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A man has visited more than 250 boozers across London in what he's dubbed the "world's biggest pub crawl."
Artist Karma Khazi dedicated his summer last year to exploring the capital's many watering holes. But he wasn't looking for a refreshing pint – he was there to photograph the pubs' loos, and especially the graffiti left on their walls.
Speaking to the Daily Star, the artist said: "I've always loved the purity of those marks that are left in that private cubicle, in that private space. [There are] really limited spaces in which people are able to truly be private these days."
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Karma Khazi's "pilgrimage" around the city began in Shoreditch, east London, and took just five days. On his busiest day he was able to conquer a staggering 60 pubs but soon had to slow down when traversing the country's biggest city on foot proved a tiring feat.
"I kind of thought it would be relatively straightforward, I thought in London there would be pubs absolutely everywhere," he said. "But what I learned is that you have clusters. So, you'll have a cluster quite close together in the heart of the district and then you'll have a long walk or you have to get on the Tube.
"It's sort of the world's biggest pub crawl," he added.
The artist said the capital's graffiti varies from borough to borough. Districts like Camden and Hoxton offered up more exciting scribbles than the likes of Mayfair, where he found "nothing at all" despite poking his head into around 20 different boozers.
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Quizzed about the best defacements he'd seen, Karma Khazi said the more nonsensical they were, the better. He recalled one that said: "Your ma drives a smart car around Leighton," while another particularly memorable one read: "Fat Pat was here on his bday."
"Did he write that himself?" Karma Khazi queried. "Was it one of his mates when they were celebrating? It's those sort of pure, funny little remarks that get me."
All this may seem like a lot of effort just to take in the musings of London's drunken masses, but Karma Khazi had a vision for the photographs he took in those pub bathrooms. The best of the etchings are now set to appear in an exhibition, titled Sh*t Show, at the start of 2024.
More than 100 works of art will feature, including re-imagined pub signs, stained-glass windows, music, and even a short film by two-time BAFTA winner Lee Phillips. The centre piece, a black door, showcases 63 of Karma Khazi's favourite scribbles.
As for what happens next, the artist is planning to take his giant pub crawl global and has Paris in his sights as his next focus. "I don't speak a lot of French, so I really won't know the wording that I'm dealing with," he said. "So it becomes a little bit more abstract. I think that's where the magic lies."
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- London
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