A War Of Words
Images: Northern Quarter, Manchester.
“Nothing but mindless vandals those so called graffiti artists”
No doubt words similar to this have been thrown around the dinner tables of many white middle class conservatives, not to single anyone out, just that my town is crawling with them! In reality the statement couldn’t be farther from the truth, some of the most innovative and thought provoking art is to be found on our streets and in the most interesting and considered of locations. Ok, so what’s my point? I’m just preaching to the converted, to the admirers of street art that know full well that it runs a lot deeper. The point? I have views, I have a medium, I choose to use this medium to put my views across. It’s my wall, and this keyboard my paint.
What is happening to our right to project our views in any way we see fit? It’s a case in which the term double standards can be aptly applied. It’s accepted that multinational corporations swath their logos and psychologically affecting images across buildings and buses, billboards and bridges. It’s accepted that the council fly propaganda laden flags in the streets of our cities, this is not to mention the constant reminder that we are no longer permitted to smoke in “enclosed public spaces”. How does this message come? In the form of a sticker. Rather hypocritical that the council slap up these stickers in a manner that can only be described as over the top, whilst DIY music promoter, promoting his not for profit record label, would receive a fine for the same act.
Street art is humanities way of opening up the enclosed space we have built ourselves into. To return our surroundings to something of their former glory. It’s human instinct to decorate our living space. We see a grey wall we are urged to make it colourful. The wall is more pleasing to look at in colour. It’s given the wall a purpose other than to keep people in or out of somewhere, it’s allowed it to provoke feelings other than that of entrapment and enclosure, it’s given it life and it’s given it beauty.
Unfortunately the powers that be don’t agree, they would rather see a plain wall, or a wall that is made to be more ugly by their poor attempt to cover up what gave it life. Creature says they should spend less time worrying about the environment we have built, more time concerned with the one we are destroying and be thankful we use paint as a means to free ourselves from this red brick prison, the alternative is to knock the walls down and that would literally be war.
