Auckland Graffiti History with Askew One

So good to catch up with one of my long time friends and crew mates Deap One aka Jamie McCready graffiti & Hip Hop documentarian. We talked about his beginnings taking photos, the changing graffiti scene, his archive with Auckland Library and documentation of Aotearoa’s Hip Hop musicians while working for Back2Basics. In 2 weeks time our big TMD show opens at The Dowse museum in Lower Hutt featuring Jamie & Rimoni (Raymond Sagapolutele) archives alongside some joint installations and our post-graffiti work.

A genuine pleasure to catch up with my old friend and total legend Mean PFB from London. It was a really entertaining 2 hour chat where we reminisced about all our wild adventures during his year living in Auckland in 1999.

So awesome to catch up with Opto aka Otis Frizzell and discuss his incredibly varied career doing everything from being a pioneering graffiti artist, musician, TV & Radio host, contemporary artist, driver to the stars and taco truck owner! This guy has done so many things and along the way been a part of many cultural flash points.

I had a chat with Merksta of the infamous DAF crew. During the early to mid 90's Merksta along with this crew mates innovated and pushed the Auckland scene to new levels. Merk discusses his early days in Greymouth, New Plymouth and Melbourne before coming home to Auckland and wondering why there had been no continuation from the era of Smooth Crew. He talks about the time period they were busiest and it's enduring impact on the scene.

It was an absolute honour to have this chat with pioneering graffiti artist and musician Darryl Thomson aka DLT. Darryl was one of the earliest graffiti writers in the Wellington region before he moved up to Auckland as part of the group Upper Hutt Posse. He was based in Auckland for close to 3 decades where he mentored many young artists.

This episode features this chat I had with the pioneer of Auckland's graffiti scene Claude Iusitini - founder of Smooth Crew. We talk about the very beginning of the scene, the ingenuity it took back then and all the crazy opportunities that came with being the first well organised crew in Aotearoa.

In this episode I catch up with Mangere legend Finer FDKNS. We talk about the vital link between Auckland and California's graffiti scenes during the late 80's and early 90's and the birth of the regional tagging style style known as 'Straights'.

This was the first of my ongoing chats hosted on my instagram live with by good friend, crew mate and long time collaborator Berst GBAK TMD aka Dr Bobby Hung. We discuss his beginnings, the various ways we tried together to push our local graffiti scene in innovative directions. We also talk about what it means to be a grown up graffiti writer.