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March 11, 2007
The style of urban graffiti that most people have seen and know about, is the kind that uses spray cans. It came from New York City in the late 1960s, and was born on the subway trains and basically indicated a writer's presence. However, graffiti became so much more than simple tagging or throw-ups. Graffiti writers, in addition to getting their name around as much as possible, would try to outdo each other in terms of style.
NYC subway graffiti became world famous, and its style and sensibilities were transplanted to other parts of the country and the world, mixing with local traditions and styles in new ways. I remember seeing the grafitti along the walls of Melbourne's suburban train lines in the late 1970s as I travelled from Sandringham to the city.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, words+images, Adelaide, 2007
The word graffiti simply means--words or drawings scratched or scribbled on a wall. Since Adelaide has no subway the street walls become the major medium of graffiti art. If the building has no architectural beauty and is a perfect place to display a mural, why not put one up? Why not make some streets into art galleries?
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I wonder about this one. Our local park, which had a fantastic graffiti wall was taken back by the council and no graffiti is tolerated. It is painted over as soon as the green is violated. I sort of liked it, but the number of beer cans, needles and other associated stuff has declined dramatically with the dissapearance of grafitti. A difficult one. Some is very artistic. Most is ugly and jarring. One of my first observations when I came to Adelaide four years ago was that there was a lot of grafitti. More or the same as I had seen in my world travels, including living in New York and Washington and the other east coast cities that I have visited.