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Trashmonster is a person on a mission to bring some comedy sesame street style monsters to the urban streets of London (in particular East London). These newspaper filled monsters have all the traits needed for some light hearted comic relief, including googly eyes, giant felt teeth and brightly coloured skin.

These temporary, New York graffiti style monsters and tentacle stickers are often extremely temporary and can be found on the back of loads of signs and lamp posts around London. Or nestling among piles of rubbish on street corners and yards.

Londonerseye recently caught up with Trashmonster and pitched a few questions in their direction, which seems to have uncovered some interesting fetishes and obsessions with office supplies…

1. Why monsters and do imagine them coming to life?
The monster thing sort of came from these caps I used to customize,
I used felt for the teeth and those wobbly plastic eyes you can get in craft shops to make these monster faces but soon saw New Era were doing something similar so I started using the bin bags instead, it just evolved really, I never sat down and decided on monsters. I guess I just wanted to use something fun and appealing though, to take the edge off things. The coming to life thing, that’s more why I started the tentacles. I think they’re definitely feeling and looking a bit more lifelike.

2. Who is your favourite graffiti artist?
That’s a killer question, I don’t think I could say just one but if you’re talking graffiti in terms of painters then my firm favourites growing up were Zombie and Insa but more recently maybe the Before Chrome boys. If its street artist then Mark Jenkins, Space Invader, Spy, someone like that. I think right now though its all about Aakash Nihalani and Poster Boy in New York or JR, those guys are smashing it. I came across this guy from Leeds the other day too called Final Frontier. His works is sick.

3. How do you feel when your work disappears quickly from the streets?
I quite like the idea of it being temporary and not knowing where it might end up. So much street art is fixed where as a lot of my stuff is the exact opposite, I think its kind of a refreshing take on things. I guess it also squashes the problem or legal issues too.

4. What is your favourite material to work with?
I’m proper into cardboard at the moment and of course spraypaint. I’ve also been using a lot of PVC for my new work. I’m loving that stuff man.

5. Did Blue Peter inspire your sticky back plastic interests?
Ha, yeah right like ‘here’s one I made earlier’ sort of thing. Without realising it, it probably did you know. I use quite a lot of everyday accessible materials in my work so you could say it’s a bit like Blue Peter yea.

6. How long have you been doing graffiti?
I started painting walls when I was about 16 but was never much good and I got caught a few times so I started thinking of some different ways of working. I started doing stickers and the 3d stuff quite recently maybe 2 years ago.

7. Where in the world would you most like to put some stickers?
I keep seeing all these kids in South America on Flickr making some well nice stickers. They do these mad combinations in some well rural places of all the stickers they trade with each other. I quite like the way they’re taking them out of the city, so maybe the desert or the jungle.. somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

8. Why do you do everything hand made?
It just gives me a lot more freedom to experiment with ideas on the fly. I can change my sticker designs or colours a lot quicker and cheaper than if I used a printer all the time. I’m working on some giant wheat pastes which will mean a trip to the printers though so it’s not all strictly handmade. Also there’s nothing quite like pulling your own screenprints, it might take a bit more time but it’s satisfying as hell to know you did it yourself.

9. Would you consider showing your work in a gallery?
Yeah of course, I mean its kind of the next step with street art as long as you stay true and keep banging your stuff out on the street as well.

10. Any tips for aspiring graffiti artists?
I guess its all about persistence, working hard and just getting out there and doing it, I used to spend too much time sitting around thinking about ideas but never actually doing anything about it, the best thing to do is just go with it even if you think it might not be the best. Also take your ideas and inspiration from anywhere and everywhere don’t just limit yourself to looking at graff. Oh and learn to love the early morning strolls; you know what they say about how life starts at midnight and all that.

If you are a graffiti artist that would like to be interviewed feel free to drop us an email to info@londonerseye.com and will get in touch!