On the wall

Picture: Tent van der Jagt

An exceptional piece of street art came together over coffee between two locals, writes Elizabeth Meryment

George Raftopoulos is famous around Paddington and famous around the world. In Paddington, he’s best known as a cheerful face at the cafes and in the streets where people congregate to have a coffee and a yarn.

But around the world his art is sold in New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Athens and wherever collectors look for iconoclastic pieces that, in their own way, rage against the machine.

“My parents always told me to go and get a job and I said, ‘I’m not going to waste my time doing that’,” Raftopoulous says with a grin. “I always had this relentless buzz that I wasn’t going to do anything else than be an artist.”

Raftopoulous may be well known here and there, but it was at the wall of a humble Paddington takeaway joint that his two worlds collided this year in the simplest and most rewarding fashion.

Walk down Underwood or William streets on any given morning and you’ll see a crowd gathered around the window of Tuckerbox, James Martin’s cheerfully understated grab’n’go cafe. People come for the coffee, the croissants, the conversation, and the cafe has gained a cult following since opening at the end of 2018.

Raftopolous had walked past the space daily before and after the cafe opened and identified its grey, blank wall on Underwood St as one of Paddington’s waiting opportunities.

“I walked past the wall every day for the past 12 years since coming back from living in New York and I never went into that shitty place that was there before Tuckerbox,” he says. “But I got to know James and became quite fond of him. We got on well and I thought, ‘Why not just do something there?' So we did.”

Raftopoulos’s wife Denise is in arts administration and has been involved in the Perry Lane arts project, so the couple knew the avenues to get the artwork through council. They patiently worked for eight months to get approval for the art wall in council, using the down months during COVID-19 to plan out the space.

They decided that instead of dominating the wall with a single mural, other artists would be invited to share the space. In August, Raftopolous painted a series of frames on the wall, effectively creating an external gallery space, and local artists began talking about using it.

Local tattooist Gummy Johnson painted a space, as did Tuckerbox’s affable manager Shane Petroni. Talented young local artist Otis Taylor and his dad Matt painted slots and the last positions are dominated by Raftopoulos’s two pieces, particularly the large Prince of Paddington with its distinctive yellow and orange tones. The idea is that the works will change over time, as in a conventional gallery.

Raftopoulos, who is not a fan of galleries or the establishment, says the idea of the mural wall appealed to his sense of working outside the system.

“This wasn’t about how much money you’re going to pay me, it wasn’t anything like that,” he says. “It was a reflection on everybody and the sort of people who walk past it. My whole ethos of my work is seeing yourself reflected in the work.”

Getting to know Raftopolous, it’s clear that working outside expectation is his norm. Raised in rural NSW in a Greek family, he has repeatedly defied expectations.

At 14, he was destined for a career as a star soccer player when he ran into a plate-glass window, slicing ribbons in the tendons in his arms and legs. Doctors believed he would be a quadriplegic, but he learned to walk again, spending three months in a wheelchair, seven months in plaster and three years in rehabilitation.

“I always say that I went into hospital as a boy and came out as a man,” he says. “I had to spend so much time on my own. It’s where my creativity sparked. I had hours to spend drawing and writing to occupy my time.”

A lifetime later, Raftopolous is one of a handful of Australian artists able to live solely off his art, with some large and intriguing projects on the go and an abiding interest in the local streetscape. He believes that bringing high-quality street art back to Paddington can fulfil some of the suburb’s lost artistic heritage.

“Sometimes people don’t feel like going to a gallery environment,” he says. “Art shouldn’t be contrived, or elitist. It should be open and accessible.

“That’s a part of my evolution as an artist, to have something up on the wall that’s so accessible. It’s open for everybody, whether it’s good or bad, or they like it or not, in this country we need more of it.”

For Martin, the mural has been an incredible addition to his cafe.

“The reaction when it went up was amazing,” Martin says. “People were grateful and thankful and really proud of it. Paddington has always had a bit of a European vibe and I think the wall adds to that.”

As for who exactly is the Prince of Paddington? Could that be Raftopolous himself?

“Well, I do want to leave a bit of myself behind here,” the artist says.

Tuckerbox

83 Underwood St

georgeraftopoulos.com