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DAVID
CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISATION / DESIGN / ART / KITSCH / CHANCE
TAGGING
~ GRAFFITI ~ STREET-ART ~ KITSCH
CITIZEN'S DISPLAY
THEIR INDIVIDUALISTIC VISUAL CREATIVITY ON THE EXTERIORS OF THEIR CITY
.
INDEX
IMPROVISED-ARCH IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
IMPROVISATION
- PUBLIC & LEGAL - ALLOTMENTS
IMPROVISED VILLAGES - WANDSWORTH / KEW BRIDGE
VERNACULAR & STYLE - BERDUN, HUESCA
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE
- FRANK'S CAFE / SOUTHWARK LIDO
"HOME"
- MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - LIV-RM
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS &
TASTE - HOUSE
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA
PERSONAL-CHOICES
ART - GOTHIC INTO RENAISSANCE INTO 20thC
ART - 20thC COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA
GRAFFITI INTO STREET-ART
KITSCH
CHANCE & DESIGN
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CITIZENS'
INSCRIPTIONAL & PICTORIAL PUBLIC INITIATIVES: 'TAGGING' > 'GRAFFITI' >
'STREET-ART' > COMMERCIAL ASSIMILATION ... in process
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INTRODUCTION
[Written: from 02-2015]
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In
this 'GRAFFITI' section I want to sort out - solely on the basis of my own naive
observations of their results
- the public works of our citizen artists. Without
any knowledge of their individual or social background, based only on my
personal sense of their contributions to the 'art-gallery' of public space, I
will simply try to categorise and assess the various types and qualities of the
experiences they offer.
The
need in our generally socially un-coherent and often impersonal cities, to claim
and assert ones possession/occupation of, or at least presence in, not only ones
private places (of home and work), but also the city spaces one shares with a
multitude of others, seems to be for many a deeply felt demand. Results from one
vector of expression of this need - the 'visual/pictorial' - are shown below,
roughly grouped to illustrate what I believe is an inevitable developmental
trend in the mutual influence of creative individual and consuming society - the
visible results of role change from inadequate despoiler; through tribal
anarchic self-expressive; to practitioner for devotees; to member of an
international artist elite; to a collectable commodity.
A
free individual creative citizen of the collectively 'owned' exterior spaces of
the city - asserting their presence via public pictorial interventions - may
ascend a hierarchy of image-making. The ascent starts from 1: simple
self-assertion of the signature type: "I was - and therefore I am -
here", called 'tagging'. Through 2: graphically elaborated images (often
based on 'signatures') usually called 'graffiti'. To 3: representations that are
'thought messages' that seek to recharge dull locations with pictorial
adventures: that pictorialise text, assert 'artistic' styles, present fantasy
stories, turn flat walls into 'theatrical' scenery. To 4: interventions that
capitalise on the structures of their location to provoke new meanings and
unexpected effects. Through 5: works that begin to reveal indications of
self-conscious 'art-snobbery': smartnamed practitioners perform these new works to devotee initiates, even possible is membership
of a new international artist elite who (apparently unpredictably)
present to the masses huge 'public-art' works on the exteriors of world cities.
Finally 6: a creeping decadence in this public arena of burgeoning creativity:
an increasing mutating of graffiti into 'street-art', sought by tourists and
increasingly endorsed by councils, businesses, corporates, art-commerce, and
recently even private domestic patronage of famous graffiti-artists. One may
even buy gallery framed spin-offs of some artists' 'typical motifs'. Thus free
self expression is transmuted into 'art-styles' and the
freedom/individuality/experiential impact of a once vital zone of citizens'
initiatives is increasingly eroded, its surprising locational
transformations neutralised//neutered, its culture of individual public
expression weaned and appropriated by tangential money and publicity interests.
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TAGS
+ GRAFFITI + STREET-ART: CALLE SAN AGUSTIN, ZARAGOZA (CITY CENTER-E), SPAIN
(paste-up 3-pics 14-06-2013)
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1:
PRIMITIVE
GRAFFITI - 'TAGGING' (BY INDIVIDUALS)
... in process
The
least developed type of public graphic self-expression is 'tagging'. It is
a 'citizens initiative' closest to the basic impulse to reveal and assert to
others of ones species "I am here: I exist in this physical place even when I am not
present at this particular location of my tag". It attempts to challenge the basic limitation of physical existence - that
one cannot be in more than one external location at the same time -
by multiplying one's tag on any graphically accepting and generally
visible-to-others surface throughout ones 'territory' [1]. However this multiplication
activity has another aspect, more experientially fruitful than the passive
claiming of territory in the way a dog does, by pissing its scent on every corner and
stump; this second aspect embodies a potential: the pleasure
of perfecting by repetition an ideogrammatic sign
that is simultaneously an image and ones name - developing a
physically/sensationally gratifying gesture of ones-arm-plus-spraycan-paint-mark
towards a maximally visually coherent (and thus beautiful) shape-image. This latter (aesthetic) satisfaction
tends to be progressive - though rarely pursued, it can drive an evolution of mere tagging
into the elaborated word-images called "Graffiti" [ref section 2].
Note:
1:
Of course the electronic networks allow individuals to spatially multiply
various aspects of their presence: their texts, voice, appearance. However only
a direct physical mark has the experiential quality of "I am
(was)
here" - the indubitable
'presence' of a unique physical action - always performing the temporary process of being made
... affecting on our environment a lasting event.
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TAG: BOROUGH RD (E), LONDON, SE1
(pic 17-06-2015)
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The tiny stridency of aloneness!
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TAG: BUS-STOP (0123 8438) SHELTER ROOF, 211 STANSTEAD ROAD, LONDON, SE23
(pic 11-09-2015)
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An
almost unassailable position of daring! Seen from the top of a bus.
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TAG: ON GAS-METER-BOXES, SIDE OF SHOP AT 129 STANSTEAD RD., LONDON,
SE23
(pic 3-08-2017)
A monumentalizing stretch
of ones purloined space!
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TAG: ON ROAD-WORKS SIGN, HARDMAN ST., LIVERPOOL
(pic 5-09-2015)
An
exquisite individualising and animating of
this knickerbockered road-sign (its open mouth now 'speaks its name' and its
person-ising emphasizes that it can walk away!).
.
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TAGS: WC - "FRANKS
CAFE", MULTI-STORY CAR PARK (LEVEL 10), CERISE RD, PECKHAM, LONDON,
SE15
(pic 18-09-2011)
... in process
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TAGS: SHOP SHUTTER - ZOODOHOU-PIGIS, ATHENS
(pic 5-12-2014)
... in process
Shop shutters become
closing-time tagger notice boards. A socialising of the night-street otherwise deadened
by these anti-theft defenses (a minor transgression against private property
thrives on the defense necessitated by major transgressions). Blinded
shop-windows confine night-time sociality to the
trough/flume
of the street, but the resulting tagging is some
restitution and the graffiti that often evolves from it can transform the
night-streets into a unique environment - a fascinating and vigorously
competitive
'art' show (eg: Barcelona old town).
Here the tags - apart from responding to
the 'permission' afforded by the first tag on the surface; and the
self-serving avoidance of each other's writing-space - remain separate actions
quite unaware of any relation to their immediate support/location. (In fact
these resemble infantile writing exercises on the cusp of pictorial emphasis.)
.
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TAGS,
ETC:
DOORS OF "FLORAL HALL" , COVENT GARDEN MARKET, LONDON, WC2
(pic Summer-1985)
This location - an unused
(pre-restoration) Covent Garden Opera House street-entry - has become a
kind of tagger 'notice-board'.
The tag-impulse ranged from a solitary
signing of a location (sometimes an 'original' or 'daring' one -
advertising the tagger's prowess) to joining with a growing group of
taggers - perhaps exploiting a special location (eg: above: or a new
means//marking-technique (see next eg.).
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TAGS: BUS 89 UPPER-DECK
WINDOWS - AT STOP 'A', SLADE GREEN STATION, FOREST RD., ERITH, LONDON, DA8
(pic 10-09-2006)
... in process
A craze grew (based on
cheap 'DIY' glass-cutters) for engraving ones tag/name on windows of shops
and especially the top floor of busses = unsupervised (pre CCTV) thus
hooligan infested //
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TAGS,
ETC:
ALLEY, AMSTERDAM (CENTRE)
(pic 1986)
What once must have been an individual act of tagging seems to have grown into
a kind of frenzy of affirmation of belonging to the Tagger tribe!
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TAGS,
ETC:
ALLEY, AMSTERDAM (CENTRE)
(pic 1986)
The 'rebirth' of a mere tag as a heraldic self-titling 'graffiti'
image: "LONE"!: As if transcending the frantic mass of common
tagging (hyper-stimulated via competitive 'positive feedback') it floats in the
taggers' sky surmounted by its original tag - now reborn as the signature of its
own apotheosis as an 'artwork', this whole ascent emphasised with a date and exclamatory star !.
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TAGS,
ETC: VONDEL PARK (BEHIND THE PERFORMANCE STAGE), AMSTERDAM
(pic 1986)
... in process
#
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TAGS,
ETC:
PEDESTRIAN WALK THROUGH HOUSING AREA, LONDON, SE23
(pic 5-02-2009)
The
boorish repetition of the "RAZE" ('street-name') is typical of
tagging. Interestingly, here its variations seem to demonstrate two
unconnected directions of development: 1: the addition of new
information to the initial(?) basic name-tag 'inscriptogram' (starting
third from left); and 2: an
excursion into a pictorial transformation of the tag-name ... divergent
possibilities that for this person seem (so far) irreconcilable.
The pictorialisation of the
name: turning the name into an emblematic picture, involves an interest in a quite different region of experiencing than mere writing
- writing (especially its word-limited form 'signing') is a practiced gestural skill ('talented' taggers apply their visual awareness and
motor//muscle control to developing//enhancing its rhythmical gestural
fluency). Depicting an object however (as this doubt-ridden example reveals)
requires a much more externalised awareness and a very
different set of skills.
This person (seemingly stimulated by a plagiaristic memory of letter-forms in developed
graffiti) makes this heroic if tiny struggle to give their tag objective status, expanding the tag's single-line
writing gestures into the shaped edges of a row of surfaces, visually pushed
forwards by their painted background (probably added simply for visual emphasis) and thus acquiring the beginning of a sensation of monumental
mass.
This is an astonishing promotion from the simplicity of
'writing', with its dependence on a background written-on
surface that muffles its actualisation in the world of things - to a depiction of an
independent massive foreground object, that affords (experientially) a magnification of the tagger's status to that of a memoralised being !
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TAGS, ETC: COVERED-PAVEMENT PILLARS - ZOODOHOU-PIGIS ~38, ATHENS
(pic 7-12-2014 / to W)
As one progresses down the row of pillars,
the ugly tags, positionally
constrained only by a habitual estimation of the space available for writing,
morph into images whose pictorial/emblematic nature inevitably forces their
maker to see them within their visual context - as 'presentations' 'framed' by
their immediate environmental features. Thus, even at this crude initial level,
influenced more by a wish to emulate, via imperfect memories, stylistic
inventions of other more developed practitioners: a level of poor illustration
rather than personal expression via invented aesthetic forms, there is just
discernable the beginnings of the most developed level of graffiti,
that which intentionally uses its location as an essential aspect of its
expressive content. .
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TAGS,
ETC: BUILDING SITE HOARDING, REDCHURCH STREET, LONDON, E2
(pic 9-02-2008)
Self-centered tags mix with
(or rather work-around) extraverted official instruction-notices, while a third
type of initiative, using printed-paper images, generally responds (probably for
the sake of clarity and survival) to the positions of the official notices and
ignores the presence of the tags - thus seeming to assert a level of importance
equal to the former.
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TAGS,
ETC: "BEST-BOOK-HUNTERS" SHOP+HOUSE - ZOODOHOU-PIGIS-41, ATHENS
(pic 7-12-2014 / to N)
A dramatic gallery of tags on the upper
part and graffiti-influenced street-art on the shop-facade (larded with a
few tags and messages appositely placed in 'framed' spaces). The
upper-centre tag (or tags?) reveal a pleasure in rhythmical patterning of
linear gestures, which transcends mere name-tagging
and is seemingly imminently transformable into pictorial heraldic graffiti.
Its positioning and style my be stimulated by the balcony front's fluid (but conventionally
symmetrical) iron-drawing; its contrast with the lumpen bureaucratic
dullness of the "NR4T. FLOP." tag-list evidences a huge divergence
in human social types !
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frenzied
Barc mixing of tags + graf ... replace Lon below ?
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TAGS,
ETC: ALLEY TO 49 BRICK LANE (W SIDE), LONDON, E1
(pic 9-02-2008)
An increasingly
frantic competition
for
space and attention between tags and paper-based images and messages,
with occasional graffiti and 'street-art' decor.
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TAGS,
ETC: ALLEY TO 49 BRICK LANE (W SIDE), LONDON, E1
(pic 20-09-2015)
91 months later ...
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2:
PRIMITIVE
GRAFFITI - 'TAGGING' (ON BEHALF OF GROUPS & BELIEFS)
... in process
These
tags are not individual, they define and locate a group and/or publicise ones
participation in a shared belief. The defining icon of a
group is an 'insignia', not a signature. Like
all taggers groups publically display their insignias and state/inscribe their
ideologies to prove to themselves and convey to others the significance of their
local
presence. Just
as groups display their identifying icon and ideological statements, so do some
individual taggers (presumably males) display their signature tag with (or
substitute for it) a phallic 'potency' icon.
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GROUP-TAGGING: ON SHOP SHUTTER, BARCELONA
(pic 25-12-2006)
It seems as if an english group are
boasting their presence and allegiances in Barcelona - one person writing for all ?
or individually sharing the same spray-can ?
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GROUP-TAGGING:
BUS 281
UPSTAIRS SEAT-BACK, LONDON
(pic 1982)
Expressing and advertising an extraordinary degree of identification of person with penis and a
bizarre degree of ignorance of the body that is its target, this savage image of
selfhood is nevertheless endorsed by six boys and aimed at one girl
(... one shudders !).
Perhaps
the most basic level of 'political' graffiti. Around this time, phallic
images (of various degrees of abstraction - a simplification
driven by a desire to 1: achieve an iconic stereotype; 2: the satisfaction
of drawing a perfectly fluent line; 3: a sufficiently rapid finish to
avoid
embarrassment
or arrest) were a frequent graffiti subject. Unlike this unusually anatomically elaborated and
sensation driven drawing with its direct report
of sexual urgency, the most common type of phallus image was no more than a
practiced automatic sign, presumably
a mere reassurance of renewable potency [examples].
.
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GROUP-TAGGING:
BROCKWELL PARK, BRIXTON, LONDON - 'ANARCHIST'
(pic 1984)
Around
this time an Anarchist group based in Brixton were vehemently politically
motivated. Their insignia tag here points the way to large text statements
inscribed on a facing fence [see next pic]. The familiar Anarchist sign of an
A in a circle is here combined with elements from the old symbols for
female and male - the female cross under the circle, the male arrow
diagonal from its upper-right. Does this signify sex solidarity? However,
strangely the male sign is shown bent and dripping - is this humor; a
woman's derision; a man's attempt to empower
the sign's abstraction?).
Encountering
such presentations via this culture's familiar context of sophisticated
publicity mores, exposes a startling disproportion between their style,
competence, subtlety, persuasiveness, mental-state, and the huge and
complex issues they purport to confront - or does their 'style' directly
express and intentionally speak to feelings beyond subtlety, of a state
reduced by prevailing powers to brutal desperation?
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GROUP-TAGGING:
BROCKWELL PARK, BRIXTON, LONDON - 'ANARCHIST'
(pic 1984)
The
'Anarchist' pavement signs directed one to these large inscriptions, which
convert a park-workers' enclosure into an instructive hoarding.
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GROUP-TAGGING:
AD: MAIL ON SUNDAY NEWSPAPER - RAILTON RD., BRIXTON, LONDON, SW2
(pic 1985)
Various additions - the main tag is probably by Anarchists.
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BELIEF-TAGGING:
AD: TODAY NEWSPAPER - EFFRA RD., BRIXTON, LONDON, SW2
(pic 05-1987)
...
in process
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BELIEF-TAGGING:
AD: SILK CUT CIGARETTES - COLDHARBOUR LA., BRIXTON, LONDON, SW2
(pic 1989)
...
in process
An anti-smoking
amendment has been added to this ad. An ineffective because arbitrary change
of subject-matter.
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BELIEF-TAGGING:
AD:
GOLDEN VIRGINIA TOBACCO - COLDHARBOUR LA. (RAIL
BRIDGE - E SIDE), LOUGHBOROUGH JUNCTION, LONDON, SE24
(pic Summer 1987)
.
An anti-smoking
amendment has been added to this ad.
An inspired opportunism - a far more subtle and affective subversion than the
rather arbitrary appropriation of the previous ad.
Indeed, the added message
so perfectly fits the forms of the ad's designed message that its reversal
of intention seems completely innate.
A
painter is enhancing (with the brand's colours) a gateway which opens to my desire to
smoke - it's now been made to appear that he has already added - indeed it seems the ad was
designed to announce - that this gateway also leads to lung cancer. The
ad's original intention was probably to subliminally suggest that a Golden
Virginia cigarette would revivify an otherwise depressing entry into one's immediate dreary
future - however the added message flips the dreary driveway into a darkly sinister
region.
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3:
ELABORATED
GRAFFITI - PICTORIALISED-INSCRIPTIONS
All
real art is 'guerrilla' art - the endeavor of an individual or cooperative group
to break open cultural boundaries.
By
discovering a new working venue, the publically/collectively owned
exteriors of cities, which offered not only forms that stimulated an impulse to
transform them, but assured direct public exposure of their works, graffitists solved the problem of energising
their desire to originate; and further, in out-facing the circumscribed
environmental aesthetics of the 'owner'-administrators of public places and thus
constantly risking arrest during the process of working, they discovered a spur
that acutely focused their working energy and attention, and thus the perceived
originality and presentness of their works.
One of the most ubiquitous (and unintentional) environmental
contributions of these 'citizen artists' is to increase the complexity of
chaotic places. Because these painters often choose a location that is less
publicly exposed and whose chaos or desolation signals its low value - a dump or
ruin whose lack of care and ownership seems to offer their work more security -
they (usually unintentionally) make a gift to such locations, adding to them a
different type of object, an event at a new qualitative level (of
beauty/meaning), which however, because its 'thing' status is as arbitrary as
any other dumped item, its unified place in the location's 'pattern of chaos' is
assured.
It
seems possible that 'Graffiti' originated as an elaboration of the 'name-as-icon' aspect
of tagging [Ref: Section 1-1]. Its most prevalent form consists of words or
word-messages aesthetically/stylistically elaborated into pictorial forms that
seek to express as visual rhythm and dynamism the gestures of writing (especially
the flourishes and extravagances of 'signing') and indeed speech (from
whispering to shouting ... even sometimes screaming ... infrequently anything as
expressively neutral as mere 'talking'!).
As
usual {eg: squat-architecture], public interventions by citizens have at first
the energy and confrontational presence of individualistic originative actions,
they blossom on the public streets into a forest of affects. However, the
works of some practitioners become recognisable and iconic, and eventually the target of
'collectors', commerce, and even leisure-flattering local councils;
unfortunately this attention, and image-filtering by
their new sponsors and employers, has (as is usual) encouraged image-repetition
and drained the creative energy of many artists.
I
start this selection of graffiti with the most primitive and urgent
of in-public-self-advertising - almost seamlessly close to the
social/territorial messaging of tagging. This function of territorial claiming
and the social-mutuality of in-public personal messages are at the inception
of unsponsored 'public-art'.
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GRAFFITI:
ON DOOR, BARCELONA (OLD TOWN)
.
(pic 3-01-2006)
... in process
From 'word' to
'picture':
The
central graffiti is almost a tag - seen separately the marks have the practiced
fluency and lack of pictorial elaboration of a tag 'signature', however, though
its marks are drawn sequentially their sequence in not harnessed to the linear
process of reading, but controlled by a background perception of them as
simultaneous parts of a single visual-image that has the direct visual power of
a 'picture'.
The
main image has departed from the one-dimensional perceptual habits associated
with the linear-gesture code of writing (evidenced in the superposed tag names) and
is defaulting back (in time) to the much more basic 'natural' and holistic summation
of affective meanings - a two-dimensional visual 'image/object'
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GRAFFITI: ON METAL DOOR, BARCELONA (OLD TOWN)
(pic 3-01-2006)
The breakaway from linear
'writing' is taken further. The simple linearly-defined pictorial image of
the last pic is here given an illusion* of three-dimensional physicality. It
is even further removed from a word-tag, it has become a 'thing' - a
'monument', independent of its marks.
[*
Depicting 3Dness
by use of devices such as shadows and reflections (remainders from the
previous culture's illustrational
tool-box - derived from Renaissance visual researches) is endemic to graffiti,
which in terms of visual depiction is in general
quite
traditional.]
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
... in process
Stockwell Estate's ball-courts
(presumably ignored by sportists) have become a public-painters' gallery: the
walls for graffiti, the floor for tags.
The two modes of
(alas mainly male) competitive public performance: art and sport,
the first primarily mental the latter
primarily physical, always in a silent
struggle of commitment, are here poignantly #contrasted//merged#.
common to
both sport and graffiti - the energy, dynamism and inventiveness of individual
practitioners are expressed within
collective behavioral and stylistic rules.
The oppressed cousin of the
disciplinable//'containable'
and profitable yet pathetically tribally
atavistic spectacle
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
Even
the most pictorial graffiti seem to use as a vehicle of visual power an
analogue of the rhythms of linear writing and sequential words.
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
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GRAFFITI: STOCKWELL ESTATE, AYTOUN RD., LONDON, SW9
(pic 27-08-2010)
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4:
LOCATIONAL
ELABORATION VIA PICTORIAL TRANSFORMATION
... in process
Prior
to consulting the graffitists as to their intentions, the examples in this category
(and indeed, in some respects the category itself) are based on my subjective judgments.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION:
RAILWAY BRIDGE NW WALL, LADYWELL STATION, LONDON
(pic 2002-02-13)
This example simply illustrates the simplest
case: a nondescript and confused landscape is visually focused by the small
coloured graffiti in the foreground.
In itself the graffiti is a visually
striking and (at first) un-interpretable sign - in a landscape of familiar
objects, such a feature attracts attention, however the graffitist - facing the
wall and seeking the nocice of passing train passengers - was presumably quite unaware
of its larger impact.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: VIEW FROM TRAIN
PLUS GRAFFITI ON RAILWAY VIADUCT WALL, JUST SOUTH OF LONDON BRIDGE
STATION, LONDON
(pic 25-04-1998)
A magnificent addition of an alternative mental and alive rhythm to the
mechanical repetitions of the moving view. Contrapuntally accented by the
skimming reflections from the train interior.
It
seems possible - such is this graffitist's practiced skill and visual-rhythmical
awareness - that s/he was influenced in choice of forms by an awareness of the
location's rigid rhythmical repetitions.
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TAGS
PLUS LOCATION:
A 'DOOR OF DOORS' ENTRY, BARCELONA (OLD TOWN)
(pic 3-01-2007)
... in process
A 'primitive' example of
an (innate/inevitable) effect of location - the tagging is controlled by the
physical (rather than aesthetic) difficulty of fluently writing over the
raised frame-moldings
... however it seems probable that to have ones tag ready-framed would add a
(probably subliminal) reinforcement to the restraint of positioning.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION:
ON DOOR, BARCELONA (OLD TOWN)
(pic 31-12-2006)
... in process
A bicycle appears to be emerging from a street door. (Various tags and
stickons have been added and obscured.)
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: SPOOF DOOR - AMERSHAM
RD. (HOUSE 107 LEWISHAM WAY), LONDON, SE14
(pic 23-03-2014) ... in process
A bricked-up doorway, signalled only by its original brick lintel - has been 'restored'.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: SPOOF DOOR
- AMERSHAM RD.
(HOUSE 107 LEWISHAM
WAY), LONDON, SE14, LONDON, SE14
(pic 23-03-2014) ... in process
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: WC - BOROUGH MARKET, PARK ST. (E-END - NEAR REDCROSS WAY),
LONDON,
SE1
(pic 03-10-2016) ... in process
Walking along
Park Street towards Borough Market there
is no sight of a painted 'wc' in a small alcove at the far end of the hoarding,
next to the rail bridge ...
[ref next pic]
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: WC - BOROUGH MARKET, PARK ST. (E-END
- NEAR REDCROSS WAY), LONDON, SE1
(pic 19-05-2017) ... in process
As one
passes this quite deep alcove one suddenly sees a wc, and because it's
recessed (like a cubicle) and previously 'hidden' one may experience a shock of exposure (as if it is real and
usable!). Thus this simplistic illustration is afforded an experiential richness and a dimension of reality
by melding it with//locking
it into its location.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: ROA!
- INDUSTRIAL-YARD GATE, BUXTON ST., HACKNEY, LONDON, E1
(pic 12-03-2012 - photo by the artist ROA!)
A magnificent and shocking
image of an almost completely flayed pig that blockades a factory entrance in a small road off Brick Lane. It
fills the space of the gate as if crammed into a tank (like a preserved
specimen in an anatomy museum) and is strung by its legs to the upper
fringe of spikes - the gate's only feature that remains in the 'real
world' outside its painted volume. Recessed from the street the image
can be unnoticed or a sudden emotionally disruptive encounter.
.
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POST-ROA!
- INDUSTRIAL-YARD GATE, BUXTON ST., HACKNEY, LONDON, E1
(pic 22-10-2013)
[ref previous pic] When I went to photograph it,
about 18 months after ROA!'s photo, his extraordinary work
had been overpainted with this modestly striking, but bland and commonplace
image. One whose energy consists, not in an emotionally charged subject and
the shock of an anomalous space, but in a relaxed enjoyment of moderate
graphic-design skills serving a moderately successful formal cliché: a
flat symmetrical pattern centrally focusing a 3D-rendered face. The
difference is between the shock of original art and reassuringly
illustrational decor. Graffiti works are frequently overpainted by other ambitious graffitists, however I
wonder if this replacement was commissioned because the pig was too indigestible
for the guardians of moderate enjoyment.
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: HANBURY STREET (W-END), LONDON, E1
(pic 04-07-2013)
A vision of a ferocious struggle breaks
through a wall, as if from another type of place behind the familiar surface
of the street. A couple walk past grinning - no more aware of this sub-world
of terrifying animalistic barbarism than of the uncontrollable space of
dreams immediately beneath their layer of habitual familiar consciousness. The
whole wall of this Indian restaurant's rear-end is redhot and spattered with debris of the
fight; the door it surrounds has become an entry to an underworld. The
restaurant's front-end (facing Brick Lane) is a kitsch cool pretence of 18C
classical chic - an absolute contrast with its furiously raging side-street
back-side!
It is hardly surprising
that, in its efforts to attract decent bourgeois tourists, it has covered
this marvellously theatrical and shock-inducing image with a placid
illustration
[ref next pic].
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: HANBURY STREET (W-END), LONDON, E1
(pic 26-10-2013)
[ref previous pic] The extraordinary
cat-fight has been replaced by this insipid, mechanically adept, 'kitsch-clever' illustration.
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: ART
STUDIOS ENTRY, STOUR RD (E), LONDON, E3
(pic 25-04-2014)
... in process
The disconcertingly stacked eyes
on the closed entry shutter stare
down the industrial driveway to its street entry.
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: ART
STUDIOS ENTRY, STOUR RD (E), LONDON, E3
(pic 28-07-2017)
... in process
With
the shutter raised there
is no pictorial challenge .
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: BEN
EINE - RIVINGTON ST, HACKNEY, LONDON, EC2
(pic 30-01-2014)
As one enters, from Shoreditch High
Street, this (at night) slightly
sinister dark street, the most visible object (lit by the rail
bridge lights and facing a night club entry) is this huge word: "SCAR". However,
on approach it
reveals another letter, hidden by a strange change of angle in the 19thC bridge wall, and the word transmutes to "SCARY"!
The sophistication of this person's works
suggests he is aware of such meaning-affecti ng potentials of locations.
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: BEN
EINE - RIVINGTON ST, HACKNEY, LONDON, EC2
(pic 30-01-2014)
.
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 |
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: BEN
EINE - RIVINGTON ST, HACKNEY, LONDON, EC2
(pic 04-06-2015)
.
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GRAFFITI
PLUS LOCATION: BEN
EINE - RIVINGTON ST, HACKNEY, LONDON, EC2
(pic 04-06-2015)
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5:
'STREET-ART'
... in process
'Graffiti'
has increasingly
grown a branch where competitive self-assertion seems diminished and subject
matter has escaped
from its origin in evocatively rendered words,
via an emphasis of its pictorial aspect (even relegating its word origin to a signature (a tag!) in the corner of a pictorial
'art-work'). Thus Graffiti has transmuted itself from
'street-message' to 'street-art'. This transformation has encouraged a new type
of 'artist' into public performance; however, while infinitely extending its
subject matter it has sadly begun to reduce the vitality of its impact (a vitality that is a correlative of
fear) by assigning control of its 'messages' and their affectiveness to commissioning/sponsoring bodies (even Councils)
and interested individuals (even
middle-class house owners [Ref section 6]).
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'STREET-ART'
:
RAILWAY VIADUCT WALL, ATLANTIC ROAD, LONDON, SW9
(pic 1984)
A pictorial image that apparently has no 'meaning' except the direct affect of
an individual's emotional expression. A strong event contributed to the
street.
..
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'STREET-ART'
:
DOOR, BARCELONA (OLD
TOWN)
(pic 31-12-2006)
... in process
#
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'STREET-ART':
METAL SHUTTER, BARCELONA (OLD TOWN)
(pic 3-01-2006)
An
obscurely motivated image !: In simplicity and sole use of lines it
resembles a tag, however it is drawn so deliberately (without 'signature
flourish'), so carefully utilising and dividing the whole area of its
'paper', showing-off an awareness of composing in relation with the
boundary of its mount, it could be classed as 'graffiti'; however, as
its subject is so unidentifiable and so untranslatable as a verbal-image, it seems it must be a most
minimal form of 'street-art'.
.
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'STREET-ART' :
RAILWAY VIADUCT WALL,
GRIMSBY STREET, LONDON,
E2
(pic 22-11-2006)
A 'spook' - unpleasantly 'alive', or rather psychoactive, because the
shape, though painted with a precision that requires definite intention, is
indeterminate. One supposes it's a human figure (ready to waylay me at a murky
corner of this somewhat lonely road), yet in closer view each of its
features fails to definitely confirm this. The ensuing mental struggle to
identify what it denotes (since our evolution insists we discover what
confronts us) ensures that it seems to present something of the uncontrollability
of an independently motivated entity. As if to confirm this
objectivity, this entity appears to sprout from root-like dribbles whose
form could only be determined by an agency completely separate from
intention: gravitation.
.
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'STREET-ART':
HOARDING, MONMOUTH ST., SEVEN DIALS, LONDON, WC2
(pic 1993)
... in process
.Admayral
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'STREET-ART':
HOARDING, 113 KIRKDALE, LONDON, SE26
(pic 22-09-2013)
... in process
Commissioned
work for Joyce Treasure Co UK.
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'STREET-ART': ALLY BESIDE
"PECKHAMPLEX" CINEMA, 95 RYE LANE., LONDON, SE15
(pic 10-03-2017)
"Grand Admayral" - non-commissioned work by
"Artful Dodger".
Alas, this powerful and apposite
image has by now (4-07-17) been overpainted with a skillful and banal
'pattern-filler' [ref:
Note+Pics].
.
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'STREET-ART': ALLY BESIDE
"PECKHAMPLEX" CINEMA, 95 RYE LN., LONDON, SE15
(phone-pic 31-01-2017)
"Grand Admayral" - night view
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.NwXGate-mural
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'STREET-ART':
RICCARDO MATLAKAS (02-2015) - NEW CROSS ROAD (W OF NEW CROSS GATE STATION), LONDON,
SE14
(paste-up 2-pics 10-06-2015 / to WWS) ...
in process
A result of official
patronage: lots of legalised time to do 'craft-art' - with no stress to focus
attention! This example - a hideous corruption of Picasso (especially of "Guernica" - a painting which has a real subject - that distills
outrage, horror and personal grief).
[Matlakas subsequently added a new
motif to the picture. Then sometime in the next six months the work was
overpainted by a 'competitor', and then that was vandalised ... Note+Pics]
.
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'STREET-ART':
'3-STREET MURAL' SE CORNER - CURTAIN RD & SCRUTTON ST, LONDON, EC2
(paste-up 3-pics 25-09-2013 /
to WWN)
... in process
.
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'STREET-ART':
'3-STREET MURAL' - SCRUTTON ST, LONDON, EC2
(pic 20-09-2013 / to NNE)
... in process
.
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'STREET-ART':
'3-STREET MURAL' - SCRUTTON ST, LONDON, EC2
(pic 25-09-2013
/ to N)
... in process
.
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'STREET-ART':
'3-STREET MURAL'
- CURTAIN RD (N END), LONDON, EC2
(paste-up 2-pics
25-09-2013 / to NW) ...
in process
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'STREET-ART':
'3-STREET MURAL' NE CORNER - CURTAIN RD & CHRISTIANA ST, LONDON,
EC2
(paste-up 2-pics 25-09-2013 / to SSW) ...
in process
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'STREET-ART':
'3-STREET MURAL' N FACADE / 'BROKEN FINGAZ' - CHRISTIANA ST,
LONDON, EC2
(paste-up 2-pics 25-09-2013 / to SE) ...
in process
The '3-Street Mural' seems to have delicately
intruded
onto the Broken Fingaz image (which presumably pre-dates the huge mural)!
.
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6:
GRAFFITI
- PATRONAGE & DECADENCE
... in process
As
usual [eg: squat-architecture], public interventions by citizens have at first
the energy and confrontational presence of individualistic originative actions,
they blossom on the public streets into a forest of affects. However, the
works of some practitioners become recognisable and iconic, and eventually the target of
'collectors', commerce, and even leisure-flattering local councils.
Unfortunately the pleasant warmth of this attention, and its concomitant image-filtering by
their new sponsors and employers,
has encouraged image-repetition and drained the creative
energy of artists. Even the few most obviously talented,
who have expanded their
originations in size and location, emblazoning the planet's cities with their
individualistic subject-matter, are becoming 'branded' via recognisibility
and are thus slowly fosslising from lack of discovery and risk.
.
Like
all originations the most useful or beautiful begin to be sifted
(from the increasing numbers widening this
new region of freedom of action)
by the public's cultural pundits and thereafter by its professional 'guardians
of the norm'. Eventually the makers of works deemed useful and
beautiful begin to be tempted, by people who perceive their cultural/business
potential, into 'profitable employment'. Thus the energy of the solitary forcing
open of the boundaries of society's environments and freedoms
is relinquished for praise and profit
(the fate of many artists). This is, in some respects of course, a
cultural-experiential tragedy:
the products of innovation
and freedom are differentiated and the 'best' (in terms of the ruling/retrogressive
judgments) is publicised and commodified; the growing shoots of freedom are
amputated and originality is re-absorbed back into tradition. It
seems that most
graffitists have become
or been replaced by
compliant converts to the cause of (externally) provided public entertainment and
distraction, and the innovative potentials they released (aesthetic and social) are reduced to a slight emphasis on
decorative painting in public places and a freeing of public colour.
####
transition from personally-motivated graffitist to 'professional easel artist'
is often via legally commissioned public-site works.
... a
domesticated offshoot of graffiti's spontaneous cousin 'street-art') into
graffiti- chic for the unfazed unafraid consumer radicals - those who can recognize
and drink the vital springs of talent near their source - superior to the safe
commonplace; living at the temporal forefront of energy ...(SHOULD THIS BE HERE
(NOT NEXT SECTION ?)
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': HOARDING AROUND COVENT GARDEN OPERA HOUSE, LONDON,
WC2
(pic c1988) ...
in process
The fact that this is a commissioned
image (that the 'type' of the image has been chosen by others), inevitably displaces
it from 'origination' to 'illustration' - a mere demonstration of what is publicly
recognisable as "Graffiti" ... thus the act of making it is rendered
sub-honest and plagiaristic (here it is a plagiarism that feeds on ones own once-originals). See [click on pic] the notice affixed top-right, an
ugly signal of this displacement from graffiti's essential mode of origination,
from the vitality of implanting onto the environment a spontaneous image of a personal order, to the status of choosing and selling an 'exhibit to a
museum'.
To presume to make a contribution
to a genre whose every work (even the most pathetic tag) is an origination/original
(if only in the sense that it is inserted into 'forbidden territory' and
thus is powered by a sense of presence that ensures at least a
basic experiential vitality) via the safety of a belief in
ones competence to simultaneously fulfill the expectations of 'official' commissioners and
rely on their support for ones performance; is to endorse work that
reassures everyone who is worried/frightened by the out-of-controlness of
originations, that the genre is now tamed, its productions no longer
unpredictable, that the anarchy of individual initiatives is now regularised
and commodified.
Such a work is disastrously based on the dishonesty of a pretence of
sufficient competence to achieve an original synthesis: an art object - whereas at best competence can only achieve (as
we see here) a somewhat beautiful (especially the left-hand work) but rather
tired and practiced craft fulfillment. If these painters continue to indulge such commissions their
works will become ever more stereotyped and deadening.
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': BEEHIVE PLACE, BRIXTON, LONDON, SW9
(pic 04-1998)
Permission has here replaced spontaneous personal need,
and when a commissioned task that is neither fully personally motivated or
completely practiced is undertaken the result has a look of doubt,
a struggle to make already-known and imported fragments cohere with
each other. Worse, this particular in-process work also reveals a struggle to make it at least
appear to
be 'an original'. This incoherent
muddle of graffiti-derived motif-fragments betrays a state of mind whose efforts to
portray
are so reliant on fragmented memories of
external sources not its own, that it will never
discover a personal reason/principle for performing (let alone
finalising)
this puzzle.
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART':
NEIGHBOUR HOUSES IN AN EXPENSIVE LONDON SUBURB
(pics 29-11-2014) ...
in process
Two houses. On their facing side-facades
they have each commissioned a 'graffiti-art' sheep motif - one black, one
white ... how cute! These are small variations of this painter's 'brand style/motif'.
.
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COMMISSIONED &
PRIVATE 'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': HOUSES IN AN
EXPENSIVE LONDON SUBURB
(pic
09-05-2015) ...
in process
Two houses. One house displays two commissioned
'graffiti-art' motifs (one by STIK is glimpsed at far left) - these are both
the habitual iconic 'brand styles/motifs' of their painters. The other house's
garage doors display an original public-art work by the owner.
.
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GRAFFITI-ART:
ROA! SCULPTURE
- PRIVATE
COLLECTION
(pic
09-05-2015) ...
in process
ROA! is usually a painter of large-scale street-art works [ref to
previous section], here his sculptural work (possibly commissioned) is
exhibited in a domestic setting. This is a real art-work: it's
exploratory, not merely a 'brand-motif'.
With the boxes
closed.
.
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GRAFFITI-ART:
ROA! SCULPTURE
- PRIVATE
COLLECTION
(pic
09-05-2015) ...
in process
With the boxes open.
.
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': DULWICH PARK BOWLS CLUB HUT + KITSCH 'EDUCATIONAL' NOTICES
(paste-up 2-pics 28-02-2017)
...
in process
The bourgeois-isation of public-art
initiatives; the taming of independent socially-unobedient creativity, is
here applied by a society which truly believes that an application of
flattery and snobbery is publically beneficial, that a dose of 'educational information' (in this case ridiculous fantasy dressed up as serious
custodianship) can administer more benefit to those whose attention is caught by
these post-graffiti images, than 'automatic' enjoyment/rejection or
considered personal thoughts! The fact that these
'brand-motif' painters were chosen to re-present the works of vastly more competent,
historically significant painters, with whom they share only the banality of
a habitual skill, which in the historical works is of such a complexity of
achievement that it totally eclipses these simplistic motif-manufactures, is surely an expression of bitter irony or raving hysteria [see
the info-notices below].
.
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': DULWICH PARK BOWLS CLUB HUT
- STIG PAINTING + INFO-NOTICE
(pic
28-02-2017)
The affixed info-notice
'art-lesson' is administered
by people whose visual-art literacy is so subservient to
text-mediated knowledge their that they see nothing
wrong with fixing one of their 'educational' notices on top of one of the
images, obscuring a portion that they probably considered 'mere background'.
Does this action suggest a subconscious dislike of this image, or reveal a
person so lacking in respect for these so-called 'artists' that
'information' regarding their works is allowed to visually mutilate what it
purports to elucidate?
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART':
DULWICH PARK BOWLS CLUB HUT
- NOIR PAINTING + INFO-NOTICES
(pics
28-02-2017) ...
in process
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GRAFFITI-DERIVED
KITSCH-ART: ART 'FAIR': 47 TANNER ST., LONDON., SE1
(INDUSTRIAL PREMISES)
(paste-up 2-pics
06-09-2015)
...
in process
Such talent-fairs are a late stage in the commodification/popularisation
of 'art', they present (useless)
novelties that faintly//merely remind one of the truly
shocking and incomprehensible objects produced in conditions of
opposition to early 20thC culture (which are
now
valued as
historical 'originals'
and thus convey prestige).
In
order to evoke a memory of their
indubitable presentness and to avoid the
intensive work necessitated
by realised innovation, their stylistic//style sources reside mainly in
2
forms of ethnic art associated with 'modernism': 'Graffiti' (glamorously
banned and thus intensely energised), and the bizarre ceremonial products
of quasi-alien
human groups (celebrated in museums and 'antique'
shops).
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GRAFFITI-DERIVED
KITSCH-ART: ART 'FAIR': 47 TANNER ST., LONDON., SE1
(INDUSTRIAL PREMISES)
(pic 06-09-2015)
...
in process
A transition from
personally-motivated graffitist to 'professional artist' is either
via a transit to 'street-artist', via legally commissioned public works,
and/or a re-birth as a 'studio-artist' via works made in
private, which often re-present their graffiti works shrunk to fit the traditional
constraints of 'art-paintings': of a portable size, made to hang on walls,
often in mounts or frames, often signed, and sold via an 'art fair' or an art-dealer.
.
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GRAFFITI-DERIVED KITSCH-ART: ART 'FAIR': 47 TANNER ST.,
LONDON., SE1
(INDUSTRIAL PREMISES)
(pics 06-09-2015)
...
in process
Sometimes
the constraints of making a 'picture' (rather than covering a wall or an
undefined area) are
destructively challenging. Here the
process of limiting a freely growing
'doodle'/improvisation
to
'picture-sized bites' tends to threaten a
basic constituent of its maker's constructional method -
that each motif directly stimulates or grows into the next - a dynamic continuing.
Thus - having found himself in a commercially motivated 'art fair' - this maker
is struggling with the problem of reducing his 'endless' work to 'a
picture' or selling it as if 'by the yard' on paper-rolls.
.
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': NOIR - COMMERCIAL GALLERY, SHOREDITCH HIGH ST., LONDON,
E1
(paste-up 2-pics 6-08-2015)
Every
type of homey item is emblasoned with or distorted into "Noir"
style shapes. This famous graffitist has become a brand and his patron-gallery
has aided the completion of a typical 'circular'
career, facilitating the meeting of its two banal extremes: at its start the 'tag'
(perceived as staking possession of its whole location) meets at its end the
iconic-'brand' (that can convert a whole world of consumer objects, each into
a fragment of a single celebrity).
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': NOIR - COMMERCIAL GALLERY, SHOREDITCH HIGH ST., LONDON,
E1
(paste-up 2-pics 6-08-2015)
.
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7: GRAFFITI - SUBLIMATION INTO COMMERCIAL STYLES
... in process
As the 'look' of graffiti becomes
familiar and even enjoyed, and is gradually accepted as an improvement of scarily
scruffy and chaotic areas of the city, the idea of fascinatingly daring 'edgy'
locations decorated/celebrated by the talented 'alternative-lifers' eventually
evolves, spinning off as it does so low energy, partially
tamed, stylised and bowdlerized versions of itself, sold as portable art and commissioned as
painted decorations, designed (not improvised) for polite public places, a
domesticated offshoot of graffiti's spontaneous cousin 'street-art') into
graffiti-chic for the unfazed unafraid consumer radicals - those who can recognize
and drink the vital springs of talent near their source - superior to the safe
commonplace; living at the temporal forefront of energy ... this image must be comodifiable
and its excitement salable - its visual styles are readymade and quotable - it
has reached the stage of consumer assimilation ...
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART': DECORATED
COACH - BROCKLEY WAY, LONDON, SE23 - (ARTISTA)
(pic 14-08-2017)
Graffiti seems to have exuded cultural permission to cover ordinary functional objects in 'painterly' patterns. Here are two examples of a 'street-art' painter's work which seems to inherit graffitiesque characteristics: swirling rhythms, dense compositional coverage, lavish colour, subject-matter consisting of a mix of repetitious motifs, a mix of rational and irrational elements. However they manifest
almost nothing of `graffiti's energy, presence, freedom; none of its origination excitement, urgency of execution, daring, innovative
liberty. These images are cloyingly sentimental, aesthetically insensitive, monotonously repetitive, embarrassingly childish, as predictable and unexpressive as product-branding graphics, commercially rather than personally aspirational.
.
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COMMISSIONED
'GRAFFITI/PUBLIC-ART':
DECORATED
SHOP BUILDING
- BROCKLEY ROAD, LONDON, SE23 -
(ARTISTA)
(pic 20-10-2017)
...
in process
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POST-GRAFFITI:
"SPLICE", GREAT EASTERN ST.
& SANGER ST., LONDON, EC2 - (CAMILLE WALALA - c 04-2015)
(pic 4-06-2015)
...
in process
A crude and outdated type of utilitarian
office building, recently re-imaged with a clever paint job that wittily
cuts its side elevation diagonally, like an unwanted present emerging from a
gift-box, contrasting its dynamic jollity with the original's stolid gloom.
The astonishingly (for the UK) brazen style and scale of this paint-transformation makes me wonder if it shares with genuine (sub-legal)
graffiti a lack of 'official' sanction.
Recently much graffiti has disappeared from this area and as if in substitution, some shops, commercial
premises, hoardings, have adopted a visually strident full-colour decorative style that
could be influenced by (ie exhibit a debased mass-mnemonic stereotype for) the visual richness and
dynamism of genuine graffiti, or at least a commercial cashing-in of this
area's graffiti fame.
.
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POST-GRAFFITI:
PEDESTRIAN CROSSING, SOUTHWARK ST., LONDON, SE1 - (CAMILLE WALALA -
16-09-2016)
(pic 6-09-2017)
...
in process
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POST-GRAFFITI: "BETTER
BANKSIDE" WASTE-BIN, SOUTHWARK ST., LONDON, SE1
(pic 6-09-2017)
...
in process
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POST-GRAFFITI: A COMMERCIAL
VEHICLE IN A SUBURBAN STREET,
LONDON, SE23
(pic 28-03-2015)
... in process
The glamour of graffiti - illegal, spontaneous,
artistic - lends its kudos to "London Calling ...Your Essential Cultural Edit" website.
.
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POST-GRAFFITI: COMMERCIAL FABRIC CATALOGUE
- WEB VERSION
(pic 02-2016)
... in process
.
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LIGO:
1st GRAVITY-WAVE DETECTION - NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (USA) PRESS-CONFERENCE
- 11-02-2016 - VIDEO:
pt1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEPIwEJmZyE
pt2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9wUK99VTTk
(pic 11-02-2016)
... in process
Themed garments worn by:
Kip Thorne
(LIGO co-founder / Caltec) - tie; (and possibly
themed) France Cordova (Director: National Science Foundation, USA) -
jacket.
.
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AD: TV SKY-1 - COPELAND RD, LONDON, SE15
- FAKE 'BELIEF-TAGGING'
(pic 04-10-2015) ...
in process
Tagged messages defacing ads and walls
have become so familiar that this (pretend/designed/printed) version lends a
credence of immediate reality to an advertised fantasy TV drama
.
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INDEX
IMPROVISED-ARCH
IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
IMPROVISATION -
PUBLIC & LEGAL - ALLOTMENTS
IMPROVISED VILLAGES - WANDSWORTH / KEW BRIDGE
VERNACULAR & STYLE -
BERDUN, HUESCA
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE
- FRANK'S CAFE / SOUTHWARK LIDO
"HOME"
- MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - LIV-RM
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS &
TASTE - HOUSE
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA
PERSONAL-CHOICES
ART - GOTHIC INTO RENAISSANCE INTO 20thC
ART - 20thC COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA
GRAFFITI INTO STREET-ART
KITSCH
CHANCE & DESIGN
.