R.I.P Hate

Here's a piece back from September this year. Myself, TONY RIFF, NISER, TOILE, and GEAK got together to take out this space with co-ordinance from Global Street Art.

I dedicated my piece to HATE. Hate died 10 years ago unfortunately on train tracks. HATE was a local writer with a lot of credit in the scene of our generation. I met HATE one summer back in 2006 and it as an honour to finally see him, he was full of kind words and acknowledgement for my work and we had agreed to paint once I got back in a month from U.S.

When I got back the first thing I saw when I was driving back from Heathrow was R.I.P HATE written somewhere, I think it may have been in West London. I phoned another writer as soon as I got in to the lab and it was confirmed that he had died, it was a great loss to the scene.

There's people that will take away from this "Well he shouldn't be on the train tracks then." Well you could say that, but I'll say this: This scene has supported me, it has taught myself and a large amount of other writers things that the education system failed to teach us. For over 5 decades this scene has been demonised for criminal activities, with barely any support in our creativity and the progression. It's only in the last 8 years I've noticed a shift. We make use of spaces that others do not care about, people just walk on by, go past it on the train, they don't even blink about it. We live in a backwards, stifling society and these incidents can easily be lowered if there was more progressive resolutions to accommodating space. A very nice person died, because they were doing something that they were passionate about and was harmless to anybody. It's a shame.

Tony Riff

NISER

TOILE

GEAK