Graff. Part#03: The Graffiti Artist

Our special guest of the event was one of Melbourne and possibly Australia's best graffiti artist. He had more than 10 years of being in the street art scene, while he was still a teen back in Sydney. Not a lot of people know his background, but while he was sharing his experiences of coming to Melbourne from Sydney. He was saying that the art community here and the graff artists here has more respect for each other and the community of graff artists here are of a very artistic level. He was saying how he was hacked with a hammer under his right eye, he broke his bone and had to replace with a titanium rod under that eye (!). How shocking! All in the name of (Sydney) graff art.

His name: Tim de Haan, may not be known by many, but his tag "Phibs" is one where graff artists all around Melbourne and Sydney respect and give their credit for the years of work he has put into the graff art scene and how it shaped the art of graffiti in Australia. He is recently commisioned by Absolut Vodka to do a huge billboard in St Kilda promoting the new Absolut Raspberri. You can see some of his work here.

Before that, the Max Brenner in Melbourne Central opened and they chose Tim "Phibs" de Haan to do a huge artwork on their wall too. And in 2 weeks, he will be touring 5 Asian countries promoting graffiti and street art while being endorsed by K-Swiss.

We were absolutely blessed to have him agree to come and do a total of 6 pieces of work for us. Each was a large board as you can see below. In No Comply 2, the skateboards designs were selling for $600 each, so you work out how much these graff art cost street value wise!

Despite the regular social perception of a graffiti artist, Tim was an awesome guy, a father of a baby boy who loves art and is very helpful and friendly. He loves talking to people about his work and what it means to him. He was talking to a few guys during the event and I reckoned he felt like a star (not that he's not already one!) at the end of the day when we all took turns to take a photo with "the man".