Gone 161 is the current alias of one of the most prolific and revered graffiti writers currently active in the North East. He first began spray-painting in his early teens with friends he met BMXing and his ten year career has taken him travelling to paint all over the UK and Europe. I tracked him down late one night to chat about the most subversive of art forms.
How would you describe your style of graffiti?
That’s a tough one. It’s a bit of a mixed bag of things I like really, but it’s an odd one. When I think about the graffiti writers that I like my work is nothing like theirs so I’m not even sure if I paint the style of graffiti that I like. A lot of it just comes naturally, certain shapes and letter forms that you find yourself repeating.
You would have to list influences to go in to a real style analysis but I guess first and foremost it’s the people you paint with and who you watched get up around you. And the people you hold in high esteem - I like a lot of French graffiti, a lot of Scandinavian and Italian graffiti styles too.
You got in to graffiti through BMXing. Do you see them as part of the same subculture?
Graffiti doesn’t really go in the same bracket as an extreme sport like BMXing because there’s not really a sporting element to it, but then again I would argue there’s not really that much of a sporting element to BMXing either really, especially with street riding and that sort of thing.
They’re both hobbys but there’s a lot more to it than that too. They’re lifestyles. I guess there’s an element of danger to both which compels people to push themselves and to get more involved in it. It’s quite empowering, when you risk a lot for something it becomes quite worthwhile in a way.
Do you think the empowerment comes out of rebellion and a rejection of social norms?
I guess a little bit. I never liked football when I was growing up and really disassociated myself from it because of the rivalry and everything that it brought with it where I grew up. I was always looking for something else and had a lot of energy to be used so BMXing and then graffiti as a follow on from that were natural progressions.
Riding a BMX you were always looked at as a bit of a freak and it was the same with graffiti, it was a bit of an oddball thing to do and that was nice. There weren’t as many clean cut rules to it so you had to find your own path in a way and that was exciting.
Given the massive risks involved, what are the rewards that make it worthwhile?
The rewards are really an inner thing. There’s a lot of satisfaction and feeling of self achievement. You know you haven’t wasted another night drinking where you’ve just spent all your money with no memory of it. You’ve been out and done something constructive. You can get a photograph and document it. If you know you’ve pulled off what you planned then you can get a deep sense of reward.
Obviously if you’re painting for your peers and an older, respected writer turns around and says they’ve seen what you did and it’s good then you get a little buzz inside but really you’ve got to be motivated for yourself. The people who come and go early on are the ones who are painting for their peers. The ones who stick around are the ones who are doing it for themselves because it’s what they love and it’s what they want to do with their spare time really.
How do you feel about the public perception that graffiti is nothing more than ‘pissing on lampposts’?
‘Pissing on lampposts’ sort of brutalises it a little bit but it is a brutal thing in a way. It’s a very selfish thing. Graffiti writers certainly don’t ask for any permission or approval. You do it for yourself and for other graffiti writers so in a way it becomes your own language.
Tags are never going to be understood by anyone who’s never done them before because to the untrained eye they’re not very aesthetically pleasing. Once you get into it it’s like learning to read another language. You can read it and understand it and you can see how it’s been achieved, the materials used, the people - perhaps from different countries - who have done them. You can literally see how people have moved, who’s passed through a certain part of the city centre that weekend and it’s a really addictive thing.
Personally I really find it adds to a place. I’d never want to see a tag on the side of a beautiful piece of architecture, but at the same time there’s nothing worse than a grey wall. If that grey wall is covered in graffiti, whether that’s by children or activist students or graffiti writers or whatever, that’s better than a grey wall in my opinion.
Is it easier to be a graffiti artist these days than it used to be?
There are as many pros and cons for someone who is coming up these days. All of the paint is there, the quality is so much better so you can paint quicker and easier than anyone would have imagined ten years ago. At the same time the levels of security have risen with things like CCTV, motion sensors and DNA technology.
The game is constantly advancing. It is as much as a battle as before. For every step the graffiti market makes to make the products better the technology as far as the law goes are advancing as well. Especially in England I feel that we’re seeing the tail end of serious graffiti and that we’ll be one of the first countries to eradicate it completely.
So is graffiti in a sense a game?
It’s definitely a game and I don’t think anyone is clearer with that than the authorities themselves. It’s cat and mouse, though I’m not sure exactly who is the cat and who is the mouse.
Where is the Newcastle graffiti scene at now?
A lot of people would comment that the scene is dead, that it used to be so much better and there did used to be quite a strong scene in Newcastle. It took a bit of a dive but of late I’ve seen it start to perk up a bit and there are a lot of young guys out there doing good stuff.
There’s a bit of a divide now coming between who is a writer and who is an artist. It’s an easier thing to do now, you can go and paint various permission walls and put your photos on the internet or send them to magazines and be praised for that and have that as your niche and be very happy with it. On the other side though there are always going to be the people who are going only do illegals who will go out and perhaps stir things up a bit and maybe they don’t have the same access to materials and that sort of money who are limited to the paint they can use and the time they have. I think there is going to be a cleaner divide between artistic graffiti and the more vandalistic side of it.
It seems like the quality of graffiti getting painted has declined over the years, what do you think?
It’s a problem with the buff (graffiti clean-up crews) essentially. There were pieces that were there for ten or fifteen years, maybe done when there was a lot more time to work cos security wasn’t as tight so they could spend all night there painting and they were pieces that I think everyone came to love in some way shape or form. But no the buff is so efficient that walla literally get cleaned on an almost daily basis so no-one is going to invest the time and effort in doing a 30 colour piece to see it cleaned off within four or five days, that would be madness.
That’s what the buff has brought unfortunately. The graffiti still gets done but it’s brought the quality down to chrome and blacks, throw-ups and tags. These things have replaced the beautiful full-colour pieces we used to see. It’s city economics really.
Do you think you’ll ever reach a point where you feel you’ve accomplished what you set out to accomplish as a graffiti writer?
It’s a difficult one ‘cos you set yourself goals and when you achieve those things you think somewhere in your mind you’d be content but, you know, you paint a whole car and then you want to paint a full colour whole car. You might paint the tube in London and then the next step is you want to paint every tube system in the UK and that’s the problem. There’s always a next step and a next barrier.
I can’t think of any example where someone would consider that they’ve completed a perfect lifetime of work, there will always be a new frontier. As you age and your tolerances grow you find yourself pushing yourself further and further so that barrier is set further and further back. It’s just when you decide to call it quits really, or when someone else decides to call it quits for you - which in the case of graffiti does occasionally happen unfortunately.
So does it become addictive?
Everything is addictive in a sense, but graffiti is like anything else in that it becomes more enjoyable once you start to become good at it and it’s only after those initial formative years that you gain skill and if you persist at it you can really feel the rewards.
The first time I ever did it the paint I had just blew up in my hands. I managed to get the first line of my name up but that was it the first time. I knew from that moment that I could do it though and knew it was something I was going to try to do so got more paint and more paint and it just spiralled from there really.
What do you think of painting legal walls?
There is still a level of satisfaction with permission walls but it’s never the same satisfaction as when you’ve done something under the cover of darkness. You go back the next day to see it in all its glory. Maybe there are a couple of mistakes that you hadn’t noticed but that’s part of the parcel.
The anticipation is one of the best parts of doing it. When you go back to see the work the next day and you don’t know how the colours have sat next to each other until you can see it in the day light.
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