Five questions for five flicks 

Featured artist - KURE

KURE is a graffiti writer from Brisbane. He's a member of the notorious WTCS CREW who are one of the most organised crews in the Australian scene planning & working together as a team to achieve a bigger goal. He's produced countless panels, whole cars and even whole trains.. A real writer who used to live and breathe graffiti. We caught up with him to find out what those years were like and asked for his favourite five flicks.

1. What got you into graffiti?

Growing up through my early teens in the 90’s around Logan, Southside of Brisbane, I use to see a lot of TRP, KOC, THC, SNS tags I knew it was called graffiti but didn’t understand there was a subculture around it. I started catching the train on the B-Line to school that’s when it became apparent to me that graffiti was more than just tags, I remember racking disposable cameras from the chemist at central station and just catching the train all city taking photos of the pieces on the lines. Crews like AKM, THC, ACR, BWP and WAR were running the lines back then, there was pieces everywhere on people’s fences, sheds in their back yards, roof tops basically anything that backed onto the lines was pieced or bombed. It was sick riding the lines as a young wannabe writer seeing all the different styles, riding the lines back then was how you got schooled, you knew who was up and whose style was burning. Looking back at those younger years graffiti was a lot more innocent, I didn’t know who was doing it, how it was getting done but I knew it was the bomb and I wanted to be a part of it.

2. How would you describe your style?

Anyone that’s from Brissy would know my style is definitely B-Line. I grew up on the B-Line and my style is definitely influenced by B-Line OG’s like Bore, Spirow, Bleks, Alamoe, Diohe, Dcide. All those old-school Kings were the style masters in my eyes, mad kicks, connections and B-Line funk, real aggressive B-line steez.

3. Do you have a good chase story?

Like most writers there’s many chase stories, but this particular one was when I did my first one man wholecar. I had done it the previous day at Robina yard and it was due to run from there to Main yard to be buffed, I can’t fully remember the early movements of that morning but basically the wholecar was lost in traffic, myself and demise ended up at Main yard watching the two entrances into the yard so we could get running flicks of some sort. I was at the Bowen hills crossing while demise was at Bowen hills station, then Demise calls me saying it’s been spotted heading through the station out of service, destined for the buff shed. I jump into my trusty VL commodore and caught it pulling through the loop bridge into ‘riverside’ yard and park up. Like any train writer I’m chasing that better flick so before you know it, me and Demise are running over the Loop bridge into ‘riverside’, mind you this yard is Brisbane’s most active yard and its about 9am on a Monday morning, looking back it was never going to end well. So we make it into the aisle without being seen, we get our flicks and footage then start to head out when we’ve been seen by a mob of QR workers keen to let out some steam on writers.

They’ve blocked the loop entrance so we’ve had to make a b-line down the access road and past the buff shed, every time I looked back the mob seemed to be growing with workers and enthusiasm like it was the day they were going to be able to finally take out there anger on some dirty rotten writers. As we were running down the access road a car of more QR cyborgs block our exit, the access road runs parallel to a swampy river that’s fenced off by a 9ft barbed wire fence luckily for us the cyborgs had kindly park their cars alongside it, so onto their bonnet and up over the fence we went, landing waist deep into mangroves and preceded to swim across the river. With our precious cargo of flicks and footage held above the waterline, we paddled across the river while we could hear them yelling out obscenity about railsquad sodomising us and all that jazz.

We finally make it to the other side and start jumping back yards, we can hear the sound of cop cars accelerating through the backstreets, so we ducked into a two storey house to lay low. As we waited for the heat to calm down we’re shivering under this house trying to come up with a plan, we can hear people upstairs talking and walking around so we’ve got to make a move quickly. Looking outside I spot the occupants clothing hanging on the line, so we decided to borrow some clothes for an extended period of time and dumped ours in their bin and split. So basically we got back to the car sweet and back to the warmth of the Southside of town, about 4pm that arvo I get a call from Bore saying their running the wholecar peak hour on the C-Line!! Running panels was rare let alone a wholecar so we figure it’s a set up by railsquad, but I didn’t really care I had good flicks, footage and a sick story to tell the boys over a few coldies.

4. WTCS has been an extremely active crew and even painted a whole train in Brisbane! What sort of planning goes into these missions?

We’ve actually been major players of about 4 or 5 wholetrains in brissy (I thought I might add). Depending on the type of wholetrain depends on the planning. A joint wholetrain like a crew spellout and cazzas, a lot of planning and teamwork is involved to pull it. Homework, communication, Time and efficiency are key elements in the process, just like a true writer said “I want to get in and out, without being noticed” I’ve spent many of cold wet nights/mornings hiding in bushes watching, waiting and doing my homework on spots, if you want to be king at this game that’s what you’ve got to do. I loved it, I thrived for that shit, I always took pride in the planning and execution of missions, and I believe our work speaks for itself.

5. What motivates you to keep painting?

People close to me know why I’ve hung my cutters up for the time being, but I still try and keep tabs on the scene who’s up, who’s running shit. I hope the new train writers out there, aren’t just hitting the same old spots for easy fame. You know you gotta take pride in hitting new spots that other writers are either too scared, don’t know about or don’t know how to hit. That’s what motivated me back in the day, I wanted to own shit, run shit, and be King!

 ARTIST SERIES TEE'S