Hong Kong has been 'bombed' by a group of Britain's foremost urban artists. It's 3am, the shops are closed and Causeway Bay is still - except for the rats. And the street artists. Working meticulously with spray paint and stencils brought from London, Hong Kong's first Diesel-sponsored art wall begins to take shape and a riff on the classic Coca-Cola bottle appears with the slogan, 'Only the brave ... riot.'
If you've been riding the Mid-Levels escalator this week you may have noticed an invasion of the D-Dog, a slightly vicious-looking Pac-Man with wings. D-Dog is the signature character and alter ego of D*Face, a prolific London street artist who most recently populated his capital with massive, 1-tonne sculptures of spray cans. His name is now being mentioned in the same breath as the elusive Banksy, and he counts pop star Christina Aguilera among his collectors.
D*Face grew up in London during the 1980s when graffiti art, or tagging, was exploding onto the scene for the first time. 'As a kid I was really interested in graffiti. My Mum bought me the books Subway Art and Spraycan Art and they're pretty much the seminal graffiti books from the 80s,' says D*Face. 'The styles and the colours, the look and feel - that was completely fresh to this little kid growing up in London.'
Although graffiti art and later skateboarding culture had a big impact on D*Face, he doesn't call himself a graffiti artist. 'I've never really created my work in that way. I've never painted trains, I've never painted letter styles.'
'What it did teach me was to look at the city differently. So when I was travelling around, what might be a regular wall would essentially become a blank canvas.'
D*Face began 'bombing' his hometown 10 years ago when there was no such thing as street art. 'It wasn't something I thought of as a movement or genre. I was creating posters and stickers just for my own amusement. I was sticking them up as an idle form of release.'