impossible to ignore.

Whilst the most illustrative and characterful depiction of these merged interests is most exactly given in the record-breaking mural attempt at ‘Hole In The Wall’ in Walsall town centre in which Chu single handedly painted a 40x95ft anamorphic projection mural over 42 days, the most precise and stunning experiment with these ideas is his black and white geometric work. Whereas the variation of subject matter (characters, letters, background) in traditional graffiti offer a chance to break up a surface – the consistency of line and colour in these monochromatic works do not give us that chance. Employing these devices of optical illusion for projects such as See No Evil and Room K in Bristol as well as the simply astounding “largest ever freehand 3D graffiti illusion” for City Of Colours mean the possibilities of graffiti and street art have been taken to a new level, especially when they’re painted without projectors, ladders or measuring devices – as Chu is prone to doing.

In Chu we have a master of alternative realities, a connoisseur of the understanding that art can be more than simple posturing. Together with the subtle political humour that creeps through the titles and ideas of much of his work we are shown an artist adept at getting to the crux of our experience and forcing us to confront how we perceive, engage and construct it. He is an artist that takes us to the edge of our reality, and demands we jump.  

In The Fields The Bodies Burning.

The flickering flames drowned over the screaming of some names as I confronted the kid who was building that huge fucking pyre in the graveyard in stoke
I smelt a grim stench recognisable as death
we sat down against the stone, shared a can or two of worms, spilt some cider on our clothes whilst we watched the orange glow slowly engulf their bones
he said he’d heard about those political scandals, read the papers knew his angles decided side with all the vandals against the digging at the heart by those above
in one hand his knuckles white as tight he gripped some gasoline,
but put it down when he had to drag more bodies to the heap,
mps, celebrities – he didn’t differentiate between
all was equal in that primal light
all was equal beneath soil and starry sky
at home in silence decided to solve matters without debate
scythe and weigh all the evils that these money men create
the panama papers, mps expenses, david Cameron fucking a pig
now he tied a lot of knots, ignored a lot of groans, over the cackling of a fire focused instead on his seething, gritted teeth tight form of hope.
determined to make a charcoaled and heaving mass, towering crumbling carbon ash and black –
rolled someones history, someones personality in his fingertips then…*blow*… blew it back
a crooked type of augustus
building an empire from several degrees
a blistering type of justice

the cloven hooves are back again
I hear them clicking on the rooves of all my kin
don’t let them in
don’t let them in

he barely moved or muttered further after that,
kept eyes fixated on that glowing burnt inferno
stoked and poked at any murmurs til they ceased.
that danse mcabre dug no hole in which to shovel that fall of rome, just slowly paced around his creation, cremated
come tomorrows dewy dawn
would set out, pile more flesh in mounds

our progress a slow descent, an ape bipedal made
still flings his shit around afraid
against that end of light afraid
we lurch and shriek in shame

some was me, most was them – lost a youth now a melancholy of older man. Leonard Cohen died and is Trump is president.
All was me, all was you, all was them

the cloven hooves are back again
I hear them clicking on the rooves of all my kin
don’t let them in
don’t let them in

Away

You were the most glorious of fucks

The most sublime of cunts

I was everywhere with you

A giant oozing wound

I clocked them from time
thought it best to keep walking
keep talking
because that’s a couple o’youths right there searching for their prime
at 3:45 on a saturday night
unsure of to how release it
except on random people in parks at night

couple hoods covered
couple tall ones

id clocked them from time
guess they had too
7 stalking meaning in the lamplight of a covered moon

but ive no doubt they wouldve done it
sacrificial cuttings and sudden plummet
the harvest sow of progression yields a lone summit 

NBD

I shuddered
how many mothers had I met 
how much baited breath had they kept 

Summer time and the living was simple 
back when those doors opened 
not anymore though, not since the industry left 
Maybe thats what caught my eye, a fleeting horizon escaping the sight 
A desperate daughter of communal hype 
In anxious sad searching for prisons of pride 

Freedom, cut me loose
Freedom, freedom, where are you? 

I still don’t understand the plight