I was nervous. It was the first time Cafe 1001 had hosted an event like Secret Wars and I was really worried that our regular punters wouldn't show. Fuck that. It was one in, one out by 10pm on a Friday night! The place was heaving and heads from all over came down to witness the live illustration event of the year. It was a really debated Final with loads of drama in the days to follow.....
Secret Wars Rules: 90 mins on the clock. Black pens only. Freestyle (no sketches). Go big or go home. The winner is decided by two judges and the third vote uses a crowd decibel reader to see which artist is cheered for more. I was unlucky enough to be one of the judges who would decide which artist would win a thousand quid. Yes, that's right 1,000 GBP for the winner!!!!!!
The following is a summary about what happened on that freaky Friday 29th Feb at the Secret Wars Series 2 Grand Final....
Illustrator WEN was on the left and Graffiti Artist ODISY on the right hand panel.
Both pieces were full of rib digging sarcasm aimed at each other which, in the heat of battle are definitely weapons of choice for a paint challenge.
After the 90 minutes, it was up to me and Andy from Edding to cast our votes. Andy preferred WEN's piece and I liked ODISY's more. (For reasons that I think become apparent later). In the end, it is meant to be up to the people and by jove, they wanted their voices to be heard. Both the WEN camp of supporters and ODISY'S followers were super loud, ODISY reached an ear-splitting 115 decibels but was out-shouted by the 122 decibel WEN crew!
This is a pic of me showing the crowd my ODISY vote and getting the finger from some WEN supporter! After the voting, Terry, from Monorex was almost lamped on the head by a rogue bottle of Becks slung over from somewhere in the ODISY camp! When money is involved, passions are set aflame too and the drama continued in the following days online.
Here was the happy man WEN who won the Final and received the thousand GBP prize...He pulled out a great piece on the night and the crowd seemed to think so too.
The full wall the following morning. The Cafe is pretty dark, so please excuse the red light and minimal lighting.
I loved the Odisy caricature being kicked in the nut region, with what I belive to be his testes, exiting his mouth. "Odisy's ikkle book of clever ideas" was a nice touch too. The piece was signed off with a "Nothing fancy, just a good ol' fashioned kick in the nuts"
In my opinion though, this was the piece and the artist that smashed it....ODISY's character (with a small skeleton and mini Freddy Krueger) burying WEN's caricature was sheer brilliance. "You're my Adversary?" and WEN's tombstone reading, "An Art Fag Got Served" This is one aspect that I think probably pissed off alot of WEN's supporters...people don't like to be called "Art Fags"...oh well, it's all in the name of the game.
For me, the part of ODISY's piece that assured my vote for him was seeing the I Love Banksy tattoo on WEN's already pen-raped arse and the huge bite mark out of the Scrawl Collective book. To me, that was the ultimate jibe and made me smile, cringe and big-up ODISY.
Apparently, alot of people thought that ODISY had been robbed of the title, not due to his inferior artistic skills, but cos WEN had a bigger crowd show up and support. This brings in the debate of what Secret Wars is actually being judged on; the art or the crowd or both?
This debate continued onto the Dark Daze blog where ODISY lets off a little steam and we hear 30 other heads' opinions about the whole concept and package of Secret Wars, including some words of wisdom from Terry, the organiser. If you haven't already read the Dark Daze entries, pls do, cos some of them are fucking funny as well as some being downright rude! Overall though, it makes for some very entertaining reading......
Long Live Secret Wars and all the Beef that inevitably follows it!
