My Favourite Game Dave White

The pop-culture artist on bus-stop brawling, arcade stardom and the game that almost made him go bald

Dave White is a Liverpudlian artist who has been hailed as “the UK’s Andy Warhol”. A key player in the ‘sneaker art’ movement of the early 2000s, his work has led to several collaborations with Nike, including the release of his own version of the classic Air Max 95. Currently based in Dorset, his rural environs have sparked a recent professional interest in wildlife – but as a visit to his studio reveals, there’s still plenty of time for games out in the sticks.

What’s your earliest gaming memory? 

I was seven years old, in Southport, where there was a skatepark that I would go to every day in the summer holidays. This guy rolled up with a big box on wheels, unwrapped it, all these crazy alien graphics on the side – Space Invaders. I’d never seen anything like it before. He plugged it in, and that was it. That was me done.

This was before games were available in the home. You had to go out and find them, right? 

Arcades started to open – The Golden Goose in Southport, Las Vegas in Liverpool. I got a pound a week in pocket money, and we’d go out on Saturday mornings. I would play Tron; it’s one of my favourite arcade games of all time, I can still remember a lot of the patterns for the light cycles.