Early street artists join effort to ‘paint the change’ in downtown London

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As teenagers at Beal secondary school embracing hip hop, James Kirkpatrick and Darcy Obokata gravitated to the alleyway off Clarence Street.

The wall on the alley was a free wall, meaning graffiti artists could come and practice their craft legally and without hassle.

“It was a small fringe movement, a subculture, a bunch of friends. The wall became a point of gravity, drawing you here,” Obokata said.

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The building housed record store Dr. Disc and it was only natural the managers opened up the wall to graffiti artists in the early ’90s as hip hop grew.

“We used to call it the Disc wall, come paint the Disc wall,” Kirkpatrick said. “It was the legal wall where we got better at painting. We became better artists.”

Thirty years later, the two artists and about a dozen others returned to the wall during the Canada Day long weekend to refresh and repaint it.

“There’s been a ton of illegal graffiti that’s brought the character of the alleyway down,” said Ken Galloway, creative lead of the Wet Paint Initiative, an collective creating urban art across the city.

“A lot of the paint is peeling, a lot of the paint is fading, and a lot of the best work has been eroded by little scrawls and little scribbles. We felt this alleyway is long overdue for repainting,” Galloway said.

But there’s more than fresh art at play.

Galloway and the initiative wants to bring London into the modern world of cities that consistently and properly support and recognize the value of urban art.

“We hope that in addition to paying tribute to the history of this amazing spot, and creating vitality for the downtown core, we look at more legal urban art events and opening more walls for legal graffiti,” Galloway said.

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Urban art, or graffiti art, adds vibrancy to streets, draw customers to businesses, and promotes social activism that helps marginalized residents, proponents say.

“The Wet Paint Initiative is trying paint the change that we desire in the city,” is how Galloway puts it.

It was important to get some of London’s original artists back at the wall during the weekend to fuel the change, he said.

“There’s a lot of talk at the municipal level about revitalizing the downtown core and some of these strategies include urban art. As part of the vanguard of urban art for decades, it was important for these guys to have a voice in the conversation as well as a seat at the table,” Galloway said.

“This wall holds a ton of significance. If this was any other alleyway, you wouldn’t get people who have moved away from the city so eager to come back and be part of this.”

Five crews of one to three or four people each began the weekend scraping sections of the alley wall, which runs like an L from Clarence Street to a parking lot off of York Street.

By Sunday, the art was taking shape, in some cases almost finished. The crews were using paint supplied by Sherwin Williams, a sign of the growing acceptance in some quarters of the urban art.

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The wall was last refreshed in 2012, during an event held by Artfusion.

If you could peel back the layers of paint on the wall, you could see the history of urban art in London, the artists who have come through and gone on to international acclaim, Galloway said.

“It’s kind of the best of the best who have rolled through our city and brought style through the decades. Everyone’s painted there.”

From their early start on the wall, Kirkpatrick and Obokata have travelled the world, sometimes together, painting. Their artistry has branched into music and breakdancing, and both have worldwide reputations as multimedia creators.

“I was a young person trying to figure out myself,” Obokata recalled of his high school days. “I wasn’t an athlete and a scholar, I found my people and my tribe.”

Kirkpatrick came to the wall as a lover of music and a skateboarder, and a kid who liked to draw but didn’t really know what to do with it.

Both have seen other efforts to widen urban art rise and fall in London, but have hope the Wet Art Initiative, and the support of organizations such as the Western Fair District, will bring permanent improvement.

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“We believe urban arts is an incredible tool for building social good in a city,” Galloway said.

The 32 murals already fostered by the Wet Paint Initiative have provided about $350,000 of work and talent to London for free, he said.

He’s hoping the city will invest some of that back into support for future projects, ones developed and created by true graffiti artists knowledgeable about the culture and the craft.

“If a city is going to invest dollars in urban arts, we want to make sure those dollars go into creating as much impact for the city as possible,” Galloway said.

He plans to meet with Mayor Josh Morgan on Tuesday to gain his support.

“We felt like there’s been an institutionalized glass ceiling over the city when it comes to the urban arts and creative best practices.”

Painting at the Disc alley Sunday, German artist Saskia Widdison knows what kind of city London could be.

She moved to London in February.

“I went to the London Arts Council and other places and asked for free walls and practice walls and it was really hard to find anything,” she said.

She then met Galloway, and some walls opened up. But London needs more, she said.

“I am not used to no free walls. Normally wherever you’re in any city in the world, even half the size of London, there would be some kind of free wall or area for people to paint legally.”

All over Europe, cities and people have embraced urban art, Widdison said.

The long history of the Disc alley, and the return of artists, are evidence of what she believes.

“Street art is everywhere,” she said. “Trying to shut it down doesn’t really work.”

rrichmond@postmedia.com

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