Street art text drivers#

'In parts of Australia, they are like the UK and people really hate graffiti and tags on vans and trains, but in Melbourne drivers compete with each other as to whose van is more decorated.' 'Brazil for instance is more relaxed about it,' he says. It is a question which prompts different answers in different parts of the world, says Cedar Lewinsohn, the curator of the exhibition atTate Modern. 'DPM - Exhibit A', at the Anonymous Gallery Project in Soho, will display large photographs of the convicts' work alongside copies of their charge sheets to ask whether the men are criminals or artists. England is by far and away the most draconian for punishments for what are only economic crimes.'Ī gallery in New York in the United States launches an exhibition next week based on the work of those convicted at Southwark. 'And yet we hate graffiti more than anywhere else in the world. 'London is to street art, at the start of the 21 st century, what Paris was for Impressionism at the start of the 20th,' he says with genuine immodesty. He now works, by day, for a London art gallery and describes himself as an upstanding taxpayer. He, more than anyone else, has legitimised the genre and spawned a new generation of young imitators - much to the displeasure of those who want to clean up behind them.īob has been involved in graffiti since 1 982 when he was a punk.

His works sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds and he was recently featured in a retrospective exhibition alongside Andy Warhol. NowTate Modern is selling his book in its gift shop. A few years ago he was sneaking his work into galleries such as the Louvre and Tate Britain. The man to credit for bringing street art into established gallery spaces is Banksy. 'There is a huge irony in the juxtaposition of the two events,' said one of the artists.

Street art text trial#

The courtroom and the museum were so close that supporters of the men on trial popped down to the Tate to do a bit of retouching during one lunchtime break at the court. Gillman, for two years - after admitting conspiracy to cause criminal damage, costing the taxpayer at least £1 m.īy contrast, just down the road from the Court, the riverside facade of Tate Modern had been covered in giant murals by six urban artists with international reputations, including Blu from Bologna, Faile from New York, and Sixeart from Barcelona, in the first display of street art at a major museum. Last week the might of English law delivered its verdict at Southwark Crown Court in London where five members of the DPM Graffiti Crew were jailed - one, And rev. Great British institutions have been polarised. On the face of it, as a society, we seem to be a little mixed-up when it comes to 'graffiti', as you call it if you work in the local council's cleansing department, or 'street art' as you say if you're the man - and they do mainly seem to be male - wielding the spray can.īut the confusion now runs deeper than those who spray and those who remove the paint.