Graffiti writer 10Foot on finding meaning in the ugly and his 'disgustingly deep love of London'

The sun is going down over North West London as we pick our way up the verge towards a hulking concrete bridge over the North Circular Road. 10Foot, an oversized human in carpentry trousers and leather baseball cap, is pointing out the underwiring of the city invisible to the drivers roaring past. The River Brent flows silently under the four-lane carriageway, overhead bridges allow mail trucks to move around the capital, the Bakerloo Line makes its way out of London far above us. “It feels like we’re walking the past cut by a completely different moment,” he contemplates. “It’s layer on layer on layer on layer.”

This article is taken from the landmark takeover of Big Issue by graffiti writer 10Foot. It can be bought from street vendors across the UK or online through the Big Issue Shop.

It’s February rush hour. As it gets dark the glass and dog shit underfoot become harder to spot but 10Foot knows every inch of the walls and pavements. “This is where the energy becomes immaculate,” he enthuses as we pass under several bridges. “Hanger Lane from above is like a crosshair, a tube station sits in the middle, a dirty rectangular roadway above, the underpasses take you out to offies at the end of each tunnel. Bas told me that in one of them the Pakistani bossman speaks fluent Polish.” 

10Foot has left his mark on so many places along the A406 – as well as over it – that clocking his tag driving around London is like spotting an old friend. “Single instances of graffiti aren’t the point. A single tag is like a drum loop on a set that lasts for hours, graffiti is all about how everything fits in with each other.

“Some people do dull graf in obvious areas and it’s like Fred Again on Boiler Room, some people do amazing things for unexplained reasons and it’s like Doc Scott at Metalheadz, complete with tape hiss. It’s about witnessing someone sequencing with the city and its systems, permeating one another until they’re one and the same.”

The North Circular traverses the outer limits of the capital, ferrying commuters, residents and tourists from affluent Chiswick in the West to Beckton near the old docks area of the East, passing Wembley Stadium and the junction for the A1 and the North of England along the way.

It’s an ugly, unhealthy and dangerous road, spanning six lanes of traffic at some points, and plans to build a corresponding South Circular on the other side of London were eventually shelved when it became clear that around 30,000 residents would have to be displaced to make way. 

Yet in a city that’s in large parts gentrified and identikit, the area around the A406 has remained stubbornly chaotic, and offers a site of possibility. “It’s a breath of fresh air, a breath of exhaust fumes,” 10Foot jokes. “No one wants to put newbuilds and Pret a Mangers next to the North Circular, it’s still a place in London with space.”

As we follow the road, he mentions writers who likewise find meaning in the unlikely, ugly, and superficially dull: Octavia Butler, JG Ballard. “It’s a grubby grey tiara,” he declares, alluding to the road’s arc across the top of the map. “Each tributary road is a jewel, to list them would ruin your moment of finding them, enjoy discovery and keep it off the internet”.

We chat about how graffiti artists get to see cities from hidden angles, and experience the way that different networks – transport, utilities, people – are superimposed in one location. “Understanding it in abstract enables you to live it in the particular.” 

10Foot’s A406 project is a logical expansion of his activities in recent years beyond the practice of putting paint on walls. He’s been working on a set of audio recordings around the road for several years – a project derailed more than once by life circumstances and the police. The move to this new medium is a response, in part, to the complexity of the urban environment itself.

“It’s full of sideways jokes, experiences, references and the graffiti only starts two-thirds of the way through,” he explains. The project is informed by 10Foot’s new life circumstances and changes in his desire to exist, which now include avoiding prison and physical peril.  

“A lot of the things that I’m known for are underpinned by running down train tunnels and hanging off infrastructure with no safety precautions. 

“It’s lust for life, but that lust for life now means I want to see a little person thrive and be surrounded by love.” So how does he now reflect on the reckless adventures of his life? There’s a long pause. “It makes sense in the sense of trying to make sense of a world that makes no sense.”

It’s dark, and we’re in a small industrial estate set back from the road containing cash and carries, specialist food retailers and suppliers of slot machines. The streets here are covered with tags, underlining that graffiti artists who mark the city also experience it closer than anyone else.  

10Foot’s own tag is usually monochrome, done quickly with a single spray can. Has his signature changed over the years? “Yeah, half my tag is circles but I can’t do them still,” he admits. “I never cared about it looking stylish, it’s just signing the guestbook.”

We pass through an underpass on the way to the station, and a driving licence and an ID card rain down from above. They are discards from a recent mugging, and as we come out of the underpass a boy in a balaclava on a high-powered E-Bike zooms away from us, down the pavement. Another example of the multiple layers of life stacked together on the margins of London’s biggest urban thoroughfare. 

“There’s no chance of nailing this road’s meaning. You have to edge and edge and edge, that’s why I’ve walked the entire hard shoulder of that godforsaken road, and that’s why I made this big old ramble…  I hope that someone understands it as being a disgustingly deep love of London.”

Derek Walmsley is a music journalist and editor based in London.

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