Dr Bobby Hung, who is also known as Berst, first started painting graffiti as a teenager and was given a garden wall by his mother, to keep him from tagging on the streets. That was in the late 90s in Auckland. Berst arrived in Auckland from Hong Kong with his family at the age of three and was raised in the Auckland suburb of Epsom.
"Although there was no typical cultural pressure to keep studying, I went on a 14 year tertiary journey to finish my PhD last year." Berst's doctorate is on the legitimization of street art. In the early 2000s trains didn't ply on Sundays. "Walking along the tracks was basically like one public gallery," he said. "When I got exposed to graffiti and started walking the train tracks, as a teenager what I saw just blew my mind.
