New York legend Steve “ESPO” Powers will be making his London debut at the forthcoming Moniker art fair and as part of this will create a giant mural above the four panels of Village Underground on Great Eastern St. The above is just an artists impression, so hopefully there will be some pics to follow.

ESPO is one of Moniker’s featured artists and will curate his solog project inside Village Underground. Born in 1968, Steve Powers first exploded onto the scene in the 1990s, in both Philadelphia and his hometown of New York City, and was famed for his distinctive graffiti tag ESPO – “Exterior Surface Painting Outreach”. Painting in street clothes in broad daylight, Powers casually explained to passersby “I’m with Exterior Surface Painting Outreach, and I’m cleaning”; the official-sounding name and acronym was enough to prevent further questioning.

Powers was educated in Philadelphia, at the University of the Arts, before moving to New York City in 1994. After stints as publisher of On the Go Magazine, author of the book The Art Of Getting Over, and writer documenting his experiences as a street artist in his 1999 publication The Art Of Getting Over, Powers opened his first studio practice in 1998. Choosing closed shops and already vandalised areas as his canvas, Powers describes his graffiti as a public service. The artist’s most recent project A Love Letter for You was for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program in 2009. Comprising a series of fifty murals the conceptual pieces demonstrate the complexities and rewards of relationships and is painted along the city’s Market Street corridor, best viewed from the elevated subway.