Photo Credit: Fabiano Caputo
Street art in Hackney’s ‘concrete safari’ is a worldwide attraction, but artist Gonzalo Borondo tells Katie Marston he wants to move the borough away from ‘graffiti tourism’.
It is a sunny day in the south of Hackney and the hordes of tourists blocking the street corner are gasping in awe at what an older generation might call ‘graffiti’. Would-be Banksys feed off this fascination, and while hipsters pay homage, artists are usually the last to critique it.
Yet Gonzalo Borondo, one of Hackney’s many street-artists-in-residence, has slammed them as “safaris”. While he raves about the importance of street art, he says the tours themselves are “not natural. Artists do it to become famous.”
Inside a disused pub on the edge of Victoria Park, Gonzalo attentively rolls a cigarette as he explains how he came to be here in his studio. Huge pieces are propped up against the walls, painted on anything but canvas.
“London is the place in Europe where things are happening,” he says. “There is too much repression in Madrid.
“For me the streets are the best gallery in the world but you can’t live with that. Indoors it’s cold – there are people who never enter a gallery. In the street the relationship and the context is different.”
He leans over, tiny Moleskine notebook in hand. A face is sketched inside. “I love that piece.” He explains that the real-life version is on the side of Regent’s Canal. “It’s a little bit special. When it’s quiet, you can see a face perfectly in the water. London is full of reflections and water. People need to adapt what they do to where they are – I’m not a factory.
“I want a dialogue with the street and the city. I don’t like advertisements and the big cities where it’s full of advertisements. We should respect the ambiance because that reflects the lives of the people.”
Learning from the Spanish Masters
Gonzalo began experimenting with graffiti in Madrid aged 13. “I studied oil paintings with a master – an old guy who lived in his space really, someone who was really poor but knew so much about art. So I went and drank and learnt.
“When you take the things you’ve learnt from old Spanish Masters like Goya and put that in the public space – when it’s not only aesthetic but with something behind it – that’s beautiful.”
As the son of a psychologist and a restorator, his influences – adaptation to the environment and fascination with people – leap out.
He explains why his trademark focus is human figures. “With the figure you can say a lot with very few elements.” He holds his arms crossed, hands clenched. “It changes everything.”
@KatieVMarston
Thanks for that Anna, great spot. It should now be fixed, although probably not on the links already posted unfortunately.
Just letting you know that when this link is shared on Facebook, the header spells Borondo as Borando. Not sure if it can be changed but just a heads up.
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