As an outdoor advertising business, people often (falsely) assume that we’re at war with graffiti writers and flyposters. It's true, we're all competing for your attention in outdoor spaces. But there’s at least one more thing we all have in common: support from the communities we paste in can only come from listening to and being part of them. 

Let's be honest - Frome isn't a town that rolls out the red carpet for advertisers. It's fiercely independent, proudly creative, and rightly protective of its character. We’re a local business ourselves, so we understand this. So when a legendary graffiti artist and Frome resident got in touch, we saw an opportunity to do something a bit different. 

After spotting a billboard on his daily school run, PARIS had an idea. Rather than filling the space with another advert, why not create something for the town to enjoy? Drawing influence from his own body of work spanning nearly 40 years, the sounds of 90s Drum and Bass and the industrialism of Detroit techno, the result is a huge, intricate and vibrant piece of public art that blends graffiti and surface patterns with experimental techniques from the Decorative Arts movement.  

PARIS's work has taken him from collaborations with Coldplay to exhibitions in New York and Tokyo, but his roots in street culture and public art remain at the heart of what he does. His latest project, The Paris Zen Compendium, takes a deep dive into all aspects of street culture in a handmade zine signed by the artist, with an exclusive work of art in every copy. 

We hitched a ride with our outdoor team to catch up with PARIS and watch his artwork come to life...

Hi PARIS, thanks for coming down. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?

PARIS: Hi, my name is Paris, I'm a graffiti artist. I started painting in the late 80s on the streets of Hull in East Yorkshire. I moved to Bristol in the late 90s, that's really where my claim to fame comes from, but I'm international, baby, and you've got to keep it that way, keep moving! I’ve done a lot of different stuff over the years, video art, music industry stuff - so album covers, things like that. You’ve got to diversify these days. I still do my own paintings, canvases and commissions. So yeah, all sorts. 

How did you end up in Frome?

PARIS: Well, we moved to Frome way before it became fashionable. It was more…we lived in Bristol for a very long time. We'd kind of done everything there was to do in Bristol and then when my son came along 12 years ago, we just decided it was time for a change, and we wanted to try something new. I've got a lot of connections in Somerset, like Glastonbury Festival - been doing that since pretty much when I first moved to Bristol, so it was a natural choice. I miss the city big time. It's a very difficult move, if anyone's ever thinking, "Oh, we'll just start again in the country”. A different kettle fish altogether, but you know, we've got a very chill lifestyle here. It’s very sleepy but there's still a lot going on here, and there's more all the time!

Nice. Tell us about this particular piece and how the idea came about? 

PARIS: Okay. Well, I walk up here all the time after the school drop off, just to get into town. It's a really nice little street. I noticed there was a billboard here - it's almost tucked away, but nicely positioned. Then one day I saw that Out of Hand had taken it over. I think I just sent you a message on Instagram saying “this needs a little bit of love”. Nige got back to me straight away, saying, "Well, have you got any suggestions?” and I did. It was incredible! I've done billboards before, but very like music industry stuff, or sometimes for art pieces. It’s an advertising space, yes, but it’s also a fantastic canvas for art.

I've been sorting my archive out recently, which got me thinking about my connection with Out of Hand - it goes back to at least the late 90s, early 2000s. In the early 2000s, as graffiti artists we used to do a lot of wheat paste postering, quite abstract graphic stuff, just on the streets. A lot of the work you see here takes elements from then, some of it is more recent stuff I’ve made using Illustrator. So it's got its roots in graffiti, but it's very much a graphic sort of form, like a new form of calligraphy. I wanted to do something that would appeal to the youth. If you could picture Drum and Bass, I feel like it might be like that. There’s a lot of layers going on and textures inspired by old musical motifs. I came to Bristol during the rise of Drum and Bass and was like ‘oh my God, I know this music from up north!’. Roni Size, Reprezent, DJ Die, Dazee and Ruffnek Ting…all that. When you’re listening to stuff, it soaks into your art and channels through. I also listen to a lot of Detroit techno. I wouldn’t say this is techno, though, because you’ve got the red, gold and green as a colour flavour to it all. It’s just layered with information. 

The billboard goes hand in hand with The Zen Compendium, which is a new zine I started making after going through my archive. I thought, ‘I’ve got all this work, I’ve got to do something with it’. There’s a bit of everything in Issue 01, it’s a bit of a meander. Issue 02, which has just come out, is more structured. There’s a few people who might not want to be named publicly, but have helped me to fund and publish the Zen Compendium. The magazine +81 in Tokyo have also been a big help, along with Good Hood. There’s some barcodes and QR codes hidden in the billboard artwork, too - whether or not they work…it’s going to be interesting, just an experiment in interactive advertising, I guess. I just want to do this all the time, now!

What are your thoughts on the future of graffiti and how we can address the public perception of a battle between billboard advertisers and street artists?

PARIS: We called it the conflict of urban space, which is almost like a sci-fi thing. I would say one possibility is to evolve something together, like a partnership, because even with just graffiti on the streets, there’s always a conflict. Everyone's battling for superiority over the big spaces, except nowadays most of it is online so there’s a lot of spots that are just falling through the gaps. This is why, when Nige came to me, I was like, ‘right, I don’t want to do something that screams my name. I want to do something that’s way more accessible’. 

In the late 90s, Fosters Ice did a project with an artist called Swiftie, who I totally admire. Fosters are obviously a very corporate alcohol company, but they had some budget left over so they invited 12 international and local artists to come together to create one-off billboards in London and Manchester.  I was living in Manchester at the time, so I rocked up and met all these incredible artists. There were people like Designers Republic and Futuro involved, it wasn’t just graffiti artists. It was such a good combination of the creative arts and music world with big business. There’s a lot of money in advertising budgets that could be put to good use in the community, with the local kids who might be writing on things they should and getting in trouble, or even old age pensioners. This could happen anywhere in the world. We’re making art but it’s more about creating it together and then celebrating it in a big public space. 

Nothing lasts forever, so it doesn't really matter. And at the end of it, maybe you find a really big exhibition space to show it, like a billboard. Because as a canvas, it's bigger than a Rembrandt. And that’s beautiful.

The Zen Compendium Issues 01 & 02 are available to purchase here, more details can be found on PARIS’ instagram here.