Bristol Festival 2008

This was to be the 10th anniversary of ‘Walls on Fire’ which I also got invited to paint at. It was organised by Banksy and saw around half a mile of hoardings in the heart of Bristol getting a makeover from artists far and wide. I painted alongside my Black Country stable mate Temper and the local boys the Bad Applz way back then.

This time I worked alongside Inkie and Cheba who organised the artists for the festival. I got to say it couldnt have gone smoother. I went in thinking it was going to be version 2, like a ‘Walls on Sale’. Thankfully the weather was cooking and the wall was working wonderfully on both sides. We nicknamed the two – ‘Memory Lane’ (nice one Jer). There were early notifications of a grey border surrounding the entire wall (roger that), a black background (roger) and loads of free Sabotaz paint (wouldn’t buy it anyway). I span out a bit of a freestyle alongside Inkie on our journey across west, I ended up cutting a rather large piece of paper into small pieces so i could use the wrongly booked, non-table seat… Slowly worked out my vibe – the song by the Wurzels (with a ‘u’) and Worzel Gummidge (with an ‘o-werdip’), featuring the stylised scarecrow himself and some of the lyrics of ‘Brand New Combine Harvester’ (i’ll give you the key).

Worzel had a hedgehog that he used to comb his hair so he was to have the key to the comby. I wanted the piece to evoke some heritage in the event, 10 years and all. I really enjoy the place and the people and wished to celebrate that, so a comby seemed the natural course, even if it was complicated. I had plenty of help working out what the parts actually did and looked like.

Anyway, the black background turned into a sunset, my fields turned into a soup of cables being farmed for their high speaker yield, overflowing ontot he grey border.

Sold as seen.

One careful owner.

[thanks to acerone for the finished photography]