River Of Words / 'A Brief History Of Graffiti' on BBC4

All Graffiti Images:  River Soar, South Leicester And Beyond, August 2015

The images in this post were all collected during a recent cycle ride along the towpath of the River Soar, from my inner Leicester home, to the southern periphery of the city, and beyond.  Apologies for the sometimes questionable quality, - my phone was the only image capture device to hand on that particular occasion.

I won't pretend there's anything remotely original about their subject matter.  This fascination with the calligraphic scrawling and stenciled philosophies of urban graffiti writers is something that runs like a thread through much of my artwork in recent works, and I’m hardly the only one tapping into such things as a visual or a semiotic resource.  These days, certain prominent street-artists have the status of international celebrities, and there are shelves of coffee table books devoted to their work.  Some would argue that recycling the various forms of contemporary street art, as a generically urban signifier, became a somewhat lazy trope many years ago.

And yet…  Whenever I venture out of my front door, on foot or on wheels, there it all still is, a restless, polychromatic tangle of stylized characters, hieroglyphs, icons and symbols, endlessly combining, self-cancelling and regenerating.  The city never ceases rewriting the unofficial account of itself in draft after draft.  It may be overly familiar, but that just proves it is still completely current as a means of communication/expression.  Being distinctly alternative, less densely populated routes through any city, river and canal towpaths are usually rich in graffiti.  However predictably, I was soon punctuating my pleasant Summer afternoon ride at regular intervals to document the current crop in South Leicester.

Actually, what might appear an inability to abandon a comfort zone of artistic subject matter on my part is slightly less straightforward than it might seem.  For some weeks, I’ve been considering possible directions for the next phase(s) of my artwork, mentally rehearsing various alternatives in a general sense, whilst idling in neutral, as it were.  At such moments, I often found it useful to deliberately return to a familiar starting point, whilst considering as yet untried ways of exploring it.  It may not be about the original subject so much as how one transmutes it.  In the case of some of these images, it may be the abstract qualities in general, and a certain, occasional sense of cancellation, that interests me primarily.  I also sense an increasing engagement with some of the spaces between marks as well as with the actual statements.

One current notion is that I’d quite like at least one aspect of my future output to be more self-consciously painterly.  The basis of much of my recent work, culminating in the ‘Map’series of pieces exhibited at June’s ‘Mental Mapping’ exhibition, took layered advertising posters as their starting point, both as content, and as an actual medium.  It’s no accident then, that the finished pieces took the form of paper collage as much as of painting per se.  I have no problem with that at all, but do wonder if it’s now time to return to something a little more fluid, rather than being quite so extensively ‘pieced together’.

In that context, the gestural, calligraphic quality of much graffiti, the unmistakable clues to its use of fluid media, and the flowing ‘one-hit’ nature of its execution, all feel quite significant just now.  These are qualities that don't attach themselves naturally to my default picture-making demeanour, and thus things that part of me periodically yearns to try to push up against.  I do believe that, ultimately, any creative practitioner can only really become the best artist they were going to be all along, but also that the limits of that are best defined by periodically pushing up against the things that come less easily.

Some of the above might seem to contradict my oft-stated ambitions to also work in non-painterly media, (the collaborative film, ‘Orfeo’, and my ‘Cement Cycle’ photographs being recent attempts to scratch that itch).  However, I’ve never aspired to abandoning painting, (quite the opposite), - merely to widening my range.  In fact, one of the circles I’d really like to square is that of the relationship between traditionally painterly and non-painterly, (possibly mechanical) media, even within the same work.  That's a clear concern much contemporary painting, and it seems to me that, paradoxically, an open acknowledgement of the material qualities inherent to paint could actually be of more rather than less use, in that context.

I wouldn't want you to think any of this is set in stone, (or concrete), - I'm just trying to illuminate certain trains of thought that characterise my own on-going creative process, even when work isn't actually in full flow.  Remember how I once used to fret about my (often over-extended) periods of hiatus?  It feels like definite progress that I now recognise these periods of creative 'rest' are just valuable refreshment breaks, and not a sign that it's all ground to a halt yet again.

A typical strategy at such times is to increasingly expose oneself to the work of other artists, in search of new (or even old) connections.  That’s an on-going process for most creative people, of course.  However, whilst it can be about confirming the validity (or otherwise), of work already in hand, between phases of work, it can be more about stimulating new processes or concerns not previously explored.  In this mode, I sometimes find it useful to investigate deliberately, certain artists whose work I’ve previously overlooked, or even those to whom I might have an initial antipathy.  Serendipity, synchronicity and plain old coincidence can all be enormous value, not least as a function of the fractal digital re/search we all indulge in routinely nowadays.

I’ll expand on that in the near future, but for now, I want to return to the initial theme of this post with mention of a recent BBC4 TV broadcast, ‘A Brief History Of Graffiti’ [1.].  I don’t own a TV these days, but do watch some stuff on demand.  Often, that’s just miscellaneous comedy, consumed for relaxation, but occasionally there's something more mentally nourishing, - like this.  In fact, it’s exactly the kind of thing I would probably miss out on once the current Government forces the BBC to charge viewers for its IPlayer on-demand service.  In passing, I’m perpetually baffled by how willingly the British will sacrifice the few shared things they have left of any genuine quality, to the imperatives of the market place, - usually devaluing them beyond repair, (but don’t get me started). [2.].

Richard Clay.  Still From: 'A Brief History Of Graffiti', BBC4 TV, (First Broadcast: 25 August, 2015)

Anyway, the programme was an engaging and informative survey of the tradition of alternative, wall-based expression, presented by Richard Clay, - an academic with a nevertheless engaging enthusiasm for the subject.  He had my attention from the get-go, in particular with his discussion of Prehistoric cave painting, and its typical, reverse-stenciled hand motif, (something I’ve reflected on here more than once).

That very human urge to assert “I woz ‘ere”, - to mark one’s individual identity within the group, and locate oneself in time, space and, most importantly, memory, was clearly there from our very origins.  It is clearly a key function of graffiti, and thus, a theme Clay returned to throughout his discussion.  It came to the fore again as he inevitably turned to the burgeoning of ‘Wild Style’ writing in 1970s Philadelphia and New York.  That was the birth of what might be regarded as the modern era of Graffiti, and still holds sway over the essential aesthetic of unofficial urban environments globally.  Certainly, the importance of the individual tag remains a key component, as a variety of personal trademark.

Also notable, was the connection of the prehistoric spray technology of diluted, ground earth pigment, scallop shell reservoir and blown reed, - with today’s ultra-convenient weapon of choice, the aerosol can.  Throwing paint was the most immediate application method from the very start, it would seem.

The flip-side of that coin is the function of graffiti in cementing the tribe, be it as blind allegiance to whichever clan one most identifies with, or in sharing common political or philosophical cause.  Translated Ancient Pompeian exhortations to violence against neighbouring cities, centred upon the gladiatorial area but clearly infecting wider society, prefigure current allegiances to football team or post code ‘hood’ in an even more overtly bloodthirsty manner.

To illustrate the importance of graffiti as political propaganda, Clay drew on the example of the Paris Commune of 1871.  Enjoyably, he revived the motif of the sprayed hand to illustrate how the invention of lithographic printing around the same time allowed activists to move beyond the individual, handwritten slogan, subverting an originally commercial medium to their own ends.  I might wish he could have extended this passage to make connections with the later traditions of Lettrism and Situationism, but I guess there’s only so much you can squeeze into an hour.  As the programme demonstrated, this is another theme that prevails, and the imperative to reassert an alternative voice (of whatever viewpoint) amidst the overwhelming Capitalist babble, may be even more vital than ever.  I’m sure anyone who follows this blog will be unsurprised that this stuff engaged captured my imagination.

Understandably, the survey ended with an examination of how Graffiti, and Street Art in general, came into the art mainstream, and how, nowadays, it’s as likely to be encountered in a gallery, as on the street.  I guess my own attempts to assimilate some of its tropes into my own process is a very tiny part of that.  Anyone disillusioned by the apparent ‘official’ co-option or acceptance through dilution this implies, may take heart from the activities of superstars of contemporary graffiti and Urban Exploration, Lek and Sowat.  It transpires that, whilst coordinating a temporary collective graffiti project at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo in 2012, they also found time to secretly decorate an inaccessible space in the bowels of the institution, unbeknownst to either its management or the visiting public.

I think we can all take pleasure from that, even if, as Richard Clay admitted, we still struggle to shrug off a certain ambivalence about someone inscribing our own walls.  I wonder if I'll be so quick with the paintbrush next time someone augments my property (as occasionally happens)?

I really enjoyed ‘A Brief History Of Graffiti’, both for its mild academic intent and palpable delight in the subversive impulse at the heart of graffiti.  If nothing else, by cropping up around the same time as my own lens turned again towards the omnipresent writing on walls, it encouraged me to believe that my own abiding attraction to the subject may not be quite as hackneyed as I sometimes fear.

You can catch up with the programme here, until 25 September 2015.

[1.]:  ‘A Brief History Of Graffiti’, BBC4, First Broadcast: 21.00, Wednesday, 26 August 2015.

[2.]:  Personally, I’d be taxing all the commercial broadcasters, advertising companies, etc. to fund all that’s best about the BBC, - keeping it public, free from advertising, egalitarian and, above all, A SERVICE!  I also realise this is the exact opposite of this Government’s current agenda, or indeed, the wider spirit of our age.  Perhaps I’m just pining for the broadcasting landscape of my childhood.  Say what you like though, once this stuff’s gone, - it’s gone; and I don’t see any commercial broadcasters trying to enrich my cultural experience in the same way.  If that makes me elitist, - so be it, (although I’ve never understood what’s so elitist about wanting to “Inform, educate and entertain” everyone equally, or enabling “Nation to speak peace unto nation”).