PEN 1 - The Newest Street Artist in Town

There’s a new artist in town and his name is PEN 1, he’s currently causing a bit of a stir in the UK street art scene. There’s not a lot known about him it seems, but he’s causing something of a debate among graffiti aficionados (what I like to call the graffiterati). Some people are hailing him as the next Banksy, and others are saying he’s no such thing. I’m intrigued to say the least, and I hear that he’s going to be featured in the Sun newspaper this weekend, so I thought I’d have a look at what we do know about him.

The most concrete evidence I can find of PEN1, on the internet at least, is a stencil that he’s done of Kate Moss holding a ‘Greater London Penitentiary’ sign citing ‘Model Behaviour’ as the reason for arrest. (Obviously it’s made to look like a mugshot). I haven’t posted the picture here because I don’t know what the copyright status of it is, but you can see it here.

I quite like it, it’s not exactly biting social critique or even particularly clever, but it is fun and made me raise a bit of a chuckle. Looking at the comments page on this site, I think some people are taking it all a bit too seriously. It’s not much to go on, but I’m guessing that PEN 1 is really more of a prankster than an arch commentator of our times.

The only other bit of information we currently have to feed off is the logo. You can see it on the PEN 1 website (just a holding page at the time of writing), and as any hip-hop aficionado will know, it is strikingly similar to the Public Enemy logo. Indeed, PEN1 is apparently short for ‘Public Enemy Number 1’, and I doubt this decision was taken lightly. Despite being something of a prankster, perhaps PEN 1 is equally enamoured by Chuck D’s anti-authoritarian socio-political commentary. Perhaps he will reveal a more serious side in the future.

All in, this PEN 1 character looks like a street artist worth taking an interest in, and I’m certainly going to be watching out for him in the future. Sorry about the lack of pictures, but I don’t want to fall foul of any copyright restrictions, and there aren’t that many out there anyway!