Artwork: Graffiti

Graffiti is a much deliberated subject most will either see it as art or vandalism. When I was about 17 I met up with a good friend of mine for coffee. On the walk to the cafe he took me down this small alley saying he wanted to show me something. There on the side of a very delapidated garage was his nickname written in blue spray paint. He was so proud of it I didn't have the heart to tell him how bad it was. Though i'm well aware that I couldn't have done any better. A few weeks before he had shown me his tag design which he had done on a chalk board and it looked really good. My friend thought that tagging his name would be really easy but infact, as he found out, the intricate pieces really are an artform.

One look at a website specialising in graffiti will show you thousands of examples of great art. Here are a few taken from http://www.graffiti.org/ which had examples of work from all over the world.

But when most people think of graffiti they think of the type of tagging my friend did years ago. This picture, though a very extreme example shows the type of thing I am talking about

People who instantly condem graffiti as vandalism, those mentioned who think only of the bad examples, either ignore of do not appreciate the complexity of some of the work they see.

While looking for some examples of the graffiti found closer to home (Bristol) I came across the blog of a photographer Matthew Smith. Though I would suggest reading his post, as it seems a more elequantly explain some of the issues I am trying to discuss, i thought i'd extract the key idea as he sums it up nicely
"The criminalisation of graffiti also began to intrigue me. Public space has been adorned by public information for an extremely long time. For a public art form that on occasion is startling in its talent, incisiveness, wit, and execution; graffiti is often the target of rabid disgust from certain sections of society. Granted, tagging can be unsightly and a nuisance, but on closer inspection, contained within, can be gems of modern urban poetry. It is just a case of looking for it, like searching for diamonds in old lumps of coal. As with most things, it is a case of separating the wheat from the chaff, rather than using the lowest common denominator to tar and feather the whole." (full article found at http://www.graffiti.org/bristol/index.html)

Speaking of graffiti that's a little closer to home i'm a big fan of Banksy. There is a well known Banksy piece on the wall of Park street in Bristol

I was really impressed when I first saw this piece i'd been told about about him years ago, funnily by the same friend who showed me his grafftit but i'd never really paid much attention, terrible I know. Now i'm obsessed with him and who wouldn't be he's really tallented. I love the idea of stencils and how much planning really is involved.