PLASTIC JESUS: You never know when you go
out if tonight’s the night that you are going get busted and you are going to spend
the rest of the night in the jail cell.
PLASTIC JESUS: The thing about street art
that attracts me is firstly that there is no editing, there is no editor, you can put
any message you like on the streets. And second, the fact that street art is illegal and it
is put out without any legitimate authorisation. That in it self is a statement and I feel
that kind of subversive nature of it really works into the kind of person I am.
COMM: Originally from London, Plastic Jesus
is an LA-based street artist. After 20 years working as a photojournalist, he got into
street art around four years ago.
PLASTIC JESUS: Melrose is one of the busiest
streets of LA. You get between 30 and 50,000 people go down there a day. So, it is great
spot to get a piece of street art and also it has kind of become the centre of LA street
art as well. Most of the stuff down there is done illegally. I am not saying the building
owners turn a blind eye to it, but it is kind of almost accepted that street art is part
of the culture.
PLASTIC JESUS: Now, I’ve always admired
Banksy and the way in which he conveys a quite often political message or a current affairs
message within quite a simple street art stencilled image. So really that’s where my start up came.
PLASTIC JESUS: This is probably the piece
I am most famous for - Stop Making Stupid People Famous. Black wall, yellow works pretty
well, it’s just quite a striking piece and I can guarantee that in a day or two people
will be posing up next to it, taking selfies and tagging, tagging themselves and tagging,
hopefully, tagging me in it as well. I think it says a lot to Hollywood as well, this piece,
like, stop f*cking making stupid people famous, you dumbasses.
PLASTIC JESUS: It’s re-posted a millions
of times on social media and it always gets tagged underneath various celebrity, you know, reality
show stars like Kanye West, Kim Kardashian etc. etc. But the piece has actually a double
message, ‘stop making stupid people famous’ is really also a criticism of us. We are the
consumer, we are watching the TV shows, we are buying the tabloids, we are looking at
the websites, we are the people making these people famous. So, it is also very critical
of us and that’s the way I like pieces to be.
COMM: He made international news recently
when he built a wall around Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
PLASTIC JESUS: Most of my pieces are current
affairs, news or political commentary. I think having spent 20 years as a photojournalist,
a lot of my background there comes into play. I did some No Kardashian Parking signs. Recently,
leading up to the election, I’ve done some No Trump Parking signs as well. So what I
do is that I think of a few ideas, maybe jot them down and sketch them, come back to them
a few days later, if there is one outstanding idea that I still think works, I will go with
it. That was the case with certainly the Trump wall that I put on the Hollywood boulevard.
PLASTIC JESUS: These are Trump $100 bills,
and if we look here we’ve got the, we have got crossed assault rifles, we’ve got the
wall between us and Mexico, Trump’s signature.
PLASTIC JESUS: The whole message behind my
art is really not to tell people what their opinion should be or how they should think.
PLASTIC JESUS: I did another piece called
Liberty, which is the Statue of Liberty holding a police riot shield with a riot helmet on.
Now that can carry two messages, is it ‘are the police protecting our liberty” or ‘are
we becoming a police state’. Well, I leave that for the viewers to make their own mind up.
PLASTIC JESUS: Where my pieces are, I often
go back and just hang out there and take a few selfies, just to gaze at the reaction,
I mean, that’s the important thing with what I do. I want to see how the public interact
with them and their reaction and their comments.
COMM: He conceals his identity, but that’s
not just to avoid fines or possible imprisonment.
PLASTIC JESUS: I don’t want my persona,
me to become the focus of a piece of art that I do. I want the message in the piece of art
to convey it’s own importance. My brothers both know I’m Plastic Jesus. I think they
think that it’s pretty cool that they got a brother who does this stuff, which is getting
so much attention, and slightly subversive, and a bit of an unusual job.
COMM: Finally, how did he choose his pseudonym?
PLASTIC JESUS: I first moved to LA about 9
years ago and whilst just driving around, I saw all these cars with these little plastic
Jesus figures sitting on the back dashboard. These little plastic Jesus figures are there
to remind these people about their morals, their beliefs and their ethics. And I felt
really by doing street art, that’s really what I hoped to set out to achieve, to get
people to question their beliefs and ethics.