Live painting events are always great, but with the added twist of a live painting battle you have Secret Wars.

I first discovered secret wars when london based ‘Monorex’ came to manchester to battle against Manchesters finest scrawlers ‘Sketch City’.

The Rules

- 90 MINS ON THE CLOCK
- BLACK PAINT ONLY – ON WHITE WALLS!
- NO SKETCHES / NO PENCILS
- INVISIBLE MIDDLE LINE WITH AN ARTIST EITHER SIDE

JUDGED USING A 3 POINT SYSTEM – 2 GUEST JUDGES AND A CROWD VOTE
(USING A DECIBEL READER)

needless to say, the london boys went home with their tail between their legs

QUESTION FROM FORMAT MAGAZINE:
How did the idea of a art battle start to materialize?

SW:
If my memory serves me right – I had just watched Warriors and Fight Club and probably had a couple of beers inside me – I started thinking how could we up the ante at our exhibitions and make it more of a show for the people….A day or so later and a pad filled with ideas, Secret Wars was born. Obviously the title was inspired by the Marvel comic – where many characters were summoned to a planet in a duel to the death. The rest is history…

Photos from Sketch City vs Monorex

Go to http://www.secretwars.co.uk/ to find out more info for next events, or to sign up for a battle if you think you got what it takes.

GO BIG OR GO HOME!

Apparently this is an old Banksy paste up from back in the day, can’t really confirm but looks pretty genuine.. not really many of these about…

The Berlin Wall remains to this day one of the largest walls ever built. Its purpose was to separate East and West Berlin who had different political views. It started life as a basic wire fence and over the years spawned into a large concrete defense which split friends and families.

Why, you may be asking, are we talking about the Berlin Wall on a graffiti blog? Well, the Berlin wall became a magnet for artists and allowed people to express their social, political and artistic views. It was an icon for a generation who suffered behind this concrete curtain. I feel it’s important to recognise the beauty on the West Berlin side of the wall. Why not the East side of the wall? The East side of the wall was plain and dull – an example of the oppression these people felt, only the West side was colourful and expressive.

For more info on the Berlin Wall and it’s art, check out berlinwallart.com

TAKI 183. What is this?

Well, TAKI 183 is probably one of the first media discovered graffiti artists. TAKI 183 was a Greek who lived in New York during the late 60’s and early 70’s. He was employed as a foot messenger in New York and he took advantage of the fact he used the subway a lot. With his tag cropping up all over the city, public interest and curiosity grew around this name.

During this time a lot of ‘tags’ were appearing around New York and The New York Times published an article about one of these artists – TAKI 183. This sparked interest in graffiti and was a milestone in the graffiti scene.