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Joe Cavalla — street name ‘Cav’ — left London at 14 when his family moved away, just as graffiti was emerging.
But that didn’t stop its influence on the teenager.
“We would return to London a lot to stay with relatives,” Cav recalls. “I often stayed with my uncle Ronnie at Chalk Farm and my grandma in Poplar.”
He has his debut art show on the South Coast being staged near Portsmouth, from Friday, September 19, at the Corner Collective in Southsea.
His north London upbringing has its imprint firmly on the exhibition.
“I was using art as a teenager to hit walls whenever I could,” he says. “But I didn’t develop any real skill with a spray can ’till university.
“I had already been expelled from art school for being a bad influence, which looking back I definitely was. But I learned not to undermine incompetent teachers and confined my rebellious activities to graffiti.”
Cav was born in Camden Town in 1971, the son of publicans, in a “deprived, dark and violent” neighbourhood, not like the cultural magnet it is today.
“Mum and Dad came from Somers Town, pulling themselves up from the streets by being smart,” Cav tells you. “My Dad taught me early on to be wary of three things — the VAT man, Customs and Excise and the Met Police.”
The seeds of rebellion were sown in a young Joe Cavalla, who went on to university with his artistic flair for what became street art.
“Spraying walls was my answer to the lecturers who didn’t understand what I was doing there,” Cav recalled. “They were all from a ‘fine art’ background while I was an aberration.
“The early 1990s were a golden era when I became aware of Brick Lane and Hoxton — the artwork on the walls was a major influence.”
He was also influenced growing up by the street music of the era, like ska.
“Terry Hall and the Specials hold a special place for me,” he says. “But as kids we all loved Madness too — they were ‘Camden Town’ to the core, resourceful, irreverent and rebellious.”
Cav got his first break in the games industry in 1994 but quickly encountered a problem.
“I couldn’t afford to get busted for vandalism as I was going to be travelling to America,” he added.
“So I was confined to painting backdrops for nightclubs with friends promoting club nights. That gave me free rein.”
Graffiti by then was gaining a greater presence, pushing boundaries of what could be done with a spray can.
“Then the ‘Hardcore’ can was released, the first paint created for graffiti artists,” he remembers. “I still have some ‘first generation’ cans from back then.”
His daughter and then his son were born, along with family responsibility. He stepped back from graffiti for an airbrush and canvases instead, putting the spray cans down for 15 years until he was “hassled to get up again”.
Frequent visits to Brick Lane followed, the walls charting the expansion of the artform to murals, stencil art and paste ups.
Cav’s studio today is busting at the seams with cans and canvases on the go, but he realises “walls are getting more scarce”, and so is turning to the art show scene instead.
He adds: “My mum remembers the way Brick Lane and the East End used to be and Camden Town as it was. She is ‘gutted’ that the family sold up and left — if only because the property they owned in the 1970s is now valued in millions!”
His one-man show, Everything You Know Is Wrong, opens at the Corner Collective at 150 Albert Road, Southsea, tomorrow (September 19) from 6pm to 8pm and runs until September 28 from 11am to 4pm.
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