aroe, 2022

Aroe MSK   New & remarkable Artists

Highly influential British graffiti artist Aroe is a master of his craft, able to create large-scale murals without preparation, sketches, or projections. For four decades, this prolific artist has become one of the leading names in the subculture of British urban art. With a firmly established career, one would think Aroe has it easy when painting walls. However, he still prefers illegal graffiti to legal one for its raw power and the freedom he gets from working outside the system. A risky decision as he already had plenty of trouble with the law. Throughout his career, Aroe has left his mark in numerous countries around the world, including Columbia, Egypt, Denmark, Russia, Britain, and Malaysia.

Aroe, who was born in 1970, found his passion when he was 13. In 1990 he saw a music video "Buffalo Girls", by Malcolm McLaren for the first time, and his world changed forever. The hip-hop culture presented in the video resulted in British youth grabbing any kind of paint and marking walls all over the country. For Aroe and his brother, it marked a new beginning. Everything and anything related to the hip-hop culture he had to try. Yet graffiti was not something he could shake off. The artist fondly remembers that some of the first pieces he did were awful.

By 1989 Aroe was arrested multiple times and was facing prison time. Additionally, even though he took a step back from making graffiti and ventured into music, still, any time there was a new piece in the neighborhood, the police would assume it was him.

With Sir Prize and DJ Klear, he formed the music group First Down, which today holds a cult status, and their records are highly sought after by collectors. Yet he always looked for a way back into the graffiti world, as not expressing himself through art felt like a part was missing. In the mid-2000s, the British scene was looked at by Europe as stuck in the past. As new styles and forms were constantly discovered in other countries, UK's remained archaic.

Aroe decided to change all that, and in 2006 he co-founded the graffiti crew Heavy Artillery. They were adored by fans and, at the same time, heavily opposed by critics and law, but they managed to revive the UK scene. In 2008, Aroe joined Mad Society Kings (MSK), the world-renowned graffiti crew. To this day, the artist creates illegal works worldwide.

All the gallery work Aroe has done is based on his street art. Like his series of paintings of Grace Jones, which first appeared on the streets of Italy for a limited time. He published a limited print of his work in an art book entitled .

Aroe lives and works in Brighton.