About

The central Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn was once an inner city refuge for artists and the poor. The kind of place you went to create or live between jobs, now you got to have two just to make rent. Hip Hop culture has been going though a parallel metamorphosis, transforming from a mouthpiece for the dispossessed to a hideous cartoon used to sell everything from soft drinks to porn.
Stencil artist, DJ and O.G Grey Lynn resident Component has seen both gentrification of his home and the comodifacation of his passion. But rather than be bitter, he brings together the authenticity of the past with the immediacy of the present. His work captures that solid boom bap aesthetic while never feeling like shallow homage to a bygone era. Similarly component chooses to incorporate that old school Grey Lynn feel into his work, while making it fresh enough to sell to its new residents. His iconic T shirts with the jandels and hibiscus flowers have become as much part of the local landscape as the SUVs and Soya latté’s.
Part of that old school feel is his D.I.Y approach to art and business. Self taught in the true sense of the world, Component has built up not only a solid rep as an artist, but also a business through the sale of his T shirts and artwork. And rather than keep his skills and knowledge to him self, he shares his passion, running workshops on art and DJing .
Components art work itself is varied thematically; everything from Odes to hip hops fallen legends, Old Dirty bastard and J Dilla, to political critiques on censorship and conformity. But it’s his style that brings his work together; whether Boba Fett standing guard on Ponsonby rd to the Queen rocking the 1 and 2′s, Components solid line work and eye for detail make his pieces leap out from canvases and brick walls alike. Both the suburb of Grey Lynn and the culture of hip hop may have been changed forever by money and outside interests, but Components attitude and art captures the old school spirit of both communities’s, and recontextalises it for the present day.