Southbank Freestyle

It’s been around 12 years since I painted with these guys. We were in a crew called Ikonoklast whose members, at one time, had about 12 contributors spanning the UK.

After a few phone calls we established a spot and simply crafted our way through a four hour piece. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to use the already painted wall as a ‘mid tone’ and sculpt the shapes with light and darks, worked better at the bottom, but soon became harder to fix when painting with two others.

Everything became second nature though, as we just pursued our own levels of working, inter-weaving and getting on with it. Some way into the piece, a film crew had set up right in front of us, doing some dancing and throwing bmx bikes to a pop tune. Then Jonzy D popped by to breakdance on our found chair (which was covered in other liquids, but was great for the top reach).

We tickled the colours until the skies began to break, light was dropping although it was the best lit wall in the space. We’d avoided getting clumped by summat on wheels and enjoying two cups of tea – rocked a freestyle with cans we had found in the forgotten cupboard at home and still left as if we hadn’t even been there…

Felt really good.