At The Bench 504, owner Rob’s pursuit of quality graffiti, and the experience of travelling to paint, has led him to create a thriving business providing an exhibition space for a varied range of illustrators. It’s also enabled him to be involved in a range of projects, as well as protecting local graffiti spaces and introducing youngsters to the skill.

Now based in a Custard Factory Unit, Rob saw a gap in the market and put his savings into opening his own shop selling paints. Progressing from a few years based at a shared shop in Quinton, The Bench 504 now sits overlooking the pond at the Custard Factory, and has a colourful floor to ceiling selection of thousands of paints, which sell Europe-wide from the Birmingham location.

Graffiti artists take time to plan, practicing and sketching, often taking a sketch to the wall. Colour counts as part of the preparation. Getting good takes a lot of practice.

There are a steady stream of customers, as well as those coming to look at the latest exhibition. A customer arrives asking Rob for an order simply by naming the colour  – “I have learnt all the fruits in German and Spanish” Rob laughs, going on to explain that the main brands come from around Europe, and the range he stocks now includes seven brands as the demand grows. The paints stocked at The Bench 504 are highly specialised, some are even artisan – including Spanish brand MTM (Montana) being run by artists who couldn’t get the quality they wanted, so started mixing their own.

The exhibition space in the shop features a different illustrator every four weeks. Until Wednesday 23rd April the exhibition is ‘Off the Rails’ by mixed media artist Lucy Danielle, a Birmingham-based freelance illustrator who studied at Birmingham City University.

Rob was also involved in the future of quality graffiti, ensuring it could continue in the local area. There was a park, Bournbrook Rec, in Selly Oak from the 1980s which councillors were happy to have as a legal space for artists, until mid 2000s when that changed. The local graffiti community gathered a focussed campaign and turned around the council’s opinion of the art, and of the artists, to overturn the decision and re-open the park.

The park is now back in full and frequent use with a high quality of work. The artists know what they can or can’t paint over, as the unwritten rules and etiquette of sharing the graffiti space are self regulated, ensuring they have somewhere to develop the skills and talent to create impressive work.

Rob’s enthusiasm for the art continues, and when the sun is shining the paints fly off the shelves.

To find out more about The Bench 504 visit their website. They are also active on social media: Twitter / Facebook.

Photographs by the author, Kate Wilkins.

On 19th April the Secret Walls Live Illustration Final Battle takes place, after first rounds and semi-finals mid month. Birmingham has gained itself a reputation over recent years, winning and hosting some impressive artist battles.

The event takes place at Boxxed in Digbeth, and you can turn up and pay on the door, or buy tickets in advance through Eventbrite.

All photos are from Bowlers.

Birmingham’s premier graffiti artist versus illustrator battle ‘Secret Walls‘ has been making a comeback in recent months, with the Rainbow in Digbeth playing host to a series of live drawing sessions between some of the cities most well known sketchers. The artists are given a large canvas and 90 minutes to give it their best, a winner is then chosen to go through to the next round in the tournament.

Here are the official Secret Walls rules:

• 90 minutes on the battle clock
• Only black SW special markers and black acrylic paint can be used as battle weapons
• No pencils / sketches should be on stage or used as reference
• Each artist has to stay within the allocated space, if they creep over then there will be a 1 point deduction
• Battles are judged by 2 nominated and neutral guest judges + crowd vote (3 point system) (using a decibel reader)
• Hosted on giant white walls

This Sunday 5th August will be the third Quater Final, between illustrator Kristain Jones and graffiti artist Lisk Bot. Both have been featured on this blog on several occasions for their outstanding and prolific work, but it’ll be interesting to see how they duel it out. Things kick off at the Rainbow from 7pm and check out the Facebook event for more information.

Digbeth is Good have pointed out that the graffiti supplies shop in the Custard Factory, The Bench 504, have put their sofa up on eBay.

Here’s the listing.

This is in a way a continuation of my Digbeth series, most of the buildings are of that post industrial type, with some of them battered or missing, or past their prime

If you look really closely (or read this blog post) you’ll see that the buildings feature graffiti from some of the area’s more prolific artists.

Tony Graffiti presents Keep Graffiti Real, Smoke Crack, Sign On… a graffiti exhibition at Green Street Arts. The exhibition launches on 14 October and will run through to 23 October.

Digbeth is Good says there’ll be…

…a house band, DJ Boogie Dave, Drop Beats Not Bombs along side DJ Rosko, as well as Emjay Ladie, DJ Punk N Ska with Justin Bond from Boogie Down Brum playing early rave and britpop.

…and I’m inclined to believe them.

Where were you painting in those days?

Back then you couldn’t afford a train ticket; you’d get a coach down to Bristol with a bag of paint. Because I worked for Walsall Youth Arts, there were only three sites supported by the local authorities in the country; Barton Hill, Selly Oak and Walsall. The one in Walsall was called The Paddock, which was a sunken foundation for a block of flats. So we came up with the idea to take it over and develop it as a painting site on submission of all this bureaucracy. I became the caretaker of the place, so journeys to Bristol and Selly Oak became the backbone of my graffiti world.

This cool little video was spotted by Urbanfly. Made in celebration of Ninja Tune‘s 20th anniversary, they’ve taken over Shoreditch with the help of graffiti artist CHU who’s from Birmingham.

You’ll also see designs/illustrations for nights at the Rainbow and if you see half a skateboard tied to a lamppost then chances are that’s AS1 too.

This here wall is a recent edition to Digbeth’s landscape and was done with Tempo33:

Covering walls in public places can’t be easy, but apparently (and here’s a tip):

no-one sees past a high vis jacket and a purposeful look….