The elusive street artist taking on the world

Sub­ver­sive street artist Foka Wolf has an air of mys­tery about him. He’s nev­er pho­tographed and doesn’t like to give away too much for obvi­ous rea­sons. He’s based some­where in the UK’s Mid­lands area and has been using text instal­la­tions and inter­rup­tions to high­light and protest against inequal­i­ty for near­ly a decade. From notes left on 4×4 own­ers’ wind­screens ques­tion­ing their penis size, to hack­ing Lon­don Under­ground adverts and tak­ing over full adver­tis­ing bill­boards, his pieces are sub­tle enough to make you think they might be real. Then you take a sec­ond look and realise what he’s done. 

When did you realise the pow­er of using words in your work? 

I start­ed out mak­ing hand-drawn clas­si­fied adverts on stick­ers for all sorts of ran­dom shit like ​“Iz your nan act­ing weird? Call this num­ber” and ​“Illu­mi­nati secret blood sac­ri­fice par­ty”. Some of the ones that were a lit­tle too offen­sive would get torn off and picked at. I would then put anoth­er stick­er next to it that would read ​“Do you like pick­ing stick­ers off lamp­posts? Call this num­ber”. Once I found out that writ­ten words could cre­ate change in the phys­i­cal world, I was hooked. From there I kept the same idea but went bigger. 

Have you ever put up a piece and thought it would get loads of atten­tion but realised it was too sub­tle and made peo­ple think that was just the advert?

When I did the ​“If you dri­ve a 4×4 you could be enti­tled to a free penis enlarge­ment on the NHS” advert, I had a num­ber that was con­nect­ed to an answer­phone. Some peo­ple would call up with seri­ous enquiries about the penis enlarge­ment, which I found very sur­pris­ing. It made me realise that there is a demo­graph­ic that will fall for absolute­ly any­thing that is framed right.

Your work is very polit­i­cal – what makes you angriest?

It would be inequal­i­ty that the peo­ple at the bot­tom are expe­ri­enc­ing. Also it’s the manip­u­la­tion of the work­ing class­es into blam­ing every­thing but the gov­ern­ment for their hardships.

How did you get into activism and subtervising?

I would say it was from lis­ten­ing to a lot of Bob Mar­ley as a kid! I didn’t realise it at the time, but a lot of the things that were sung about in reg­gae music left a mark on me. I would also say that street art led me down a path of dis­rupt­ing. Fol­low­ing peo­ple like Banksy and Shep­ard Fairey as a young­ster showed me that you could cre­ate your own pro­pa­gan­da. I wouldn’t describe myself as an activist as I real­ly don’t feel like I’m doing enough to be count­ed as one, but I like to think I give peo­ple ideas and tools to use from what I do.

How impor­tant is it to make sure there’s an ele­ment of humour in your work?

I think humour or any sort of art mag­ic is so impor­tant when you are try­ing to con­vey a mes­sage. If you just shout a mes­sage down at some­one they are most like­ly going to dou­ble down on their opin­ion. If you sug­ar­coat a mes­sage with­in humour, poet­ry, song or art you will be able to soft­en them up enough to shove your idea into their brain.

As it’s so often text-based, how much of your art train­ing goes into cre­at­ing your work? Am I right in think­ing you did sign-writ­ing after art college? 

All sorts of stuff I learned in edu­ca­tion is used in my day-to-day work but I wouldn’t say you nec­es­sar­i­ly need it to progress. I did sign paint­ing as my last job but all of that was self-taught through the inter­net or from advice from friends. Learn­ing sign paint­ing did give me a basic under­stand­ing of lay­out and the impor­tance of fonts, but most of the adverts I do are com­plete­ly lift­ed from oth­er adverts. I think that if they are in the pub­lic domain (our eye­balls) it’s fair game to steal off them. I would advise any­one to try it as an exer­cise. It makes graph­ic design a lot easier.

As an artist you must sure­ly want to be able to see the reac­tion to your work – I guess Insta­gram is good for that but when a piece is live do you linger about watching? 

I get out of there ASAP and then come back to take a pho­to. Some­times I catch peo­ple at that moment and usu­al­ly receive good feed­back. The best reac­tions are from the phone calls as they are the most real. Or com­ments on social media from peo­ple who don’t fol­low me.

Do you sit under the ads you put on the Lon­don Under­ground to see if peo­ple notice or hang around the 4x4s watch­ing peo­ple pick up the notes you’ve left say­ing they need penis enlargements?

Haha! No way. I get very self-con­scious – I just get out of there quick, and let them do their thing.

How many death threats have you got? Do they both­er you?

I have received the most death threats from the ​‘Voodoo class­es for kids’ poster I put up. Usu­al­ly from reli­gious peo­ple, fun­ni­ly enough. They don’t both­er me, but that is why I like anonymity.

When you’re doing big­ger com­mis­sions, like the 35-metre mur­al STRIVE FOR­WARD WITH AMBI­TION piece – how wor­ried are you about get­ting nicked for pre­vi­ous work. How do you get around it? Or is it a ques­tion of not adver­tis­ing that it’s Foka Wolf doing the piece, you’re mere­ly an artist who got asked to do it.

Yes, so I will just say that I am a sign painter until it’s all fin­ished. I real­ly don’t wor­ry about get­ting nicked because my work doesn’t real­ly count as crim­i­nal dam­age as it’s paper.

What’s the most pow­er­ful sen­tence you’ve 1) used your­self 2) ever read?

1. Ignore the Kids, Burn the Planet.

2. “I believe that mag­ic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writ­ing, sculp­ture, or any oth­er form, is lit­er­al­ly mag­ic. Art is, like mag­ic, the sci­ence of manip­u­lat­ing sym­bols, words or images, to achieve changes in con­scious­ness… Indeed to cast a spell is sim­ply to spell, to manip­u­late words, to change peo­ple’s con­scious­ness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the clos­est thing in the con­tem­po­rary world to a shaman.” Alan Moore