Graffiti Gallery (3)
'WRITING'S ON THE WALL' for the Hulme Crescents!! Summer 1994 went full-tilt last celebration as A Way of Life was shut down & bulldozed to dust! DJ Danny Baxter led the Desert Storm Rave in Clopton Walk Shopping Precinct before it was demolished. Dancing on the roof of the Chemist to Underworld 'Skyscraper, I Love You' & watching the sun come up over a skeletal Crescent to Sabres of Paradise 'Smokebelch-2'... Unforgettable!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQ3iZZXaJM)
Annual Punks Picnic party (usually held outside the Eagle pub in Robert Adam Crescent) was held instead behind Ribchester Walk, with 5 graffiti artists (Karl-123, Kelzo, Tags, Fista & Elk) painting a whole block & bands playing all day on a stage made entirely from reclaimed stairs & council-flat front doors! In true Dogs of Heaven style, like a huge Viking Longboat built & burnt (27.03.93) when Robert Adam came down, the stage was then torched & raised to the ground! This was the spirit of Hulme. Do-It-Yourself attitude. Don't wait to be asked or allowed! Freedom Legalised!!
But not for long. 1994 was also the year that a young 23 year-old from Sheffield named Fista (who'd come to paint in Hulme many times before) was caught, charged with 14 counts of criminal damage & sentenced to FIVE years in HM Prison Doncaster
"No one living outside of Sheffield can imagine the chaos he caused over the years. He painted on everything: walls, private houses, public buildings, street signs, even a bus that had broken down. The trouble was that as soon as we cleared it off, more would appear. We just didn't have the resources, neither human nor financial, to cope. It was an epidemic." (Sheffield councillor Francis Butler 1996)
Annual Punks Picnic party (usually held outside the Eagle pub in Robert Adam Crescent) was held instead behind Ribchester Walk, with 5 graffiti artists (Karl-123, Kelzo, Tags, Fista & Elk) painting a whole block & bands playing all day on a stage made entirely from reclaimed stairs & council-flat front doors! In true Dogs of Heaven style, like a huge Viking Longboat built & burnt (27.03.93) when Robert Adam came down, the stage was then torched & raised to the ground! This was the spirit of Hulme. Do-It-Yourself attitude. Don't wait to be asked or allowed! Freedom Legalised!!
But not for long. 1994 was also the year that a young 23 year-old from Sheffield named Fista (who'd come to paint in Hulme many times before) was caught, charged with 14 counts of criminal damage & sentenced to FIVE years in HM Prison Doncaster
"No one living outside of Sheffield can imagine the chaos he caused over the years. He painted on everything: walls, private houses, public buildings, street signs, even a bus that had broken down. The trouble was that as soon as we cleared it off, more would appear. We just didn't have the resources, neither human nor financial, to cope. It was an epidemic." (Sheffield councillor Francis Butler 1996)
Return to: Gallery 3: From The Archive: Writing's On The Wall or Gallery
Return to: Gallery 3: From The Archive: Writing's On The Wall or Gallery