Preview: Part2ism “New Horizons & Future Love Songs” at Red Gallery in London

Keith Hopewell aka Part2ism’s exhibition opens at Red Gallery in London on August 9th. Having started writing in 1982, he is undeniably one of the UK’s pioneering graffiti writers and a ground-breaking Hip Hop producer.

“I’ve worked with the spray can so long now that for me it is a brush itself. Plus, why hide from the fact it is independent from what you learn in art schools? This is renegade art, so let’s not shy from our revolutionary practice; it’s what differentiates us from all the other forms of art.”  –  Part2ism, The Real State, 2009

At the age of ten in 1982, Hip Hop music, such as Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock, began to play across the international airwaves. The new music captured his passions and swayed his focus from being obsessed with Mod music. At the time, he had been spray painting his favorite Mod band logos around his hometown, York, but he quickly switched to tagging. He actually first became interested in breaking, because he had previously been into BMX bike freestyling, and break dancing was complementary in the form and style of the movements. By 1984, though, it was the art and the music that consumed him.

After the page break, more history and photos…