Part2ism

Part2ism Interview

Part2ism is the undisputed pioneer of British photorealism. His unique graffiti career has spanned over twenty years and his reputation has been firmly cemented in the annals of British graffiti history. More recently, his work has taken a more progressive and thematic approach. With a decade of music production under the Big Dada label also part of this man’s impressive resume, it seems that his creative boundaries know no end…UKAdapta was lucky enough to organize an interview with him after his recent “Artillery For Pleasure” show at the Urban Angel gallery.

- For the readers who don’t already know you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself in terms of your creative pastimes?

"Babies", Scotland 1992

P2: I just like listening to music and doing something different everytime! I go to the gym and like to read now and again, apart from that everything is all work. Many say that the work chooses you, I never asked to be part of any of this art. I could have lived a normal life, ha ha. If you want to read about my background you can read it here: www.myspace.com/part2ism

There’s also links to Tamara (miscellany) & my music page on there...

- Describe your recent show in London, “Artillery For Pleasure”. What were your artistic intentions?

P2: Artillery For Pleasure was a collection of work based on the Tamara series that I worked on with Tamara and painted on various walls around London. It was all about keeping with the concept and experimenting with body positions and forms.

"Flight or Fight", Part2ism & Tamara, Birmingham 2009

I think communication through movement and using your body as language would sum it up. The aim was to keep the compositions as simple as possible while at the same time try to make the pieces multi-layered.

- I saw at the show that you had some of your ‘geometric’ pieces downstairs. Will you still be developing this aesthetic as well as your ‘realist’ works?

P2: I haven’t made any plans to develop that work any further recently. It was a project I called 'Hypertype' and mainly a project I was doing large scale outdoors in public spaces. The original work was installed in major cities around the world and up 30 feet long, all hand cut & placed by hand. The work I had in the show downstairs was just some small recreations I did for The Leonard Street gallery before they ceased trading last year. Most of those pieces you saw downstairs hadn’t even been stretched until then & had been left rolled up in tubes for about a year.

- Care to elaborate on the ‘Tamara’ pieces that have been appearing in London? Who is she and what does she represent?

P2: First & foremost she's my girlfriend & secondly she's an artist in her own right who works with many different mediums including photography. The images I've been spray painting of Tamara around London represent her as a free spirit in her natural glory fighting a war against media prescribed ideals.

Plane Wing For Mutate Britain, London, 2008

This is what the gas mask is about, the conflict of raw nature verses nuclear age thought. Something gains acceptance these days only to become a prescribed formula for others to follow. Individuality is never what it seems these days, so it seems.

- I have noticed that in your recent Tamara paintings, you have ‘cut-back’ a lot of the dark outlines with your fill background colour. Is this an evolution in your personal style?

P2: Yeah, it’s an evolution in general because when I first did it finding that yellow in a spray paint that could fill such negative space was pretty much impossible, emulsion was the only way but when I stepped back to observe, I could hear people saying things like "is that a paste up?" so I thought let’s roll with this. Cutting in with a brush just sharpens the whole thing up and produces a totally different feel, which is what I'll always support. If I did this on purpose I probably wouldn’t tell you anyway.

- You are best known for your photorealism skills. How would you say this sub-genre of graffiti has evolved over the past 20 years? Any current artists you rate in this genre?

"Sanguine", 2009

"Stretch", 2009

P2: Firstly, I wouldn’t call it a sub-genre since the fashion has spread most rapidly amongst writers who do it at the side of their letters. A portrait is what it was called back in the days and has replaced your Bode & B Boy character. There’s also another kind of person who only does portraits without the letters who's encouraged by outsiders accepting this simply because they don’t understand the written letter aspect. I can speak from experience because when I was known for this style back in the earlier days, I had a good monopoly over the commissions & that feeling of acceptance does trap you in a false promise of acceptance. I generally stay away from painting anything nice these days & stay well clear from commissioned work.Photorealism was a name I coined for the complete use of images painted in a photographic way. I was quite young still & I mentioned it in a few interviews, being not too sure of the title, then just forgot about it.

"Private Hell", 1991

Years later people were saying, ‘you’re the guy who started “photorealism.”’ Ha ha. I wish I'd have said ‘tone science’ or something now, or ‘impressionistic layering’. Herakut have come at it from a slightly different angle using the edges of cardboard to build up the shades, but I prefer doing it the old way with pissy car spray and a carved up can lid with a hole in the front. Set in my ways but Montana really is too clean in my opinion, give me that dirt!

- Describe your painting process for the photo-realism. Do you use extra materials to get the job done or is it purely with just a spray can?

P2: I generally do the whole image with the cans but I have a different approach now that is more like painting by numbers, which works a treat.

"Mr Daly", 1993

It’s a bit of a trade secret, I just stumbled on by accident but if you fill in the block areas you can work your way up the highlights from dark to light until you've sharpened the whole thing. I layer the paint in an impressionistic process rather than strokes with Montana or Belton. You can do the most complex images in about an hour and then just take your time with emulsion-ing. It’s all about finding your own way of doing things, back in the days it was about rules and saying it’s all can skills but them days are long gone.

- Have you ever painted in Asia, primarily Japan? Is it somewhere you would like to visit?

P2: Would love to go to Japan. Its one place I still haven’t been & it'd be great to do some work over there based on Japanese culture.

"Power Of Darkness", Birmingham 1991

New York Installation 2006

- You released one of your first music tracks for New Flesh in 1995. How did your interest in music production come about? Will you continue to create both art and music for the future?

P2: Music is something I've always had an interest in. Originally I produced music for my own vocals but got more and more into the development of the sound. I keep meaning to create some new music but never seem to get round to it. There’s a dubstep label that keeps asking me to do a release and Roots Manuva asked me to do something for his label a while back, but I just keep saying ‘yeah, that'd be nice,’ and not chasing it up. I don’t know what the attraction is with dubstep people since I've never made any. Some pretty well established artist sent me a message the other day saying something like "You should be getting props for inventing dubstep". Crazy, I don’t think I did, my sound was always about making a Hybrid sort of thing so you could probably pin anything to it if you tried hard enough.

"Electronic Bombardment", New Flesh For Old

Guess that’s what happens when you make music from an art mindset, some ridiculous mish mash-ness comes out.

- What are you working on currently and what artistic plans do you have for the future?

P2: Currently I'm working on a few things with Tamara and one project is an anatomy series but it’s still a bit half hearted so who knows if it'll turn into anything concrete. August I'm doing a show in Los Angeles as part of a project about the body & also an outdoor installation. That’s at the Centre for Contemporary art on Hollywood Bvd, So hold tight... Renegade Fine Art for 2009 and beyond!

Written by Selph

"Bridge", 2009