Off the wall
I know I have written about graffiti before… last time I introduced you to one of my heroes, Social Pest. However there have been some developments, and this week has all been about the cans.
The week started with the news that wall-decorating British artist Banksy had been outed again. Apparently you can only last so long behind a pseudonym when only half of the population sees you as a genius.
Then I had my own brush with a paint-can fugitive. Lancaster has its very own version of Banksy… and like everything else here, he’s not quite as good. Rather than leaving witty slogans and provocative images, he just leaves his calling card… still, it’s pretty cool in a place that still has no real gallery space for artwork.
I imagine the police will be in touch, they seem more concerned with vandals than they do with drugs and violence, so I’ll save them the trouble and give my full statement here.
It was 2.15am, and I was walking back home from an evening spent in the company of friends. I chose to take a shortcut home through a bit of poorly lit park land (insert personal safety literature here)… anyway, I wasn’t mugged or stabbed, but I did see a figure clad in black walking towards me. He had his face covered with a scarf. Then, right in front of me, he took out a can and started spraying his tag on the floor… calm as you like, and with no small amount of arrogance. I watched him finish it – he worked quickly, I nodded in approval and walked on. I passed a further three fresh tags before I left the park.
This all reminds me of a story I was told by my friend, I’ll call him ‘D’. Apparently, as a young man, he ended up stuck in Yealand, a village outside Lancaster, for some time. There is nothing to do in Yealand except perhaps develop a drinking problem or maybe bother livestock.
‘D’ was wandering around one day, looking for something to do when he stumbled across a spray can that had been used to place temporary markings on the road. It had been discarded still half-full.
In an act of desperation and defiance, ‘D’, took the spray can, and on a wall facing the main road into the village, he attempted to spray in three-foot letters the phrase, ‘F**K YEALAND’.
I say attempted as he managed to get only six characters in before the can finally ran out. He had been too ambitious, if only he had used a smaller font size. Still, the result was legendary, three-foot bright yellow letters shouting a more general and personal message:
F**K YE
justine on 
The best graffiti anyone I know has seen was under an advertisement for a newspaper. Under the ad words (”USA Today”).it said “Tomorrow, the world!”.
the day after tomorrow, the universe…
the day after friday, heaven.
after heaven, it’s monday again.
and they say i’mmoody!
Wet paint and very dry words. Spookily true too.
I found some graffiti on a board walk last week. It was outlines of hand and foot prints, maybe suggesting various positions from karma sutra. Except that some of them may have been impossible.
Graffiti is banned at work, and mostly that is a good thing, as the majority of the graffiti is simple and crap.
There is one guy tho who draws great pics on the walls and cupboards of the lunch rooms.
Real art.
He’d get fired if he got caught.
There is a surprisingly little amount of graffiti here, and that means very little art aswell.
Seems Bansky has a larger fan club then I knew.
“…suggesting various positions from karma sutra” – or perhaps just the result of fingerpainting breakdancers.
“Graffiti is banned at work” – let me guess, as is stock car racing and blood sports.
I’m just being a little glib… My respect to your lunchroom picasso – that’s the bit about graffiti that I admire, a need to create art despite the context and the rules.
en route to one my regular cafes, there is a shortcut through a laneway (only to be taken in broad daylight, mind) filled with fabulous graffiti and i think it’s accepted by the people in charge to be art, because nobody seems to care about it. there’s some crazy good stuff up there, and it is always changing so there’s something new almost every time i go to my cafe! several times i’ve walked past people in the middle of producing a work of art. like i said, nobody cares. it’s my favourite wall.
That’s pretty cool. Especially the fact that you can catch the artist at work… because of the nature of graffiti, it’s rare you even find out who created it, let alone get the chance to watch them create.
Coffee and Art – you can survive off that combination, without food, for approximately four months.
I’m 85% coffee and art!
What, only 15% genius?
I like it.
[...] bookmarks tagged witty Off the wall saved by 2 others veverik bookmarked on 07/20/08 | [...]
grape minds think alike. tomorrow’s comic, monday’s
encore serpahine, is also about graffiti, so i added a link
from it to the FU. i even mentioned your name, adam, in
case your parole officer is looking for you again.
most graffiti is shite, although some would argue it’s
the point. as long as it isn’t sprayed on my house,
i do love observing it, deciphering the meaning. i feel
if i can recognise street tags, i’m part of the small group
of people ‘in the know’ though that knowledge really is
worth less than paint compared to things of importance.
Sort of like secret signals left by urban trackers… being able to read tags makes you a translator and a guide of a particular type of jungle.
It’s an ace comic by the way.
thanks for this post adam and the link to the article about banksy’s street project. that’s just incredible. my boyfriend and i are both fans. we once sat on the floor of this posh store hidden behind some racks and went through every page of a banksy book, laughing and oohing and ahhing at his brilliance, balls and wit. (yeah, it’s more supportive to actually buy the book, but we were broke) i love that he’s managed to keep his identity under wraps and doubt that he’s the dude with the facebook account, lol.
Anyway, great post and articles, thanks for sharing. oh and f**k ye!
<3 calan
Thanks Calan,
I think it is OK to read a Banksy book for free… it’s sort of the ethos of his art. Besides, when selling multi-million dollar sculptures to the Beckhams and Samuel L Jackson, I think his bank balance can take the hit on that occasion.
When I lived in Brighton I used to walk past two of the rat stencils… Banksy never asked me money for that…
…should have started with a ‘what’s your favourite Banksy piece?’.
here in sacramento california, there is plenty of graffiti, most gang related or kids writing their names, lots of strange stencils (the virgin mary shows up a bunch), one guys been going around and pouring paint into cursive words in the middle of streets, there are a handful of good big works and funny wheat pasting, some of my friends including myself have been sewing and knitting random things for the streets. we’re not hard core enough for permanence. we’re like fake tattoos, or maybe mandala’s mandalas seem cooler. oh speaking of that… there is also a group of people that sidewalk chalk areas once a month.
Oddly, despite my stance on religion, I have a real soft spot for the virgin Mary… She’s a bit of an icon, and one of the least realised aspects of modern Christianity in the west.
The Church is very male, yet at the centre of all this is a woman… I think it has something to do with men’s inability to give birth.
I love the idea of dressing streets on a temporary basis… especially knitware!
My friend’s daughter was told off by a policeman for drawing on the pavement with chalk… apparently it is still considered graffiti.
Does standing on a street-corner blowing bubbles count as loitering? That is my favourite hipppie-activity. You can even do it in large groups, and canvas a city block.
No, but I bet it won’t be long before it is considered an act of chemical warfare.
Cuz y’know, the terr’ists use bubbles and hippies. Secretly. XD
even more fun, i find, is finding somewhere high up and blowing bubbles over a road
it must be pretty confusing for the drivers
my friends and i do that with origami…once we wandered in to one of our favourite cafes (a different one) to find that one of the cranes we had left behind last time was bluetacked onto their till. we were delighted!
honestly mary is pretty badass to raise a magic baby… ever read Lamb the gospel according to Biff? but seriously she is definitely iconic, the pieta is one of my favorite sculptures… at least classic sculptures, Marcel Duchamp’s fountain will always hold a place in my heart, but its not quite an emotional piece as the pieta.
Since I’ve moved to NC, it’s been odd to see walls that aren’t patched-over from graffiti ‘repair’–all over Orange County, CA there is tagging. It’s just a fact of life.
Of course, if you want the prettiest graffiti, it goes without saying that you need to go farther north and drive around Los Angeles.
I rather miss graffiti, really. It was one of the background things I took for granted.
The lancaster guy looks like nothing more than a tagger - that’s bog standard graffiti if you ask me and gives guys like Banksy a bad name. It’s the usual uninspiring gangbanger tag. Stencils on the other hand are a lot more aesthetic and you can leave an implicit message rather than some huge bubble font of your gangname.
Indeed, he is pretty much just a tagger, but this being Lancaster, that’s the closest we’re going to get a banksy-alike.
I too am rather fond of stencils, although I prefer to leave my social commentary to sharpie pens on public signs. I spent a few days correcting the spelling and grammar in road signs and council placed warnings (we had one that said – Dont’ let your dog foul here)…
Actually, you might be able to help me out here… I see that you sell Banksy prints (and some pretty nice looking ones at that) however, where does copyright stand with reference to graffiti? I mean, technically you can’t copyright something that is illegal…