Q: First of all, thank you for taking the time to answer some questions. Secondly - as I usually start. What is the first place you saw graffiti, and what drew you to it? Tervo: Cheers mate, thanks for taking the time to chat. I don’t exactly remember the first place I saw graffiti, but I do remember the first place I really looked at it. I was sketching cartoons instead of paying attention in my year 9 English class, at that time I was sitting next to a B-Boy that I was mates with and he asked if I’d ever seen graffiti. I told him that I’d seen it, but didn’t know much about it. He started showing me photos from DTS, WTCS and a bunch of other Brisbane writers. I couldn’t believe that people were doing the sort of art that I loved: bright colours, thick outlines and funny shit without rules. I instantly fell in love. It was only a matter of time before I started falling down the rabbit hole of hip-hop. So for our English assignment that term, we made a magazine about hip-hop with one of the writers in our class. There was one page dedicated to each of the pillars of hip-hop. From there, the bug bit pretty hard. The first video I ever saw was Dirty Handz II. It had a lot of street bombing and trains from France. That just opened my eyes right up to how global this scene was and how hard people were going. I still hear that soundtrack and get hyped! Q:Oh man, big shout out to the Dirty Handz videos and in particular Dirty Handz 3: Search and Destroy for being the gold standard of graff movies forever after. If you haven't seen it.. you should go watch it ASAP! The pillars of hip hop is a kind of old school and pretty formal approach to things (to me). It asserts that graffiti is intrinsically connected to the culture of hip hop and to some degree inseparable - do you personally believe this? Also, just a guess but I'm placing this as mid 00s? Tervo: Yeah, it would've been 2006. You’re bang on! As for the pillars of hip hop. Well - for the most part, yes. I don’t think graff and hip-hop are always connected, for everyone. But to say they aren’t deeply connected would be silly. I’ve heard plenty of people argue that graff isn’t actually a pillar of hip hop, because of its timeline. But I don’t really care about that sort of stuff. Why’s everything always got to be forced into rigid boxes and structure?. That’s where it fits for me. If it doesn’t fit there for someone else, I’m not bothered. All that matters is burners. Q: Deeply connected yes, but not for everyone. For example Blade from New York, who supposedly has one of the highest panel counts ever. Played in a jazz band. But I digress. Who did you see getting up back at the start of your interest - and how long before you had a crack? Tervo: I grew up on acreage. There wasn’t really anywhere to bomb around there. I’ve never really considered myself a writer. Never painted a panel and I’m too old to start now. Graff just was a heavy influence on all of my other art. The colour, techniques and self-written rules of style inspired me. I was never going to fall in line with the fine art establishment. So I found my people in graffiti. It’s a participatory activity. But most people are pretty generous with their time and knowledge if you show respect. Even if I was taking it to a different medium. Most of what I’d see was on the way to and from school. Heaps of WTCS pieces. Then we’d spend hours on school computers googling new shit from all over the world. Q: Now to people reading this who don't know - you were instrumental in getting the Ekibin wall made legal.. which is a hell of an achievement! Can you talk through how on earth it came about? Initial meeting with Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner. Left to right Tervo,Schrinner, Smalls (2022) Tervo: It was just sort of the perfect storm of events leading up to putting Smalls (On instagram as @iwritesmalls) and I in the right place. Smalls is my mate that worked on the project with me. A couple of nights earlier, I’d been the guest speaker at a big law firm’s cocktail party. I was a finalist in Brisbane Portrait Prize. So they got me to go to fancy events and talk about art. I took Smallsy with me as my plus-one. Then a couple of days later, BSAF had organised us to be painting live murals for the launch of the Botanica festival. But we got rained off. So we were invited to a fancy cocktail party. Everyone was in suits and we were copping a lot of judgement for our paint covered shorts and t-shirts. During speeches, the chairman of the big law firm noticed us and invited us to come sit at his table. It was full of lawyers, politicians and powerful people. I noticed the Lord Mayor sitting a few seats down from me. He seemed like a friendly bloke so I introduced myself He had a chat and was really interested to learn more about murals and asked to go for a walk to where we had been painting and have a chat. That’s where he asked, “what’s it like being a street artist in Brisbane?” Not being one to sugar-coat things, I asked if he wanted my polite answer or my honest answer. He laughed and said, “Now I really want your honest answer.”. So I said “it's a shithouse and it’s all thanks to your liberal government.” He asked what I meant. So I told him all about the great buff of Brisbane, Campbell Newman, GTF and how the government had actively worked against artists. Yet still we had some of the most talented artists in the world. So I started dropping knowledge on DTS, Fintan Magee, Gus Eagleton, Guido Van Helten and all of the amazing artists that had come out of Brisbane, despite not because of the government. First official planning meeting for Ekibin (Left to right - Smalls, Tervo, Schrinner (2022) I then pointed out that in ten years time, the Olympics would be here and the council would open their arms and say, “Artists of Brisbane, come out and make your city beautiful!”. But the old generation will be rusty or will have moved and the new generation won’t be very strong and the government will pay ten times as much, for a tenth of the result. All because they ignored us when they didn’t directly benefit from us. The Lord Mayor said it sounded like a big problem and asked what could be done. This is when Smalls started hitting home runs. He’s originally from Canberra. Down there they have 36 legal government walls. Smalls explained how they worked, the outcomes, what the council did and gave the Lord Mayor a playbook on how it could be done. We chatted for an hour and couldn’t work out if we’d just made a difference, or if the Lord Mayor was just great at playing games. The next day I got messages from mates in council, saying they’d all been called into their meeting and been told that council needed to do something about supporting the arts better and it was a big problem that they all had to take seriously That was the start of almost nine months, working to get the first Ekibin wall launched Q: That is incredible! What an amazing opportunity to be in the right place at the right time to be able to make Ekibin happen. Every bit of painting at Ekibin that has happened since is a direct result of that one interaction. Tervo: I’m a big believer in community. There were a lot of people who put in the ground work to make that interaction possible. The first legal line up on southern end of Ekibin wall (2023) Q: So from the timeframe, this started rolling at BSAF 2022 and took the next nine months to iron out. I imagine a lot of that time was back and forth about legality, location and community impact? Tervo: It took ages. Because the council had never done something like this, there wasn’t the infrastructure for it. So they had to work out which department handles it. What to consider. Where was possible. Then there were all the considerations from our side of what makes a wall desirable to paint. We haven’t earned a single dollar from this project. We knew money would just be another factor to slow it down. So Smalls and I agreed to just do it for the community and we figured it would make enough opportunities for everyone where we’d all get paid. But I must admit, I don’t think we knew what we were getting ourselves into haha. I’ve learned a lot about how council works. We’ve been blessed to have some powerful people (in council) step up and take on roles that they really didn’t have to, to make this happen Q: How does it feel now that the dust has settled and your goal accomplished - to be the first ones to make a Brisbane city council sanctioned legal wall happen? Tervo: Honestly, it feels surreal and I’m tired haha. My brain won’t really compute that it’s real. I’ve had people stop their cars to yell out to me and say thank you. I’ve received really meaningful thank you’s from some of my biggest heroes. But still it doesn’t feel real. Sometimes I just go down to the walls and look at them. It feels nice to know that I left my mark. Every single person that said thank you to me really has meant the world to me. Unfortunately however, you’ve only got to look at my output of painting for the last 12 months to see how much effort it’s taken. I feel like I’ve hardly painted. But hopefully I can find that balance and keep the pedal to the metal. I think there’s more we can do with this momentum. I’m a big believer in biting off more than I can chew and then chewing like fuck! Longest lasting piece from the initial line up. By Gus (2023) Q: You've hinted in the past there might be more sites under consideration? Also, great forethought on the Olympics. It's been on my mind ever since it was announced, you only have to look at the Sydney white wash before the Olympics or the Brisbane pre G20 buff to see what's coming! Tervo: Yeah man, the plan is to do something like Canberra, where eventually legal walls won’t be a big deal. I’ll know we have succeeded when people just feel like having a local legal wall is normal. Hopefully that way kids coming up have somewhere accessible to practise and different walls come with different benefits. The Olympics have been a huge motivator. We can either be passive bystanders and watch our city get buffed again. Or we can get in front of it and make sure that the city loves us and the money they’d spend on buff, they spend on more paid murals and stoking the fire Q: Was there an attitude within the council that they were relatively open to this idea or was there pushback? Tervo: I felt a pretty overwhelming sense of support from council. There was a bit of fear that it would go wrong. But more so not quite sure how to do it. But I think the vast majority of people wanted to see it succeed. Times are changing and murals are a part of any creative landscape. Ekibin media call (2023) Q: I think anyone would want to emulate the success of Melbourne with their laneways and artistic reputation. It's a hell of an example. As a city, and I will digress for a moment. We have had a shitter of a time if you read up on some local history about how brutally anti art and self expression this state has been historically. Joh, Newman et al. Tervo: Yeah, Melbourne really proved it’s possible. My big message to the council though, was to not try make us like Melbourne or plan too far in advance. Just make something with as few rules as possible and see what we become Q: Right. Because Melbourne came about organically. You can't just say “art people become like that.” Tervo: Exactly! We are natural creators. Let us create. Whatever it turns into naturally will be way better than whatever we try force it to be Q: Well said! Now, last one about the wall - I know we have seen a positive reaction from the public. But have you heard anything from councils side? Tervo: It’s been overwhelmingly positive. Like councillors are trying to get them in their areas. Everyone is hyped. There’s been some complaints about fumes in the tunnels under Ridge st. So I just told them to take back 2 of the 7 tunnels. That will keep joggers and cyclists happy. It also shows that these projects are flexible, easy to work with and worth doing more of. I bet I cop shit for suggesting council shut two tunnels. But a few months ago, we had 0 tunnels. Now we have 7, a spillway and the council wants to give us more. There’s got to be some give and take as we work out this project Ekibin lives (2023) Q: You know I was there the other day and I did hear some ride by screaming from an angry cyclist about the tunnels being illegal so I guess that makes sense now. Tervo: I don’t think they’re illegal yet. They might be. But I didn’t think it was rolling out yet. I don’t think council would ever want people to be charged for painting it. I think they just want people to be cool and paint the rest and they’ll buff anything that does go in there Q: That could work Editors note: Council has since buffed two of the tunnels and added stencils denoting they are walls that will continue to be buffed. Tervo: Yeah, these are all the decisions we have to work through. I’m always just trying to find the option of least resistance. It’s never going to be perfect and trying to make it all perfect ends up with too many rules and that kills authenticity Q: Do you have any advice for others trying to get legal walls started or permission for murals? Tervo: I think my biggest advice is always put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re speaking to. Do your research. Find out what success looks like to them. Then work out where your goals line up and sell them on those points. Don’t just keep telling them what you want. Bring them along for the journey. Convince them why they should want it too. Q: What do you hopefully see in the future for the Brisbane scene? Tervo: I think the Brisbane scene is about to have jet fuel thrown on the flame that artists have been maintaining. I feel like part of the strength of the Brisbane scene is the resilience. Even in the worst conditions, it couldn’t be defeated. So with the Olympics coming up, the proven success of the silos, Melbourne’s laneways and the million other places it’s succeeded, it’s hard to deny the value of graffiti, street art, public art, murals or any other form of it. I’m lucky in that I have my feet in multiple camps. I’m welcome in fine art circles as well as street art. I can tell you there is a huge thirst for street art amongst the fine art establishment. Normally that screams gentrification time. But as Brisbane has stood strong in an environment that actively fights against it, I think we can stand strong against gentrification and culture vultures, take their investment but do it right. Q: Any shout outs you would like to give? Tervo: Definite shouts to Smallsy, my partner in crime and the little brother Gourami for always keeping my head on straight. Huge love to the Ironlak crew for teaching me almost everything I know and all the real mates out there that have genuinely supported me to follow my dreams. Q: Tervo, thank you for your time. Editors note: Some facts about the Ekibin area are included here for your perusal According to Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines (2003) the modern name “Ekibin” is derived from the aboriginal "Yekkabin" which referred to aquatic plants. In the Great depression of the 1930’s and the post WW2 housing crisis. Ekibin was known for having a shanty town (or homeless town) consisting of up to 148 home made huts. Residents also occupied a former military hospital. This area was eventually bulldozed.