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 they made me do it
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.The writing's on the wall. The UK graffiti scene is its own worst enemy. The country is teaming with artists but they're torn between those who want to make a career out of what they’re doing and writers clinging to the culture's “street only” roots. Some see it as art, others see it as dissent. That's putting aside the fact that the councils won't give any money towards exhibitions, the corporate world is raping the scene for its “cool” factor and the government is offering £500 for people to rat on writers’ identities. In the end, no one is investing in the scene and no one wants to see it for what much of it is - contemporary art. So, fed up with art-induced poverty and cultural ignorance, 12 graff-artists got together and decided to create work as a collective to bring some unity to the UK graffiti scene. The collective originally formed to create a show for the launch of the film Donnie Darko. Their name was inspired by the scene where Donnie vandalised his school, scrawling "They Made Me Do It" on the ground. Their initial work was created in six hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds, and was shown for 28 days exactly - the length of time in which Donnie predicts the world will end. There was even a countdown clock hanging alongside the work in the venue. The artists set up a site to sell prints of the work produced and could have left it there. Instead, they used it as an opportunity to jump-start an art collective. “Donnie Darko worked and we wanted to keep that cohesiveness,” one of the organisers, who chooses to remain nameless, explains. The 12 artists each have typically short-and-sweet monikers - Astek, Bleach, Busk, Chu, Dane, Insa, Korey, Shucks, Solo, Snug, Tizer and Wish One. But that's almost all they have in common. The work they produce is so diverse that the only thing that holds them together is the kind of paint they use. Astek's abstract wild-style wordings are very different from Snug's super-slick, surreal sci-fi characters, Wish One's Victorian wallpaper stencils or Tizer's illustrative caricatures.  What keeps the group coherent is their thematic approach to each of their shows. Often picking a colour and a concept, the work is varied but has some underlying connection. Each exhibition has pushed the work they produce. It's as if the opportunity to display their work alone is helping it develop. “The real problem is that there are very few legal sites where you can write in London,” the organiser explains. “Marseille encourages it and has one of the most vibrant scenes, and some of the best commercial artists are coming out of there.” Having recently created work for London Fashion Week and Stella Artois' After Dark Tour, their next show (in May 04) is slowly being conceived. The idea is to expand using canvas and walls together to create pieces where the work is bursting out of the frames. According to the organisers, graffiti has always been about visibility. It looks like these boys are getting themselves well and truly noticed.
Francesca Gavin
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