Lushsux’s street art is celebrated by Banksy and Beeple; his NFTs have made millions; and he has a landmark auction planned for a “major auction ho
Lushsux’s street art is celebrated by Banksy and Beeple; his NFTs have made millions; and he has a landmark auction planned for a “major auction house” next March — but he’s still very much a man of the people.
The artist is showing me around his studio warehouse in inner-city Melbourne but gets concerned when I point my camera in the vague direction of his beaten-up old Ford. The anonymous artist is worried that I’ll inadvertently expose his location to other graffiti crews who hate him.
“Do me a favor and don’t shoot the car in the front because I’ll have some cunt come round here and try and stab me. I’m not kidding,” he says.
“They’ll work out where it is — trust me — and I’ll get some psycho cunt come around.”
Lush (that’s how everyone refers to him, as “sux” was a late addition) has been beaten up by other writers before, most famously in connection with a series of murals of rapper 50 Cent.
As the somewhat true, somewhat invented, story goes, Fiddy was getting increasingly upset with Lush’s murals mashing up his face with Taylor Swift (Swifty Cent), Donald Trump (The 45 Fif President) and Mike Tyson (50 Thent). The rapper reposted that last mural to his 11.8 million followers, telling them that it showed Lush needed “an ass whoopin bad.”
Soon afterward, Lush did indeed get an ass-whoopin’ bad, and he posted a picture reply to Fiddy of his bloodstained hospital bed. However, Lush graciously blamed “violent video games” and not the rapper.
Lush explains that he’s brought in some weightlifting equipment to the studio so he can pump iron in preparation for next time.
“I got beat up,” he says. “Someone was hitting me with a metal pole in the shoulder, so I brought my stuff back in so I could get back in it.”
Lush does not look like much of a fighter, even though he’s a big guy in a death metal T-shirt that exposes his tattoos. The image is somewhat undercut by a ponytail, jaunty-looking pants and softly spoken manner. He says he’s not planning to get into fights if he can avoid it:
“It’s not worth it. It’s funny man, karma. There’s always someone bigger and more junkie than them.”
Provocateur
Lushsux is what Australians call a “shit-stirrer” who loves to provoke a reaction, good or otherwise. He calls it “strategic trolling” and bills himself on Twitter as “the world’s first and therefore best meme artist.”
He spray-painted a dead horse for one London exhibition opening and set up a wrestling deathmatch so that Jesus and Satan could fight it out in a cage at another. In 2017, he painted a huge mural of Donald Trump on the West Bank separation barrier in Israel, referencing the president’s “build the wall” plan for the Mexican border. He’s an equal opportunity trouble maker, though, also getting reamed/celebrated for controversial and supposedly sexist takes on Hilary Clinton and Kim Kardashian.
Earlier, Elle Anastasiou, who works with Lush on his nonfungible token (NFT) platform, DRP.io, explained that the loudmouth internet persona was mostly an act. “He’s very much more quiet in person, so I need to do all the talking,” she says.
Lush concedes that “it’s misdirection,” adding, “Lush doesn’t have to be me, like my government name, type, and personality, you know what I mean?” he says. “I’d rather have fun with it.”
Locked down, while NFTs go up
Melbourne is still in the grip of the world’s longest lockdown, which will have hit 263 days by the time it is finally lifted on Oct. 22. Unfortunately, defacing public property is not one of the “Four Reasons to Leave Home,” so he’s been mostly confined to painting in his warehouse for the duration.
There are stacks of canvases in one corner, and he’s recently been working on a Joaquin Phoenix Joker NFT drop and a large Bored Ape picture that he painted for a friend who owns the actual NFT.
Three enormous murals of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are on the far wall. I’d watched him paint one live on Twitter earlier, muttering darkly about Zuck being a “bloody lizard” and complaining that every time he paints the social media overlord, his Instagram posts mysteriously go missing. When he finishes a mural, he imports the picture into Adobe Premiere to jazz up the NFT with movement because “there’s more perceived value in it being animated. It’s kind of fun.”
“My formula is to combine viral moments with living memes, and that gets things popping,” he says. A signature Lush move is to find the most talked-about celebrity of the movement and combine it with some sort of meme in order to hijack social media algorithms. This works even better when the celeb takes part by reposting or engaging with the work like Fiddy did.
I spy one of the green posters that have…
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