Five questions for five flicks 

Featured artist - AMUSE

AMUSE is a graffiti writer from Sydney's North Shore. If you caught a train down Mainline through the 2000's no doubt you would have seen his bombing and notorious laughing A throwup everywhere. His style has real swing and dope connections, match that with his eye for colour and it's game over! We caught up with him for a quick chat and asked for his favourite five flicks.

Instagram@amuseone

1. What got you into graffiti?

The question should be - "What will get you out of graffiti?"
An early memory is seeing burners on a wall next to a basketball court near Boston when I was growing up in the 80s. I was drawn to them every time we visited that park and wondered what the artists would be like. In my 7yo mind I had visions of foul-mouthed dudes with flames on their leather jackets and stolen sneakers on their feet. I was actually not that far off. Another early memory was seeing some dudes bombing in NYC in the daytime in front of gridlocked traffic. They did not give a shit and I thought this was awesome.

2. How would you describe your style?

Best described as a sadistic take on the word itself, which is to play, consisting of heavy notes of train grease, drunk faux-bravado and underarm funk... haha..

Seriously though, my style is probably a bite of about 3 or 4 other amazing style-writers who will remain nameless. Flow, balance, connections and shit that goes pop are all necessary.

3. Do you have a good chase story?

Less of a chase story and more of a stupid one from a while back.. My ex-GF and I were leaving Gane 2's 30th birthday party in Redfern and we caught a lift home with one of her mates. We stopped halfway at a servo and I had to have piss so I jumped down off a partition wall at the back of the servo into a construction site. I immediately spotted about 30L of buff paint in different cans which only required untwisting about 4,000 knots in a long steel wire - so I untwisted for the next 10 minutes. I greedily grabbed a hefty 10L can of white and went to place it on top of the head-height partition wall to hop back up to the servo and to the waiting car. As I tried to put it up on the wall the top came off and the entire 10 litres of white paint tipped down the front of my Lacoste jacket and down the front of my pants. I didn't know what to do so I just jumped back up to the servo and casually strolled over to the car and they're like 'hahahahahahaaaa - you're not getting in MY car!'. Fair enough.. So we started walking the remaining 7km in the freezing cold, my seething ex by my side "you stupid fuck" yadda-yadda-yadda. We had about $5 between us so we decided that she could wave down a cab and then I would pop out of the bushes and jump in (still covered in white paint). It worked. We were almost home when he turned around and saw the situation and turned on the interior light and his eyes went angrier than Warnie at a closed bar. We split out both doors and left behind a cab backseat which was destroyed with white buff. Made it home, scrubbed the shit out of the Lacoste jacket and it came good looking as good as new.

4. You've made the move down to Melbourne, What's it like living and painting there compared to Sydney?

Yeah we moved down a few years ago and still pretty happy about that decision. Well for starters, in Sydney I used to pay $4.90 for my chai mocha lattè with a twist of lemon. Now in Melbourne I only pay $4.80 haha. Honestly it's just a bit more chilled out here and more walls to paint and less writer bullshit, not to say there is none, but there is less. People here are just less possessive of property than they are in Sydney so you can be caught painting a wall which 'looks legal' and get off with a steady 'say g'day to Banksy when you see him'. I'm semi-retired now so this suits me and my little mob..

5. What motivates you to keep painting?

Motivation isn't really a factor. I just do what I love to do ---------SWB-KOS-----------

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