The Art & Adventures of The London Police
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 52, which is sold out.
It’s early evening on a Thursday in May when the London Police jump on a call with Hi-Fructose from their studio in Amsterdam. Chaz Barrisson and Bob Gibson—who began working together under the London Police moniker in 1998—are in work mode, preparing for an exhibition at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles that will open in late June. They’re mining their film influences for the show; Barrisson notes that their painting in tribute to Bruce Lee is in front of them as they talk about their past and future.
Earlier, Barrisson went out to grab lunch, noticing all the people outside on a nice day and wondering if anyone else was working. “We’ve got to paint every day from the minute we wake up to the end of the day,” he says. But Barrisson acknowledges that soon they will be the ones with time for leisure. He imagines being on Venice Beach after the L.A. opening and saying, “We did our work and produced a great show.” Right now, though, is the crunch. The two artists are pushing themselves creatively, working on large pieces with lots of detail and color. “We’re aware that it’s quite easy to get into the trap of getting a little bit too complacent,” says Gibson.
For more than twenty years, the London Police have been building a delightful world that includes quirky characters, detailed cityscapes, pop culture references and lots of humor. It all started, however, with photography. Barrisson and Gibson—who are originally from the U.K.—had a couple photography shows in London. Their first show had made a bit of money, enough to get them to Amsterdam to scope out the scene there. Eventually, they made the city their home, moved out from behind the camera and started drawing happy lads on the streets.
“Everyone was doing photography and there are millions of good photographers out there,” Barrisson recalls. “At the most, we were making nice stuff. The characters that we were drawing were unique.”
Barrisson decided to stick around Amsterdam. Gibson headed back to the U.K. to finish school and then returned in 1999. Their goal was to make art and travel, maybe spend six months at a time in different cities. But they ended up planting roots in the Netherlands, where
they were able to get jobs and find places to live. “Let’s give Amsterdam some credit,” says Gibson. “It was amazing—still is, and was then.”
Street art became their thing. “It was just about filling our city, Amsterdam, with these little characters everywhere. They would pop up in the same way that Shepard was doing his Obey posters and Invader was doing his Space Invaders,” Barrisson says. “Once you filled up your own town, you would go to Barcelona. You would go to London. You would go to Milan. You traveled far and wide trying to sow the seeds of what you were doing. This was before anyone was thinking about doing stuff in galleries or doing giant murals. That’s how it started.”
He adds, “It was just a case of being in a gang together and running around the streets of Amsterdam and drawing where we could and, in the meantime, having a job or two that would help pay your way.”
They painted on the sides of the electrical boxes. The boxes themselves, Barrisson points out, had white paper on the side and, when the paper was marked, someone would just put up another blank sheet over the graffiti. “That way they always kept it looking clean without having to actually clean it,” he says. That paper made the electrical boxes an ideal way for the London Police to display their work in Amsterdam.
“It was a lovely canvas, in fact. Nice flat white paper on the side of a big electricity box,” Barrisson recalls. “We would just sit there in the day time, really, and make the effort to do nice pieces of the characters. It could take anything from five minutes to an hour.” They didn’t have problems with the authorities. If someone questioned what the artists were doing, they could talk their way out of a trip to the police station.
Their calling card became the Lads characters—Barrisson’s creation, but drawn by all the members of the London Police. But drawing one artist’s characters became a hindrance for what was ultimately a multi-artist project. “Although we shared the character, it was, in essence, my thing—and that was always going to create friction,” says Barrisson.
“It didn’t really feel like there was much room for me drawing that character,” says Gibson. He left the London Police in 2003 to focus on his own art and music.
Once you filled up your own town, you would go to Barcelona. You would go to London. You would go to Milan. You traveled far and wide trying to sow the seeds of what you were doing.”
From 2004 until 2009, Barrisson worked on the London Police solo and ventured out to other cities. “At this point, I was doing it on my own and I was doing it more illegally in every other country because there wasn’t that niche of the electricity box and the paper, but I would still try to pick my spots to not mess up someone’s nice wall. I would find a wall that already had a bit of graffiti or a bit of wood that was boarding up a shop. I would try to find spots that I felt I could beautify as opposed to vandalize. I did that for many years, covertly spray and go out in Barcelona—which is a great place to paint,” he recalls. “You make sure you go out from twelve to five in the morning. Those were great times to go out. There was no one about on the streets. You could take your time and stencil or spray, come back and do the pen work later.”
For years, Barrisson loved painting in the streets. However, he says, about a decade ago, the situation began to change. “The fines were worse,” he says adding, “you’re a man in your thirties. You get caught drawing on a wall, things change,” he says.
I would try to find spots that I felt I could beautify as opposed to vandalize.
“Then the mural scene started kicking in. People wanted bigger and better murals. Also, you lose the excitement of going out and being up at 3 in the morning in Barcelona and putting up these characters that are only going to get painted over the next day, or someone is going to pull it down or someone is going to cross it. At a certain point, you start thinking, ‘I want to put effort into something that I know is going to stay there for two years’,” he says. “That’s when you kind of get more into doing murals and little jobs and canvases, to be honest. Putting that same effort and work into a canvas that can then go on to be sold, it can be on someone’s wall. It can be part of a show.”
In 2009, Barrisson and Gibson reunited. It started out as a collaboration between the two artists that brought together Barrisson’s characters with Gibson’s architectural style of art. That was when the work began to feel like it came from both artists. The London Police were back together and, a decade later, they remain a partnership.
“I think it works best for us when there’s a good combination of the two styles,” says Gibson. “I like it when it all merges together and it’s a fantasy landscape with Chaz’s stuff and my stuff. That’s when I think that it works well. It’s an ongoing thing. There’s so much to explore, so many different things that we can do with it.”
Together, they make works that merge the distinctive styles of two individual artists in a way that is always complementary. Barrisson’s street art sensibility, which launched the London Police years earlier, remains intact; but Gibson adds his own illustrative touch with realistic portraits and detailed urban backdrops.
“Flexibility is definitely key to accomplishing a mural, but, of course, we’ve made hundreds and hundreds of works together now,” says Barrisson. So, while the two are
open to flexibility, they do start with a plan. Depending on the project, there are a few different ways that they might approach art-making. “If it’s an intricate piece, it starts with Chaz spray painting the background colors in and he does all these throw-up logos,” says Gibson. “That takes place a few days before I can get my hands on it.”
The line work is a crucial detail to every piece. They want lines so tight that you might think that they’re printed as opposed to handmade. “In our artwork, we want it to be exemplary,” says Barrisson.
There’s a lot of humor in The London Police’s work, from the armies of smiling Lads that propagate the scenes to other characters, like a dog astronaut or mermaids. Yet, there’s a sense of absolute perfectionism in every piece.
They are careful as to what images the London Police capture as well. “Whimsical” is a word Gibson uses to describe their work. What they choose to represent is important, but so is what they don’t feature. Barrisson notes that they avoid politics and anything that might have too much of a message.
“We like to create fantasy stories that we can enjoy,” says Barrisson.
Recently, the London Police traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina to paint at Camp North End, the site of a former Ford factory. “They made the Model T car there in the early 1900s,” says Gibson. Later on, it was used as a manufacturing site for a military contractor. Now it’s being redeveloped as a shopping and business center. The London Police added their touch with Lads on a conveyor belt and other characters, like Tanksy and their Lad-styled dog, in the foreground.
I think it works best for us when there’s a good combination of the two styles.”
The canvases and murals are only part of the London Police’s output. There’s a performance aspect to their work as well. The duo like to sing songs about dogs. They even made a “Dogumentary” that compiles this work. Perhaps we could consider their Instagram—replete with stories filled with adventures in the studio and on the road—a part of their art as well. In the future, they’re interested in working more with animation. “A lot of times it feels like Bob’s paintings are stills from what would otherwise be an animation or short film or cartoon,” says Barrisson.
Even in the earliest days of their career, the London Police wanted to make travel a part of their art. Barrisson and Gibson have painted everywhere from the Netherlands to the UAE to Mexico. But their journey wasn’t fast and they want to continue their steady creative and commercial progress. “It’s just about trying to build it slowly over the years so that it remains on an upward trajectory,” says Barrisson. “You don’t become yesterday’s news, but you keep going forward, but not too fast, not too quick.”
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 52, which is sold out. Subscribe to Hi-Fructose today and get our latest print issue here.
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