Hong Kong MTR trains graffitied by fugitive American artist pair; China may be their next target
WATCH: Artists who call themselves Utah and Ether, and who later came unstuck when one of them was jailed in Australia, film themselves tagging three trains, apparently in Chai Wan and Kowloon Bay
Video footage showing two fugitive American graffiti artists vandalising trains on Hong Kong’s MTR subway system has emerged online, showing scenes reminiscent of New York during the 1980s. One of the artists is now in jail in Australia for similar offences.
In the undated video, posted online on July 11, the artists, who call themselves Utah and Ether, can be seen entering what appear to be the MTR railway depots in Chai Wan, on Hong Kong Island, and Kowloon Bay, in East Kowloon, and spray-painting trains with slogans such as “crime time”, before evading staff and then filming their handiwork from a distance.
On their website, Utah (real name Danielle Bremner) and Ether (Jim Clay Harper) write that after breaking probation in the US “by boarding on a plane to India in 2011 and knowing they can never come back, they set a course for new adventure, which lasted five years in the world’s largest and wildest continent – Asia”.