My commute home is generally spent trying to ignore other commuters. I adopt a comatose and defensive stance: arms folded, massive earphones blocking out the sound, eyes happily closed. If someone nudges me, I nudge them back. You have to be very territorial on the Underground.
Yet every time my train rolls past Kentish Town tube station I open my eyes…only to see eyeless poster people staring back at me. Some strange scrawler has decided to deface posters, by blacking out some arbitrary actor’s eyes and drawing rather strange tears just hanging there. It’s infinitely odd but fascinating.
I am amazed at how rapidly this ‘graffiti artist’ works. No sooner has a new poster been put up, but they’re at it again, presumably with a black marker (a spraycan just wouldn’t achieve those authentic-looking tears).
Only once did they deviate from tradition. There was a poster up for Banksy’s ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’, bizarrely marketed as ‘The world’s first Street Art disaster movie’. Scrawled across the poster was a simple ‘Marry me Banksy’. (I’m assuming that it’s the same person; it was written in black). To be fair, there wasn’t a human on the poster, just a puppet, so maybe blacking out their eyes wouldn’t have had the same effect.
Time Out ran the article this morning, with the catch line where the eyes should be are only black chasms weighed down by tears ! Can we get some eyes gouged pictures on here please.