SHOP
Five For Five - KASET
Five questions for five flicks
Featured artist - KASET
KASET is a graffiti writer from Sydney. He's been putting in work for years painting panels across Australia and travelling all over the world. He paints a funky public style and always goes huge! We caught up with him for a quick chat and asked for his favourite five flicks.
1. What got you into graffiti?
I use to take the train to school every day, so I'd be sitting down looking out the window majority of the time with my friends. Being quite young, as all kids are, you become fascinated over bright colours in which draws your attention on a moving train. Even if it is for a few quick seconds you notice these things as a kid growing up. You even notice it now when a nice set of panels roll into a station, the first thing the child with their parents notices is the bright colourful pieces. Guess that's why when you're in Primary School you enjoy colouring in and drawing exercises.
2. How have you seen the Sydney train scene change over the last 10 years?
The common change I always see is the amount of people who start and fall off after months/years. You would see a lot by them, then they either get careless and get caught or just plain fall off. My older friends always use to tell me, "It isn't about how many you can do, but how long you can do it for". I see it more as a prolonged satisfaction then a short term one.
Another distinctive change is of course, the internet. It doesn't seem like it was long ago where a lot of things were still analog. Spots were quite secretive and harder to figure out as you would be going blind, you had to actually go out there and explore. With the internet now many things are widely available, which is good but I also think it looses that genuineness to it, things are immensely easier to find and figure out laying on your bed with your smartphone but I guess we all have to adapt to new technology.
3. Do you have a good chase story?
It was in a subway yard in Hamburg. My mate and I took these tourists to a spot to paint in winter, my mate was on the lookout while I took the guys to paint. Everything went well till I was taking photos. The Vandal Squad there known as the "Hochbahn Wache" jumped out of the train while I took the last photo, only a few cars down we ran for the end of the yard to get out of the aisle. As we got to the end of the aisle the guy in front of me got Jonah Lomu tackled so badly. I was right behind him and kept running as there was more.
For people who haven't been to Hamburg running on the tracks in winter there is a nightmare as the tracks are slippery let alone the wooden path along it, so I was trying my best not to slip while running with a guy yelling, swiping at my bag. I got to the fence knowing they will be in that vicinity but luckily they weren't. As I jumped over, my other mate also got to the fence so I helped him get over and we ran for the next bus to get out of the area.
The guy who got caught later came back to the house with only a fine, few bruises and beers!
4. You've done a lot of travelling, could you tell us about a mission abroad that went horribly wrong/right?
A group of my friends and I went to Brussels a few years ago. It was quite a big group but we still went to try this spot I've done before. We went in a different way as it is quite a touristy spot, so we entered and spotted a new camera under us next to the spot. Few minutes later we hear a bit of rustling above us, we felt uneasy but when you're in that moment the care factor drops a little, so we by passed the sensors and hid in the train. Still nothing after 15-20 minutes so we decided to jump out and paint.
After finishing our outlines we hear yelling and many footsteps running towards us, so we jump in between the train and ran, little did we know they came from every direction yelling and throwing rocks at us but we still ran towards the station as that was where the least amount of security were coming from. We all ran pretty far but they sent a new load of security with fresh legs to chase us in which we were done for.
My mate got bashed and my other mates also got badly man handled. In the police car we all looked at each other and laughed as we knew it wasn't severe, the cop actually was nice to us and didn't care at all about what we did. He let us go within 2 hours in which we went to grab our bags from the Central station lockers and took the first train out of the city. We were a mess but still in high spirits as we were all still together laughing at the ordeal.
5. What motivates you to keep painting?
Exploring new things abroad, if I was to stay in my home city for a whole year I will probably get sick and tired of it, when it becomes a chore I get over it. Painting should be fun and shared with friends, good friends who you can trust. Everyone has times where you dislike someone or someones decision on a particular thing but at the end of the day it's just painting. It's better to get along with most people then to be old and bicker about every minute thing. Some young guys are also doing some cool stuff which is good to see, every scene needs some variety.
FEATURED PRODUCTS
Leave a comment
Comments will be approved before showing up.