Street art sells

You need look no further than last year’s US presidential election to see how far street art has come, embracing such forms as stencilled art, stickers and wheat-paste posters. Shepard Fairey, a Los Angeles-based artist and graphic designer with roots in skateboarding culture, was the artist behind Barack Obama’s iconic “Hope” portrait, an unofficial campaign poster that soon became the most recognised piece of marketing in the entire campaign. In the New Yorker, art critic Peter Schjeldahl called it “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You’”.

Other street artists around the world have been hailed for their genius. The UK artist Banksy – whose real name remains a Zorro-like mystery – applies his images and social messages across walls, often levelling criticism of the commercial advertising and corporate world that has already saturated public spaces. Some see him as a genius, while others plainly see him as a vandal.

Some artists have successfully turned commercial after learning their craft the illicit way, including the members of the Brooklyn, New York-based Faile collective, who produce a mix of hand-drawn typography and pop culture imagery. The Auckland-based artists of the Cut Collective bonded as a street crew and have now pooled their talents as a business, incorporating as a company and leasing a showroom and studio space near Karangahape Road.

The principal owners in the business are Ross Liew and Hayley King, also known by their artist names, TrustMe and Flox, respectively. Also involved are artists calling themselves Kool, Enforce One and Component. Typical of street artists, the crew is multidisciplined and involved in various mediums, making everything from murals, prints and paste-ups to T-shirts, and, in Flox’s case, an entire clothing range.

“To pool resources – it changes every-thing,” says Liew, who has been working for years with King. “It crystallises our ambition: now we can do this, we can self-produce, bring things inhouse, host this – it gives you a lot more potential really. It has changed the perception of what we’re doing.”

The collective existed for five or six years as a loose arrangement before the business plan started to form. Each artist has their own style. Flox’s work is detailed, with flora and fauna being favourite subjects. Component is a classic stencil artist, drawing heavily on images from hip hop and pop culture, with a tendency to use found objects as canvases. Enforce One has a unique layered style, and goes for jungle animals and space invaders. TrustMe, whom the others describe as a real all-rounder, lampoons society’s insecurities through a combination of text and images. And Kool – real name Kurt Ensor – leans towards graphic design and has a dark, humorous take on things, often juxtaposing guns and kids with angel wings.

“It’s the innocence of youth, how everything’s pure when you’re young, and crossing that with what’s happening in society today,” says Ensor. “In this world today, there isn’t much that’s pure. We all know as we get older that all falls away.”

What brings them together is collaboration on the bigger murals, especially in a live performance capacity when they’re hired for events or shows, but, being artists, they don’t like to be pigeonholed.

“It’s good for your survival if you aren’t limited to doing one thing,” says Liew, who also co-hosts TVNZ6 arts show The Gravy. “The business side of it is something we have to embrace. Typically, artists are naturally averse to business management. The ones who do well are the ones who embrace it or have good people to take that up for them.”

The artists all have commercial design backgrounds and have worked in design, advertising, branding and logo design. They already contract to agencies as freelancers to be brought in for specific jobs.