Stickers in Street Art

The area surrounding the "Fresh Provisions" supermarket in Mount Lawley seems to be, since ever, a heaven for graffiti, stencil and sticker artists. I always pay attention when I walk by this area, and there is always interesting, cute and creative material. However, the examples showcased in the slideshow below are remarkable. Despite its simplicity, the messages in the stickers are poetic, witty, cheeky, thought-provoking, and even philosophical. Fleeting thoughts of a talented artist/writer who can turn a traffic sign pole or a rubbish bin into something interesting to look at.  

Read More

Fremantle Council's Anti-Graffiti New Policies

A full page of Friday's Western Australian newspaper was devoted to the new anti-graffiti campaign started by the Fremantle City Council in which everything that is not Art or artistic will be removed. A step ahead with regards to the current erase-all policy of the Council. The Article, among other things, says:

"Any work considered potentially interesting will be referred to other staff, with the city's public art officer and director of community services making the ultimate decision." 

It worries me that an administrative institution considers itself good enough to discriminate Art from non-Art based on the initial evaluation of a group of cleaners or Art Department officers. Unless a group of artists is walking the streets and/or part of the department, the news should be taken with caution. Australia is full, I mean full, of examples of idiotic senseless policies by City Councils. If we knew who these final-decision people are, we might feel more at ease with this new policy and join the clapping party.

Let's be clear. 

I hate my taxes paying for the indiscriminate destruction of private and public property. I hate buses or trains being scratched, painted or destroyed with ugly scrawls and insults, vandalised by young kids who use their spray cans to kill their time or get a thrill by doing something illegal. I hate the front of a household being painted with a scrawl or tag. There are plenty of lanes, back walls, car parks, and abandoned sites where they could do so easily and will save us the expenses of the cleaning up. I do not support or encourage any sort of vandalism.

Still, there are many forms and styles of graffiti. You cannot put all in the same bucket based on the opinion of a group of cleaners or public officers whose knowledge of Art is unknown or dubious. And, to be honest, if the graffiti is not damaging anybody's house or it is not especially ugly, why remove it? It would be cheaper for the tax payer to leave it there, no?

Plenty of "illegal" tagging, sticks and stencils in our State are -I'd dare to say- quite artistic and philosophical, as they are the way in which their creators show their inner world, wishes, frustrations and/or creative side and connect with us. It is a way of saying, I do exist and my opinion also counts and of the readers to share the same feelings or just reflect on what it is said.

If Councils regulate Art, Art is going to become a sheep within a herd, and nothing truly creative or slightly critical will come out. If Councils invest themselves with the power to decide what Art is or should be, they are killing its very core - Art is challenging, provocative, thoughtful and magical, no matter how beautiful it is. Look at Picasso's work. Not all of it is beautiful, easy to look at, or approachable to the vulgus; still, he was the most remarkable artist of the 20th century. If he was painting his work on the walls today, we would find plenty of people, and I mean plenty, that would think that it needs to be removed because it is non-artistic and ugly. If you are a fan of Picasso, think, for example, about Pollock or Rothko?

I am convinced that anti-graffiti campaigns actually encourage illegal graffiti and tagging, sticking and painting. Councils should be diverting the cleaning money to implement policies that let the youth use their cans in ways and places that suit their needs. I think that would be cheaper than cleaning up. So many millions spent on erasing instead of creating something.

Graffiti is a valid form of expression. It shows the pulse of a city, of a generation, and of a Culture. That is why there are remakable differences between the Street Art and graffiti you see in Granada (Spain), Malaka (Malaysia) or Perth WA, just to mention three very different places.

There is an empty wall close to my place, the lateral wall of a building hosting several businesses. A freaking ugly huge wall that I pass by every day to always tell myself that it needs of something painted on it. Last week, however, the wall was fully covered by a sentence -written in white- expressing a deep sense of social alienation. I guess, it was written by an Aborigine or an Immigrant. Or so I thought. I thought that that was subversive, in a good way, and something that lived up the ugly wall. The graffiti has barely lasted a week, now dormant beneath a layer of ugly brown paint that does not make anything lively. 

Many graffiti vigilantes -City Councils included- look with scary eyes at the world and see scary things everywhere, so they need to cover their eyes and ears from anything that subverts their pink unrealistic view of our community. Who is cleaning their way of looking?

Read More