Part2ism is the ultimate genre crossover king. Old School 80s graffiti don; musician; conceptual writer; photo realistic street art pioneer, there are few corners of the urban art world that Part2ism hasn’t explored or influenced.
Late last year, a cold but dry Sunday morning, my tour group came across Keith Hopewell aka Part2ism doing an incredibly complex series of geometric shapes across a freshly mulshed grey railway bridge parapet. With his blessing I proceeded with a live and improvised butchering and completely understatement of the history of and kudos due to this artist.
I first met Part2 19 years ago and he shares with CEPT credit for introducing me to the art of Rammellzee and notions such as ikonoklast panzerism, the alphabet as the arsenal in the battle of letters. Westbourne Grove’s legendary graffiti spot The Pit was a place you never trod lightly with a camera. I remember vividly how polarised the graffiti community was when Part2 buffed one end of The Pit for one of his CMYK concept pieces, reactions ranged from “This is the legend Part2, he can do whatever TF he wants” to ”No art f** p*** non letter shit allowed in The Pit!”. Can it really be 11 years since his beats and sensory deprivation experience “Broken Systems In C Major” in that space that used to be on Kingland Road? The deeper the archive mining, the more an appreciation of the diversity of Part2ism art innovations surfaces.
After the tour I circled back because any conversation with Keith is certain to be illuminating and electric. He graciously allowed me to bother him for a few minutes with a video recorder. After returning a few days later to capture the thankfully unscarred finished piece, I asked Keith if he would like to put together some of his own music and do his finest Attenborough impression describing how vectoring represents a revolution in the approach to writing graffiti. His input was transformative, you expect nothing less to be honest. Enjoy this clip.
All images: Dave Stuart
Video by Dave Stuart and Keith Hopewell
