Ask anyone their thoughts on graffiti, and you’ll get views of love and hatred : some people see it as vandalism, others a subtle artform. On the plus side, artists like Banksy have made walls a place to put a political point across, utilising stencils to produce technically tricky artworks loaded with political messages attached. This sort of graffiti was bound to get trendy with the public and the art critics : visually pleasing and intellectually satisfying. This kind of graffiti is now even acquired as graffiti canvas art, and hung on the walls of middleclass households and corporate reception areas.
Yet, what about the other end of the spectrum? - the scally, the tagger, the gangbanger type - this is just seen as hooliganism, an offence committed by the untalented. But is graffiti just an artform? To many people, it’s not only an artform, but a means to mark a district, or perhaps two fingers up at society : anti-art, anti-social, anti-establishment.
Graffiti has forever been an underground activity, although the results are very much public facing. The targeted audience is often unidentified. Is it for a competing gang? A message to an individual? To the public at large? Perhaps it’s just gratuitous and out of nothing else to do.
Whatever the causes may be, there seems to be a enduring demand to spray on walls. Some town councils have acknowledged that graffiti isn’t a fad, so they’ve designated zones where graffiti is permitted - normally uninhabited areas, but from time to time busier areas like boarding around urban construction sites.
