Watch this graffiti artist's war with the local council sped up into one gif

This is what happens when a lone street artist takes on a council clean-up crew, armed only with paint, a camera and the internet.

Source: www.mobstr.org Source: www.mobstr.org

A London-based graffitti artist has taken his local council to task, capturing a year-long battle with clean-up crews in a series of photos posted on the web.

In a foreward on this website, the unidentified street artist wrote:

"I cycled past this wall on the way to work for years. I noticed that graffiti painted within the red area was 'buffed' with red paint. However, graffiti outside of the red area would be removed via pressure washing. This prompted the start of an experiment. Unlike other works, I was very uncertain as to what results it would yield."

An elaborate game soon unfolded on the walls of an unassuming electrical substation, situated in Tower Hamlets, east London.

The graffiti artist would paint the word 'red' on the red painted section of the substation, only to have it prompty 'buffed' with red paint. This continued for close to a year until the artist, known only as Mobstr, decided to spice things up a bit.

He captured the result in a humourous animated gif, which has since been posted to the popular picture-sharing service Imgur and been viewed more than 4.5 million times.

Here is the result:

Watch this graffiti artist's war with the local council sped up into one gif Source: Imgur

Another Imgur user, Didier, recently posted a picture of the aftermath of the 'red wars'.

"Red wars building today": an image uploaded by user Didier to Imgur. Source: Imgur/Didier

It is unclear if the council clean-up crew has painted over it again.