Street Art

This afternoon I went on a “Graffiti hunt”. And I discovered a whole lot more than I anticipated, perhaps most notably about my own naïve misconceptions more than anything else.

I shall tell the story and let it unravel as it did for me.

Arriving at Shoreditch High Street, my finger twitching at the camera, I set out on my quest. The very first images I saw on Sclatter Street were these two. They made me feel uncomfortable. I neither wanted to “Hug a hoodie” nor did I know who Ben Eine was at that time (I’ve since learnt that he’s a well-renowned and talented London Street Artist with a Banksy partnership), but my gut reaction was that I didn’t like the tone of these. What was I getting myself into?

And then I stood before these other colourful messes. Again, I couldn’t make it out. I couldn’t understand it. It was chaos thrown up all over the walls like some aggressive massacre.

I walked on, finding myself in Brick Lane. And soon I stumbled across these in Bacon Street. The rat I’d seen the other night when I went for a late-night beigel with friends. I was really pleased to see it again. Look at its nose sniffing up at the cigarette bin on the wall. I instinctively felt that there was something clever about these in the way that they interacted with their environment. And just along from him was the fat sow, looking surprisingly at ease in Bacon Street.

I got talking with a guy who was sitting on his doorstep having a smoke and a cup of tea. He could see I liked the Street Art and directed me along to the market doors where there was a bird, again clearly by the same artist. It annoyed me that other people had initialled coarse letters across some of the artwork. It felt almost parasitic in that it was gaining attention off the back of the Street Art I was looking at. This was something that continued to annoy me all afternoon and which, perhaps, turned out to be the biggest revelation for me.

Realising that I might be on the brink of exploring something far more refined than tagging and graffiti, I made a good call and took myself into a gallery on Brick Lane. Here I got the low-down on the 'rat' and 'sow' artist. He's called Roa. He is an American, mid-twenties, currently living in Belgium. His Street Art can be found all over the world, most prolifically in Saragossa, NYC and London. He will only create a piece of art if he has been granted permission from the owner of the building. This makes his artwork legal.

I also discovered another Roa in Hanbury Street. It is a vast stalk. I was marvelling at its sheer scale and detail when a man came to stand alongside me. "I think it's a bit too black and white for my liking, but if somebody creates something that makes us stop and look for five minutes, then it is worth it. Don't you think?" He'd lived in Brick Lane all his adult life. He showed me a collage that a woman had worked on all day yesterday and he cursed "the cretins" who had already tagged and graffitied all over it within 24 hours. He was really cross about it. I felt his frustration and it seemed to be fast becoming clear that tagging and graffiti were destructive and disrespectful acts of vandalism. I asked the man why he thought these people tagged. He said it was done to mark that they'd been there, that it was their territory. Sounded a bit to me like a dog peeing on a lamp-post.

In Club Row I happened upon another Roa - a squirrel. Apparently the desecration of Street Art has been perfected by '10Foot' who has tagged all over Banksy's work for years. They call the defacing "throw-ups" and "going-over". Something to be expected, but a crying shame. It would seem that there are no rules about over-writing in this transient medium.

I have more stories to tell, but I'll save them for a new Blog tomorrow.