A graffiti artist uses the pages of The Guardian, of all places. to decry Melbourne City Council's "zero tolerance" graffiti policy and the painting-over of the graffiti between Flinders Street and Richmond Station for the games. It's reinforced with many claims about the supposedly wonderful Melbourne street art scene; Melbourne is a particular home of stencilling, and isn't apparently dominated by the usual flouro lettering copied from New York.
And you'd get the impression if you looked at the photos that the council and the government were out to destroy some really clever artwork that the public should be proud to have displayed around the city.
Solomon Ilios is from the new school of thought on graffiti: councils are wasting money on graffiti removal and would spend it better on commissioning "artists" to decorate residential and business walls.
"You'll never stop graffiti as long as there are authorities saying we are going to stop graffiti," he says. "That just ignites more people to do it."
According to Mr Ilios, who works with young people in one of the council's graffiti programs, there needs to be a distinction between graffiti art and graffiti tags, with the former being of cultural value and the latter being vandalism. He says Melbourne is internationally respected for its graffiti art and by having more of it around, there will be less tagging.
"Most of the experienced artists are not going around tagging trains," he says. "If the taggers see graffiti art, they don't destroy it because they respect it."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/03/1088488198917.html
http://benambra.org/benambra/?q=node/555
1 comment:
great post jess
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