London Wall: How graffiti artist got council authorities to clean up their act (VIDEO)
London-based graffiti artist Mobstr has had the last word in a yearlong battle with local authorities, as he tried to break their rigid clean-up system.
The anonymous graffiti artist, aka Mobstr, noticed the drably painted wall of an electricity substation in the Hackney Wick area a year ago.
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“I used to cycle past this wall on the way to work every day, and I noticed a pattern emerging. Anything, any graffiti done within the red area was painted over in red. Anything outside the red area was pressure washed,” Mobstr told RT on Tuesday. “And it seemed like a pattern that was adhered to quite strongly. It got me thinking if I could try to break this pattern.”
So, the artist started spraying messages in black capital letters to provoke a reaction from Tower Hamlets Council. They duly replied with another layer of red paint. This was repeated 12 times over the year.
A video posted by MOBSTR (@m.obstr) on Jun 29, 2015 at 3:08am PDT
“I’d call this an experiment in a sense that I wasn’t sure what results it would yield and what the outcome would be. But it wasn’t really a serious experiment in that I was just playing around with the system,” Mobstr said. “Usually, with the works I do, I have a definite idea of where the workers are going to go or what the outcome would be, but this particular piece… I wasn’t too sure how it would progress, how it work out. And that’s what intrigued me, interested me in this.”
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This April, the council cleaner decided to paint the entire building red. However, Mobstr wasn’t at a loss for words. He left a final message on the freshly painted wall, saying: “Well, that's one way to end it. Thanks mate, it's been fun.”
