It was Friday evening by the time I arrived in KL, I’d finished work and hopped on a quick plane over from Singapore – it was like flying from Melbourne to Canberra, straight up, straight down. After catching the high speed express train into the city, then a connecting monorail to Bukit Bintang station, I’d thrown down my bags and walked the short way over to near Jalan Imbi where everyone was gathered.

District Shop and Gallery is at the heart of graffiti in Kuala Lumpur – and the organisers of Meeting Of Styles Malaysia 2016. Down a side street, across from an amazingly tasty Bak Kut Teh (Sun Fong, you really should try it if you’re in the area – but I’m obsessed with BKT so, hey), the shop sits in an unassuming building that I probably would have missed if a) I hadn’t actually been there before on a previous trip and b) there wasn’t a mass of writers and artists inside and out.

By the time I’d arrived the job of handing out Montana 94 cans to artists was already mostly done, and guys were picking up extras from the shop to complement the paint they’d received.

It was a great start to the event and a rad moment the Malaysian graffiti scene, with everyone meeting everyone else (there were quite a number of visiting internationals alongside the locals) and chatting – it all had a real great vibe hotel it and I was pretty excited for the weekend ahead. Paint was handed out, shirts were donned, stickers were traded and people met – so many writers all in one place and it had such a good vibe to it – this was all about community, and it was rad.

The next morning, a bunch of us gathered at District to head down to the site – which was right next to Dato Keramat LRT station, on the river front side- the wall was basically the side of the train station, and it had been buffed a few days before by the guy in purples, red, blues and yellow going in and out. Some guys were already there and waiting, and everyone gathered up whilst Bone laid out what was happening – then we all got to it. After a bit of a debacle of me fucking my phone up and not being able to access it, I got to painting (heres a tip dudes, if you are using finger print security while you’re painting, turn that shit off – it fucks up haha. Oh, and remember your backup password haha).

I wasn’t in a huge hurry as we had two days, plus I wanted to walk around a bit and meet people, check out some work as well as take a bunch of pictures (which, as you can see, I did).

It was damn hot in KL – though the area was pretty shaded. The space we were at was huge, and there were lots of spots all down the river, with a whole mass of pieces. Id say this is probably the largest collection of graff and art in KL, so if you are visiting the city, I’d recommend heading down there and taking a look (and if you’re painting, well, it seems to be a fairly chill spot as well).

Towards the end of the day, clouds stated coming in and a bit of rain started spattering – and that was it. Everyone hastily started packing their shit away, for good reason – when it rains, sometimes it floods. They open flood gates up river and then the whole place gets inundated – I heard a story of a guy who was painting down there when it rained once, and he wasnt quick enough and the waters washed away his motorbike. Dammnn. So yeah, no painting if it even hints at rain!

The next day, we were all back – and it was still pretty damn hot. I got my piece finished with a fair bit of time to spare, so I wandered around and did some live streaming, and started grabbing soe video and shots of some of the completed pieces, and, well, just basically hanging out and trying to chat to as many people as possible. Time ticked, and I realised it was time to head off – straight to the airport in my painting clothes haha.

I grabbed the train right from the station, swapped at Sentral and got on the high speed rail to the airport, got on the plane and was back in SG within a few hours. Exhausted, but damn happy.

The only bad thing I can say about MOS Malaysia is that my stay was too short! I just wish I’d had more time to hang out with everyone, and get to know all the artists and writers in KL a lot better. They have a great, close knit and incredibly talented scene, and it’s one that I was honoured to be a part of for a weekend – thankyou to all the people I met, and a huge tankyou to the District crew for putting it on – wish we had a lot more time to chat and chill – next time, hey? :D

Artists involved were acrom, adr1, adam, asno, barnes, cable, disek, facter, jaba, libre, menaw, pino, slac satu, shake, smaetwo, spatie, 9micro, mauy, zmogk, amey, asmoe, acit, akeem, budean, bone, case2, chaigo, cloakwork, deanr, escapeva, jeff, jeps, katun, kos, mile09, medea, nesttwo, pakey, rash one, reeze, resk one, siek27, spuxs, sored one, twenty fifth, violent, volre and Yumz one.

You can check out a bunch of the finished works on instagram #mosmalaysia2016 or @district_shopgallery

You can check out all my shots below – all photos in this article by me with my Ricoh GR1v and my Praktica LTL – I’m no photographer, but I’m enjoying the art of capturing shit on film a lot these days, so enjoy.

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