It was interesting listening to the podcast on the graffiti artist Merda. He is around four years older than me and hearing his experience in the late 80s really makes me realise how lost I was as a kid doing graffiti. I love Merda’s work and he is an artist who changed graffiti and was involved in fine arts. Incredibly inspiring and he has done so much. I am hoping a book on him comes out soon.

In the 80s Zapgalaxy was a young thief and he was notorious from a very young age. My hoodlum experiences came a little later. I was twelve when I did my first break and enter. Most of my trouble with the police was petty crime. Most of my experiences with criminal behaviour and vandalism, not graffiti vandalism but straight up destruction taught me a lot of life lessons.

One of the most important was the disloyalty and stand over tactics of older kids who took some of what you took. It was a vicious cycle. Nobody was actually winning through crime. I figured it out when I turned fifteen, I saw it for what it was. I used to joke around that you could drop one million dollars in the Bilga commissions and rather than get people coming together you would get a full scale riot.

Zapgalaxy to some extent is ashamed of the experiences he had in Australia because if he hadn’t immigrated he also wouldn’t have been driven by greed and general delusions of western capitalism opting to steal as a business model. Really graffiti saved us and knowing what had long term currency, also fine arts helped us develop our approach to graffiti art and art in general.

For me I look at the positives, I bury my head in books, I watch fine arts movies, I am interested in culture. My work is still tainted with that youthful abandon of a potentially wasted life. I tried to see the big picture and got an education. I spent a fortune on five years of art school. Even though I lost I also won. Sadly people today don’t want to invest in themselves but it is a lot harder now. Although I had no expectations in the past or guarantees I just took the risk on an art education.