Graf artist heaven in paint fume duel

A work by graffiti artist Deus. Photo / Steven McNicholl.

Last Saturday at Nga Tohu o Uenuku, the beautiful new Mangere Arts Centre, nearly two dozen graffiti artists fought it out in the Kings of Style 2010 Graf Art Battle, part of the Manukau Festival of the Arts. They painted skulls and 1980s ghettoblasters; eyeballs and green gunk; babes and musclemen; cityscapes and robots. Altogether, 11 two-man crews wielded 250-odd spray cans over eight hours, in paint-fume haze under the Labour Weekend sun.

They were watched by knowledgeable young men; kids who wandered out of the b-boy/b-girl dance competition next door; and fellow graffiti writer Lady Diva who was too busy with her four children to enter (this time).

The standard was high. Jaes, one of the three visiting American artists roped into judging by celebrated local artist Askew, declared Auckland as "one of the most progressive graffiti scenes in the world". He was looking for figurative designs which supported the letter shapes: "I'm big into letters ... I'll be asking, 'Do these letters have an attitude you can enjoy?"'

Midway through the event, amiable writer Deus was up a ladder spraying a flat halo of pink around the bald head of a very large, sad, bleary-eyed figure of an old man. When Deus added spots of pink to the character's sunken cheeks, it looked like someone had rouged the old man.

Deus says his work never turns out like he thinks it will and he just takes a risk and hopes for the best. But his hand was steady as he went over most of the old man's pink halo with brown. He then added thin black lines to transform flat blocks of colour into a shadowed hood of tired wolfskin. Its snout echoed the old man's own thin nose. The effect was comic-grotesque; below, pink tartan socks stopped just before the old man's knobbly knees.

Deus likes drawing distorted people "with holes in their clothes". With a droopy blond moustache and crooked teeth, he himself looks more like a hillbilly than a stereotypical brown graffiti artist but then, most of the battle writers were white.

Graffiti is territorial and hierarchical, but it's also collaborative. Deus belongs to the TMD crew, which stands for "The Most Dedicated". A dozen TMD writers meet every week or so to talk their projects over, and they'll work on pieces together and help each other out. For the battle, Deus teamed up with his fellow TMD member, Berst. Working in a pair, says Deus, you have to sometimes paint over the other guy's work. "You have to be brave enough to ruin your friend's work, and also humble enough to have him ruin yours."

But there was no ruining for Deus and Berst - they won first prize along with another TMD team, Has and Phat1. Deus gives Berst a lot of credit - lettering is still the most important element of graffiti, and Berst is handy with a new nozzle, the astro fat cap. The astro "is like going electric after you've played acoustic guitar all your life", says Deus.