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Steven Cross
After 25 years of painting over and scrubbing off graffiti, the directors at a Victorian office have come up with a new way to combat the vandals.
The external wall of hockingstuart in Brighton, which faces North Brighton railway station, had been relentlessly vandalised for years, according to director Stephen Tickell.
"It was the bane of our lives,” he told Real Estate Business. “The wall is easily 20 metres long and several metres high, and every week there would be another tag on the wall.
“We’d wait for a couple of weeks for it to be completely destroyed and then we’d go out and paint over it in grey again.”
But according to Mr Tickell, the graffiti vandals loved it.
“It just gave them a brand new canvas everytime we did it, and sure enough the next day it will already have unsightly graffiti," he said. "But when we heard about this local graffiti artist who turns blank walls into works of art we thought ‘if you can’t beat them, join them!’”
According to Mr Tickell, people in the graffiti world respect the artist Brad Sheather’s work and won’t tag over it.
“Now, it’s a great looking wall – it’s facing the station and it’s branded for extra exposure,” he said.
The community was so enthralled with the work of art that it made the front page of the local paper.
Mr Tickell claims that over the 25 years, he’d spent thousands and thousands of dollars on repainting the wall.
“We couldn’t leave it there with graffiti as a professional business because it reflected badly on us. But we paid the artist between $1,500 and $2,000, and we’ve eliminated the problem,” he explained.
Since the new artwork was painted, the wall has remained untouched.
To see an image of the wall click here.
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