March 22 - Background Briefing

On Background Briefing today (Radio National) there was another discussion about graffiti.

Reporter Brendan Trembath - "As old as mankind, graffiti can be seen as a cultural expression and a tourist attraction, or as vandalism inducing fear. It can morph into high art, political comment, or territorial border security. "

The reporter looked into many aspects and perspectives of graffiti and interviewed a broad range of people, from taggers to police officers. It was a really informative report.

Some of the things that appealed to me were -

A comment by one young artist saying that "you're not a graffiti guy if you've never done a train"

Doer is an artist on the Sydney scene. "Doer says by the time he was 13 he was hanging out with bigger and more notorious graffiti groups. Some members would give up graffiti after a while, and others became involved in more serious crime. But Doer went down a different path. He saw the artistic potential of graffiti and studied art at university. Doer still does the graffiti murals known as pieces, but says he now concentrates on legal walls."

A group called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels are a really nice bunch of guys who don't really get involved in the politics of violence over territorialism, it's more about the art and they're all really artistic graffiti writers.

An artist called Ben Frost lives in a warehouse in Surrey Hill, Sydney, and the walls of it are a moving feast of changing graffiti. If an artist thinks he can do something better then it's generally okay to paint over someone else's work.

Well known artist, Banksy, did a piece in Melbourne that was much prized by the building owner. Uprotected, it stayed in place for 5 years and then the owner put a piece of perspex over it to make sure it didn't get trashed. Soon afterwards someone sprayed silver paint behind the perspex and destroyed it.

From the drawings scrawled across the nation by Aboriginees, to the scratchings of the early convicts, to the political statements of the 1960's and the spray cans and stencils and pasteups of today it seems that graffiti is alive and well in this country and anyone who's conducting a war against it is fighting a losing battle.