See No Evil: Inkie brings the world's painters to Nelson Street
A week after the riots, Bristol hands one of its greyest streets to the painters, and the man who organised it was once the city's most wanted writer.
Bristol has had a rough August. The disorder that spread out of London reached the city on the night of the 8th, and the talk in town since has been of broken glass and burnt-out bins. Something rather better is about to land in the centre, though. From 18 to 20 August a crowd of international painters takes over Nelson Street for See No Evil, billed as the largest permanent street art project the UK has seen.
Nelson Street is not a street anyone would choose to linger on. It is a canyon of post-war office blocks, grey concrete and poor lighting, with few shops left at ground level and not much reason to walk it after dark. The plan is to cover the tall blank flanks of those buildings, top to bottom, with murals meant to stay up for at least a year and quite possibly for good.
Inkie’s project
The man behind it is Inkie, Tom Bingle, one of the names that came out of Bristol’s graffiti scene in the 1980s alongside Banksy and Nick Walker. He has pulled together more than 30 artists, roughly two thirds of them from abroad: painters from Los Angeles, New York, Chile, Australia and across Europe, alongside the best of the local crop. Ten multi-storey buildings are in line for paint.
There is a neat twist in who is holding the brush. In March 1989 Inkie was picked out as a ringleader in Operation Anderson, the police raids on the homes of 72 suspected writers across Bristol, Bath, Exeter and Cardiff, at the time the biggest graffiti bust the country had seen. The courts where he was sentenced stand on this same street. Twenty-two years later the city council is paying for him to paint it, which says a fair amount about how far attitudes have moved.
That council backing is real money. Bristol City Council is putting up half of an £80,000 budget, with the rest raised privately, and the building owners have signed up. Mike Bennett at the council deserves credit for pushing it through.
The painters and the weekend
The line-up includes El Mac from Los Angeles and Tats Cru from the Bronx, Aryz from Spain and Smug from Glasgow, with Wow123 in the mix and Nick Walker, Mr Jago and Inkie himself flying the flag for Bristol.
Around the painting there is a full programme called Hear No Evil, run with Team Love. Thursday opens with a screening at the empty Westgate building, followed by DJs; Friday brings more music in the same space; Saturday turns Nelson Street itself into a block party from noon, with DJ Milo of the Wild Bunch and Greg Wilson among those playing. The Weapon of Choice crew are running a pop-up See No Evil shop for the weekend.
The finished walls will be on view from the weekend onwards, for as long as the paint lasts.
Further reading
Prints