The first piece I saw by Kid Zoom stopped me dead in my tracks. The sinister black-grey owl perched in the hallway of Hibernian House definitely wasn't the work of a fleeting street art persona. A few months later, I found myself watching him work on a massive wood panel collab, literally molding shapes from a few cans of paint and it pretty much cemented his fate in my mind. So, I was fairly stoked when he wanted to pass on the first shots of his most recent projects, the first of which was a hush-hush bus shelter hijacking with Ron English in tow.

"I met Ron up at the Z80 studio in Sydney, there was an unofficial Semi-Permanent after-party up there, and I just got chatting with Ron about various things," states Kid Zoom. "I mentioned that I had been working on bus shelter posters and he was interested in doing some while he was in town, so the next day he came past the studio to hang out and paint."

With English on a tight schedule of Semi-Permanent conference dates, the two kindred agit-pop souls set about pilfering and re-working a stack of bus shelter ads. --Alana Armstrong [republished from May 2009]

"Working with Ron was really inspiring," Kid Zoom continues. "Meeting and working alongside someone you've admired for a long time is always a very surreal experience - especially coming from such an isolated side of Australia, you don't ever really expect to meet and work alongside these people."

This all coincided with the launch of Zoom's first solo exhibition at Sydney's Boutwell Draper Gallery, where his work was first shown during the Trailblazers exhibition in late '08. The installation opened on April 30th, 2009 and also features some new works by Melbourne’s legendary stencil master, Regan HaHa Tamanui. The entire project has taken two weeks, under the influence of some intense fumes so now that I know he's made it past the opening night, I can pretty much confirm his invincibility.