I met graffiti artist Rasty at Gray Scale, a Braamfontein shop he co-owns with his partners whom he would identify only by their pseudonyms: Curio and Angel.
At the corner of De Korte and Henri streets, the shop sells spray paint, T-shirts, hoodies, books (including one on Banksy, the Bristol-born graffiti legend) and other graffiti paraphernalia.
As we chatted, the shop was an inconstant stream of people coming in, buying paint canisters the threesome import from Germany. You get the sense that Gray Scale is some kind of mecca for the Johannesburg graffiti community.
When the tattooed Rasty is not breathing in paint fumes escaping from canisters at the shop, he is out on the streets doing private or commissioned work for Sprite, Nike, Adidas, Smirnoff and other big clients.
He doesn’t feel conflicted about how this streetwise and most contrarian art form is advancing the cause of big-time brands and capitalists. “They want to target the youth and they will use whatever stimulus the youth will respond to,” he says, shrugging. In Europe and the United States, he points out, the “corporates have embraced this for decades”.
Besides, “we wouldn’t be able fund our other projects” were it not for commissioned work. “This shop wouldn’t be possible. It has enabled us to grow the local graffiti culture and scene. We are using the system to forward our own agenda,” he says, conspiratorially.
The shop is self-sustaining but it doesn’t make a profit, he reveals.
Each corporate has a set of demands: ‘Some are more specific and will ask you to include their logos.” Others recognise the need for artistic freedom (read anarchy) and give him a rough idea of what they expect. He regularly has to paint at sponsored parties. A few times I have witnessed, with exhilaration, his images taking shape.
Rasty was born in Durban and moved to Johannesburg when he was eight. He has paid back his positive feelings for Johannesburg by literally and metaphorically leaving his mark.
Yet he wasn’t taught graffiti. He is the quintessential autodidact. He took up the artform in 2001, his first canvas being his bedroom wall and the family garage. There’s a lot you can paint on a bedroom wall. In contrition, perhaps, he has since repainted the walls a holy white.
The 27-year-old graffiti artist dropped out of Wits University after studying philosophy and psychology for a year. Even though Rasty was “artistically inclined” he didn’t enrol for a fine arts degree. “I didn’t want to study fine arts. There you are told what art is and they make you follow their agenda. If I had done fine arts I wouldn’t have been able to follow my hobby.”
When I meet Rasty he is kitted out in a Rastafarian-style hat, shorts, a T-shirt and Nike sneakers. He was once Rastafarian, he tells me, and still observes some of the tenets of the Jamaican-founded religion. To be sure, he has the serenity of a Rasta on the phone and in conversation, but his private work boasts a raw energy and quirky spirit.
Under the M1 freeway, close to Museum Africa, are huge pillars on which the graffiti community showcases its works. His images of gargoyles (how else to describe them?) stare out defiantly and naughtily at the passing cars and pedestrians on Bree Street.
Rasty sees this as “reclaiming the streets. We are saying this is our art. Art shouldn’t be holed up only in galleries.” Even though graffiti might be narcissistic, demanding lots of stamina and a degree of deviousness, it is one of the most public of art forms.
The galleries have not been as welcoming as the streets that have embraced him and his like. “Graffiti is not considered a fine art,” he says, “and it’s quite difficult to find a location to do our work. We are still waiting for the galleries to see that there’s more to graffiti.”
Even though mainstream acceptance is slow, more young people are turning to graffiti as a hobby. New graffiti artists, some as young as 11, visit the shop to buy paint in the company of their parents. But he is as greedy as the walls that soak up his paint. “I want to see graffiti grow to the level it is at in Europe.”