In the lesser-known Brothers
Grimm fairy tale ‘Iron Hans’, a young
Prince is told to steal a golden key from beneath his mother’s pillow in order
to set Iron Hans, an imprisoned Neanderthal man free. The Prince refuses on
many occasions until one day, his courage builds and his curiosity can hold him
back no longer. He quietly creeps into the Queen’s bedroom and takes the golden
key from the very place that his mother dreams of him becoming a nobleman. This
part of the Iron Hans story symbolises betrayal; the betrayal of the mother at
a stage in a young mans life where he sees no other choice but to show her in
no uncertain terms that she is no longer needed as his sole guardian in life
and that from now on, he is in charge of his own destiny. Using his own knife,
he has cut the proverbial apron strings.
200 years on from the first
publication of ‘Iron Hans’, I read
with intrigue the hidden metaphors and meanings embedded within the story
rediscovered by American poet Robert Bly in his book ‘Iron John’. The trials and tribulations faced by a man on his
pathway through life appear to be the same irrelevant of what time we live in –
the coming of age folk tale that is Iron
Hans looks to be as relevant today as it ever has been.
At this point in the story the
Prince is a young teenager, roughly the same age as I was when I discovered
graffiti, spray cans and Subway Art(1). From the first time I held a can and made that scrawly, drippy line on
a garage wall in the lane behind my childhood house, I knew I was hooked. Bus
rides to Brislington warehouse hall of fame, Dean Lane skate park and Barton
Hill youth club fuelled my new found passion and soon I began to pick up the
skills of the trade; sketching outlines, sourcing spray paint, mixing colours,
and making my letters bounce of the wall – the initiation of becoming a
graffiti artist had begun.
The graffiti scene is a
notoriously difficult world to infiltrate but once accepted, a part of you will
stay indefinitely. It becomes impossible to step onto a train without imagining
it covered in bright interwoven colours that spell out your name. You can’t
walk past tags on the High Street without decoding who it was that left their
mark, just for you. Those Sparvar fumes will forever linger.
For a subculture that on the
surface appears to concern itself primarily with freedom of expression and
anti-authoritarianism, the graffiti subculture harbours an implausible amount
of politics. Internal hierarchies, tuff wars, snobbery, angst and jealousy
blight the scene and force its members to subscribe to a strict set of rules
akin to the 10 commandments. For years I believed our way was the only way, that art history began in 1960’s New York
(or perhaps even earlier in Philadelphia), that stencils were cheating and
‘Keeping it Real’ was paramount.
18 years after I made my
first marks with a spray can the excitement of painting graffiti has faded. I
question the rationale of writing the same set of letters, with the same spray paint,
on the same walls, time and time and time again. The urge to create however remains
as strong as it ever was. The problem is that simply changing my palette and
trying out a slightly different style is no longer enough to keep me painting
graffiti in the traditional sense.
Three years ago I became a
father to my own son and with parenthood comes less free time. This is a fact.
My graffiti painting days had become numbered and I found myself returning to
my other, less time absorbing passion, photography. Once wife and child were
sound asleep I would steal an hour or two from the night and venture out with
camera, tripod and timer to capture traces of the city’s low-level light. But
all too soon I missed the process of painting and so began to use these
photographs as a new source of inspiration for works that I could produce at
home; a new sort of work based on canvas. These paintings gained attention from
a new audience, perhaps more attention than my street based graffiti had and in
time I found innovative ways to sell these pieces to people who, much to my
surprise and delight, were happy to part with a couple of hundred pounds for an
original artwork that they could hang on their wall…
… and then it struck me. I
had broken one of graffiti’s most important self-imposed commandments; ‘Thou
Shalt Not Sell Out!’
Graffiti is like an over
protective, jealous parent. It rears its young, teaches them hard love, dresses
them up in its uniform and ensures its children have lots of friends to play
with. But the minute a child decides that it is his time to move out, the
parent will suddenly turn on him and will stop at nothing to strike the traitor
down! It will call you names - ‘Black Sheep’, ‘Art Fag’, ‘Sell Out’, and will
laugh out loud when your post-graffiti work is out on display.
Iron Hans, the Neanderthal
man in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale told the young Prince that he must steal
the golden key from under his mother’s pillow so that he can use it to set the
wild man free. But this is my story and
the time has come to release my own wild man and accompany him into a new
place, a big place I am unfamiliar with; an enchanted forest of my own. The
time is right for me to betray my own jealous parent.
‘Where is Iron John?’ is my
first solo show in London and opens on 11th October 2012 in the
Apricot Gallery, 16-18 Heneage Street, Brick Lane, E1 5LJ
