Sep 16 - Where Is The Art?
By I spotted this at a glance on the way to an exhibition opening last week. Now, I’m not going to pretend I’m a really artsy fella, because really I’m pretty clueless beyond photography; I’ve never been trained in any artistic field and everything I do is very trial and error. So maybe that’s why I like street art: It’s raw and dynamic but it’s also very misunderstood; especially in Gibraltar and especially when the word graffiti comes into the picture.
THIS IS ART
Totally, not vandalism
I grew up believing that anything on a wall, any kind of message or picture was ‘graffiti’, and it seems like the vast majority of people I’ve spoken to have been brought up to think the same way. But really it’s not that simple. The Collins English Dictionary defines graffiti as ‘drawings, messages, etc, often obscene, scribbled on the walls of public lavatories, advertising posters, etc’. So hold up, now: ‘advertising posters’? Here’s where things get a little more complicated, a little less clear-cut. Our buddy Collins here - if I’m not mistaken – is pretty much putting graffiti into two categories: often obscene drawings or messages in public toilets, and posters. And having seen this (and putting aside the posters bit for now) I can’t help but see some similarities between the way I was brought up to see graffiti and this very general, very vague definition of the word.
Almost two years ago, sometime at the end of 2012, along with a couple of other guys we started compiling photographs of these local ‘works of art’ in a Facebook group called Gibraltar Graffiti. The response was overwhelming as we started to receive a lot of submissions regularly; and although the idea wasn’t to find great pieces of graffiti (in fact, it was more of the opposite) it did make me not only appreciate good street art but also be more aware of what is happening in Gibraltar.
And it got me thinking about the way we – Gibraltarians - see it; both the people doing the graffiti and the people that have to live with it; and unfortunately, (and this is where the photo above comes into play) it all seems to come down to vandalism. The people drawing genitalia and writing theirs and their significant other’s names aren’t doing it as art. And understandably the property owners who have to put up with large scribbles of people’s ‘cool, street’ names across the side of their building will only ever see graffiti in a negative light.
But how about we turn this around? Street art is a thing, and it extends beyond what we know as graffiti, to well-designed stickers, pasted poster art (which doesn’t necessarily mean advertising posters, like our dictionary definition mentioned), spray can art, stencil art (like in the case of the photo) and can even extend as far as sculpture work and street installations. All we need to do is learn to accept them. I have already seen some stencil art and some stickers around Gibraltar and I definitely feel that done in a careful, tasteful manner – without the penises - it can add a lot of character to some areas of the city that are fairly run-down.
So this is a call for artists to explore the possibilities of street art: where are the clever political messages, the beautiful murals?
Mind you, I didn’t tell you to do it.
Stefano is a photographer/writer/translator/artist
Check out his other projects on: www.stefanoblanca.com
