Define Art - Cover story
February 25, 2009
In the ongoing debate about graffiti, it's not easy to get to the art of the matter, as Bianca Hall reports.
LITTLE Diver was an innocuous chap, standing a metre tall and surrounded by piles of rubbish in a Melbourne laneway. But despite his stature and less than salubrious home, thousands sought him out.
The stencil of a duffle‑coated deep sea diver is thought to have been painted by British street artist Banksy during a visit to the city in 2003.
Banksy, whose work satirises politics and popular culture, has kept his identity under wraps during a career spanning more than a decade. The secrecy has fed his notoriety and his art is admired by fans across the globe, including Angelina Jolie, who spent £200,000 at a Banksy auction in 2006.
Last April, the Nicholson Building's owners ‑ whose rear wall in Cocker Alley was Little Diver's home ‑ paid to have the stencil covered with perspex to protect it from vandals and the elements.
But no one thought to seal the perspex at the top and sides. In mid‑December vandals poured silver paint over and behind the covering, and scrawled "Banksy woz here" on the destroyed work.
In a sense, the vandals reclaimed street art for themselves. But they also reignited debate about the value of street art and whether it can, or should be, appropriated.
Online communities were divided. Some argued that the beauty of street art is in its organic and anarchic nature, and that to protect or own street art undermines its democratic spirit. Others were just appalled that something of artistic value had been destroyed.
In June 2006, Port Phillip Council launched a revamped St Kilda junction underpass. More than 100 volunteers, including primary school pupils, local indigenous people, street artists and juvenile justice program participants, spent 18 months transforming the underpass into a subterranean street art precinct.
The project reshaped the area, which the council said had previously been "one of the most notorious graffiti (tagging) hotspots in Melbourne", and made residents feel unsafe.
More than two years later. the art is mostly intact, with tags ‑ where they appear ‑scattered on the periphery of larger works. In graffiti parlance, to "slash" or tag over someone else's work is considered a deep insult and it seems most people respect the work enough to leave it alone.
Last month, graphic artist Jonas Marnell created a series of freehand spray-painted ‑works in Hosier Lane depicting the dangers of genetically modified foods. He had been invited to do it by a building owner. As Marnell, 29, and his friends worked on an image of a tomato with teeth, tourists admired the work and asked the artists to pose for photographs.
Street art transforms public space into a canvas, and has put Melbourne on the map. Many of the CBD's lanes, particularly Hosier Lane, are renowned for the graffiti, stencils and posters lining their walls.
Melbourne's lanes appear in tour books worldwide and street art is now so much a part of the city's Zeitgeist that it is common to see immaculately dressed wedding parties posing for photographs in front of graffitied backgrounds.
While many people admire the skill of graffiti artists ‑ if not taggers ‑ Marnell is critical of the way street art is treated by authorities.
"They should really decide whether they want to accept graffiti art as an art form in the city," he says. "On the one hand they want to charge people under the new laws, but on the other hand they want to use the 'graf' to promote the city."
The new laws Marnell refers to are in the State Government's graffiti management strategy, introduced last year.
Under the new rules, people caught painting graffiti on private property can be jailed for two years and fined more than $27,000. People who create graffiti that "would offend a reasonable person" risk the same penalties.
Other new crimes include possessing a spray paint can "while on or adjacent to public transport property or infrastructure", which attracts fines of more than $2800, and selling spray paint cans to minors.
The distinction between "tagging" painting or drawing scribbled signatures or "tags" ‑ and street art is important.
Street art describes a mish‑mash of fom‑is, from painted political slogans to large spraypainted artworks and even a cluster
of picture frames lining a wall in Presgrave Place beside the Capitol Theatre.
City of Melbourne research shows most people hate tagging, but "highly value" street art.
In recent years inner‑city councils have encouraged the proliferation of street art, creating space for graffiti projects and introducing permit systems for new projects.
Graffiti has been around for as long as there have been people with something to say. The word graffiti comes from the Italian grafflato, or "scratched", and refers to ancient times when most graffiti was scratched onto walls.
And there is still evidence of early graffiti from ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. Some of the inscriptions advertised the attractions of local prostitutes, while others were meant to amuse, like the graffiti in Pompeii depicting a penis and accompanied by the words "mansueta tene", or "handle with care".
In 1997, former Heide Museum of Modern Art curator Julianna Engberg suggested public unease with graffiti could stem from its intrusion into public space.
"The public gallery is the safest place for anything that might be considered dangerous or provocative," Engberg wrote.
"The public gallery provides its own law of culture that removes the edge... it is for this reason that graffiti is still feared, loathed and removed."
Some people will go to great lengths to protect graffiti, like the Bristol family that made international headlines in 2007. The family put their home on the market, but soon withdrew it from sale despite attracting several offers. One of the house's walls featured a 7.6 metre-graffiti work by Banksy, and every prospective buyer had declared their intention to paint over the mural.
The owners enlisted the help of Devon art gallery Red Propellor, and re‑listed the property as a mural for sale with a house attached. But two months later, vandals threw red paint onto the side of the house, obliterating the artwork.
Street art, it seems, just isn't made to last. And, for some, that's part of its appeal.
Writer: Bianca Hall
Photographs: Steve Lightfoot and Peter Weaving