Being on the streets, the work can be destroyed, taken or painted over at any minute. It is fragile and transient. Furthermore the juxtaposition of different pieces of art is random and unpredictable both in content and its location, which means that each day throws up a new and unique configuration of work within the streets, which you can only experience by travelling through the city.

Street Art Beginnings

The reasons for why East London has seen the flowering of street art are manifold. The post-industrial legacy of Shoreditch’s crumbling low-rise warehouses, not only provides an environment in which the artists and designers can do their work, but East London’s proximity to the City of London provides an economic source of support for the artists and designers; and finally Shoreditch with its building sites, old dilapidated warehouses provides a canvas upon which those artists can display their work and increase their commercial value.

Set against the characterless nature of the steely post-modernity of the city, the autumnal colours of the terraced warehouses in Shoreditch, no bigger than four to five stories high; offer a reminder of the legacy of a thriving fabrics and furniture industry which blossomed in the seventeenth Century. Both Shoreditch and Spitalfields have industrial pasts linked to the textiles industry, which fell into terminal decline by the twentieth century and was almost non-existent by the end of Wolrd War II. The decline was mirrored in the many three to four storey warehouses that were left to decay.

The general decline was arrested in the 1980s with the emergence of Shoreditch and Hoxton (Hoxton and Shoreditch are used interchandeably to refer to the same area) as a centre for new artists. It is difficult to say what attracted the artists to this area. But it was likely to be a combination of the spaces offered by the old warehouses, the cheap rents, and the location of Shoreditch and Spitalfields close to the City of London; where the money was to buy and fund artistic endeavour.

Not just that but post-war Shoreditch dominated by tens of post-war tower blocks, built amidst the ruins of the terraced housing that lay there before, which was bombed during World War II; had the rough edge which might inspire an artist. Shoreditch hums with the industry of newly arrived immigrants but also of the dangers of the poorer communities which inhabit these areas. Homeless people can be found sat underneath bridges on the main thoroughfares on Friday and Saturday nights; and Shoreditch is apparently home to one of the largest concentrations of striptease joints and a number of prostitutes. So, Shoreditch is a crumbling dirty, dodgy, polluted mess but it also has money; and these two factors provide an intoxicating mix for artists, who can take inspiration from their environment, but also rub shoulders with people who have the kind of money to buy their work.

By the early nineties Hoxton’s reputation as a centre for artists had become well established. As Jess Cartner-Morley puts it ‘Hoxton was invented in 1993. Before that, there was only 'Oxton, a scruffy no man's land of pie and mash and cheap market-stall clothing…’ At that time artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin were taking part in ‘A Fete Worth than Death’ an arts based event in Hoxton. Gradually these artists began to create their own gravity, attracting more and more of their own like. Clubs and bars began to emerge, as did a Hoxton style, ‘the Hoxton fin’ being a trademark haircut. Many designers and artists located around Shoreditch and Spitalfields. Shoreditch has also become a hive of studios for artists, vintage fashion shops, art students and musicians.

At the same time as an artistic community was forming fuelled by money from the City, London was subject to a revolution in street art. According to Ward, writing for Time Out, the street art scene began in the mid-1980s as part of London’s hip-hop scene. Graffiti artists, emulating what was going on Stateside, began to tag their names all over London. According to Ward many of those pioneers ‘went on to paint legal commissions and are at the heart of today’s scene’. That is to say, from the community of artists congregating in East London, a number were inspired by graffiti, and because the East London, with its countless dilapidated warehouses, and building sites, offered such a good canvas; they went on to use the East London as a canvas for their work.

Little seems to have been written about the individual journey’s particular street artists have taken to get to where they are, which help illuminate some of the issues talked about in this section. Cartrain said that Banksy was a huge influence for him commenting that, "I've sent him a few emails showing him my work and he sent me a signed piece of his work in the post."

What created the East London street art scene may also kill it

The East London urban art scene is unlikely to last forever, being the symptom of a delicate juxtaposition of industrial decline and economic forces.

The irony is that the same factors which are responsible for the creation of the East London art scene are likely to destroy it.

Politicians from all parties, spiritual leaders for global capital, tell us of the unstoppable forces of globalisation. They say if Britain is to continue to dip its paw into the cream of the world’s wealth it needs to become a post-industrial service economy; suggesting a rosy future of millions of Asians slaving away co-ordinated by keyboard tapping British suits, feet on desk, leant back on high backed leather chairs, secretary blowing them off.

Art, which is feeble and dependent upon the financial growth of an economy for its survival, will have to shape itself around the needs and demands of capital.

The financial district of the City of London, lying to the south of Shoreditch, has been successfully promoted as a global financial centre, and its mighty power is slowly expanding its way northwards. Plans are afoot for the glass foot soldiers of mammon, fuelled by speculative property investment, to gradually advance northwards, replacing old warehouses with a caravan of Starbucks and Japanese sushi places and a concomitant reduction in dead spaces to portray the art, increased security to capture and ward off street artists, increased property prices and the eventual eviction of the artistic community. Spitalfields has already had big corporate sized chunks taken out of it, with one half of the old Spitalfields Market being sacrificed for corporate interests in the last five years.

So then the very same financial forces, and post-industrial legacy, which have worked to create this micro-environment for street art to thrive, are the same forces which will in time eventually destroy it. Maybe the community will move northwards, maybe it will dissipate, but until that moment lets just enjoy what the community puts out there, for its own financial interests, for their own ego and also, just maybe, for the benefit of the people.

The Village Underground

The most visible manifestation of the imagination inherent within the Shoreditch artistic community are four underground carriages which sit on top of an old warehouse. The carriages, which look like they have been frozen in time, about to speed off into the sky taking their commuters towards the City, were put their by Village Underground, a social enterprise project set up to provide cheap studio space for young people aiding them to set up creative business, organisations and practices. The carriages are used by designers, record labels, photographers and script writers whilst the warehouse is used for conferences, launches, parties and other events. The walls of the warehouse and the carriages are frequently given makeovers with various murals, graffiti and images.

According to Tom, writing on his own website, ‘The carriages are part of a much larger project to create a series of spaces in cities around the world to allow an international exchange of creativity and ideas… the essence of the project is that Village Underground will be a catalyst for new creativity.’

The walls of the warehouse and the carriages are frequently given makeovers with various murals, graffiti and images.

Obey Giant

The Obey Giant is a poster campaign, which has made a significant contribution to the street art scene. The work consists of a bringing together of different styles, usually political protest icons superimposed on psychedelic backgrounds. The work is more often than not posted way above eye level, giving a sense that you are looking at the manifestation of power and the representation of ideology. The problem is, the images on offer, often with obscure origins, and furthermore extricated from those origins, do not readily point to any particular ideology, just ‘ideology’. One of the first posters I noticed, off Old Street, had the face of some beautiful looking Middle-Eastern looking women, wrapped in a headscarf, with two guns, with flowers coming out of them. I was thinking is this about women's oppression, Islamic revolution, a fashion house, or was it one of those sophisticated advertising campaigns when they sell you an icon, bringing the brand in later.

According to Obey Giant the aim of their ‘campaigns’ are to ‘stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail’.

This would be fine if Obey Giant didn’t produce merchandise, which have led others to believe that the campaign is just a sophisticated attempt to commodify ‘counterculture cool’. Once the consumer has fallen in love with what seems ‘counterculture’, has invested in time in cracking the secret, the next step is naturally to want to buy into this new exclusive intellectual movement, and get a t-shirt. I nearly did, but a sense of buying into nothing and fakeness produced a sickening effect inside of me that stopped me. Obey Giant seems to engage with an agenda of social justice, of helping the suppressed in some way, but when you look deeper into it, all you can find is offers on t-shirts, posters and stickers.

Reflecting on my own reactions, I think there is something interesting to about how it is ‘cool’ to be ‘counter-culture’ without specifying what kind of culture you wish to replace the existing one with. That is to say, if the posters had very obviously been about communism, feminism or the environment, would I have wanted to buy into it so much. No. Furthermore it makes me think how hedonistic non-directive ‘counter-culture’ a la ‘James Dean’, a la ‘if we smoke weed and listen to dub that makes us spiritually different’ a la ‘fuck the police Camden market t-shirt mentality’ actually is. By soaking up peoples’ frustrations, and especially where soaking up frustrations means soaking up their cash, it functions as a form of conservatism through consumerism. And for Obey Giant, as Mark Vallen has observed, "Perhaps the most important falsehood concerning Fairey’s [Fairey is the founding father of Obey Giant] behavior is that it is motivated by some grand theory of aesthetics or weighty political philosophy - but I’m afraid the only scheme at work is the one intended to make Fairey wealthy and famous …it’s also not impossible to view Fairey’s work as right-wing in essence, since it largely ransacks leftist history and imagery while the artist laughs all the way to the bank."

Josh McPhee claims that Obey Giant, which reproduces and recontextualises images, produced for protest movements over the years, is copywriting their material. He goes on to say, "Posters and graphics made in the heat of political struggles are often made by anonymous individuals or groups that want to keep the images in the public domain for use in further struggle. It is unfortunate that Fairey is attempting to personally capitalize on the generosity of others and privatize and enclose the visual commons (as seen by the prominent copyright symbols on his website and products)." Vallen however points out that Obey Giant has also donated a poster ot the "Witness Against Torture" campaign.

I don’t know quite how Shepherd Fairey, fonder of the Obey Giant campaign, and American, has such a consistent presence in London. Nevertheless, his presence is one of many examples of how the Street Art scene in the major cities of the world, thanks to cheap travel, has become global in its reach. The art you see on the walls of London is not necessarily always produced by home grown London artists.

T Magic

T.Magic, a London artist, runs the ‘Art is my Hustle’ business and is responsible for the colourful advertisement found on the streets of Shoreditch in summer 2007. T.Magic is stretching the boundaries of street art here to plain advertising. Its interesting in that, on finding this incredibly colourful combination of letters presented in such a pretty way on the street I couldn’t help but think how ‘nice’ it looked. And yet it is nothing more than illegally extending the world of advertising, from the billboard on to the pavement. Charlie Gower has asked "You gotta wonder if the various councils don't look at the road, type the name into Google and then go and fine them?! I mean this is still graffiti and that's still illegal right?"

On one website I saw a classic example of how street artists, commercial at heart, are trying to fool people that by consuming the artistic products of the artists, they are in some ways buying into some counter-revolutionary attempt to protect the poor and forgotten. The website said of T.Magic ‘Defending his dreams through an aerosol can, the young Artistocrat painted pictures of a forgotten community fighting for the right to be heard in a world of limited space’. Yeh?

It seems that a lot of graffiti artists and street artists grow up, like many other young people, really pissed off that the whole world isn’t licking their arse, and so, unlike many other law abiding young people, decide to take matters into their own hands, and put their work all over the place. I’m not entering a moralistic argument about the rights and wrongs of that right now. All I would say is that the artists are completely fooling themselves if they think that by spraying their name on a wall, they are in some sense fighting for a forgotten community. No they are not. They are fighting for themselves – their own survival – and really mirroring what all the other corporations who take up the space the artists would like for themselves. That is to say, most street artists are delivered hot from the fresh warm lips of Margaret Thatcher, whilst trying to give the impression that they are in some sense the next Che Guevara.

Faile

Faile are three bloked who do a lot of stencil graffiti utilising manga and 1950s cinematic imagery.

The name Faile was an anagram of Alife – which was the collective’s original name. The collective elected for Faile after a slight depression having experienced one night in a police cell for fly-posting. According to the collective, ‘Faile was about this growth process. About taking your fears and your challenges, your grief and misfortune, and creating something from that. Taking your failures and proceeding forward, becoming stronger from what you have learned.’

The fact that spending a night in a police cell made such an emotional impact on the collective that they decided to change their name, gives you an indication of the well heeled and comfortable backgrounds that they must have come from. Its not as if they had to do life or were raped. Then I could understand.

The distinguishing feature of Faile’s work is the way they make their stencils weathered, aged and decayed when they are actually new. This of course does not make them entirely unique as the art of faking age lies at the heart of the forger industry, and is something jeans manufacturers have been trying to perfect over the last fifteen years. When you see the image you imagine a history to it, a longevity, which it doesn’t in fact have. It is very much about painting time, or painting to cheat time. The question must then be asked, ‘how can time represent itself to us if we now have learned to forge its signature?’ or must it?

K-Guy

K-Guy has made a very distinctive mark by creating images of fag packets, using the government health warning format, to put across anti-establishment anti-egoist messages. The idea itself is not terribly innovative, but the artwork is quite striking, and amusing at times. It should be noted that a recent shop front exhibition at Diesel utilised the same technique of borrowing from government warning fonts and style on cigarette packets; and giving the messages an ironic twist.

Bortusk Leer

Bortusk Leers must have spent most of January, February and March 2008, making pictures of monsters and then putting them up around Shoreditch and Spitalfields. The monsters are incredibly colourful and quite comical, given that they are seldom scary, but just playful and ridiculous.

Bortusk Leer also goes by the name of Thinkfly, which is attached to paintings of brightly coloured pigeons, painted onto bits of paper, which are then pasted on the wall, in much the same way that the monsters are. The pigeons are often put in the most obscure of places, like at the foot of walls on the back of the warehouses.

Invader Artist

Invader is a French artist who composes space invader shaped mosaics around London and other metropolitan centres in the world. Although I have seen many examples of his work that do stand out, many of the smaller pieces are tucked away into London’s urban environment, and anyone who is not sensitised to them, might easily think that they might have been a commissioned piece of work.

In fact one should not always assume that the mosaics were done by Invader, because by his own admission, although he works alone, and although he has put work in five continents, he has received photographs of invaders in places which he has never been. In other words, like the myth of Osama Bin Laden who has created a spirit and strength for adherents of Islamofascism, so has Invader’s work inspired an army of invaders. The movement is now out of his hands!

I was particularly happy to see a space invader in Burlington Gardens, opposite Abercrombie and Fitch, and within spitting distance of the Royal Academy for the Arts. It’s rare that street artists move outside of the comfort zone of Shoreditch.

Both Invader Artist and Obey Giant are examples of how this type of artwork is not unique to London, and that rather how the street art is itself a phenomenon of the reduction of time and space between major cities, brought about by cheap air travel, the movement of the wealthy.

Invader has taken to making pieces of art with Rubik’s cubes, and one of his latest pieces is a big Rubik’s Cube reconstruction of ‘The Scream’, which he said in a recent video he plans to put in the street.

Says Invader, ‘Nothing is too much for the street. Because if you make a piece like this and you sell it to a collector, maybe his friends, his family and a few people are going to see it. I mean maybe ten, twenty, lets say fifty people. But if you put that in the street, in a good street, its fifty people every five minutes who are going to see your work, and that’s much more interesting, much more exciting.’

Eine

Ben Eine is responsible for some of the large graffiti style murals seen in and around Shoreditch, and also specialises in producing huge letters on shop fronts.

Eine’s shutter pieces started after he had gone out one night intending to write his name on a shop’s shutters. He opted not to put all the letters on one shutter, instead preferring to paint one letter a night on a row of four shutters. He went on to say, ‘But when I actually looked at the photos of it I thought it looked quite good and probably raised more questions because I hadn't tagged it either, so I thought if I was actually just to write all the letters of the alphabet on shop shutters but not put my name on it people would think, "What's going on here?" and assume it meant something and try to follow it. But it doesn't, it's just the letters of the alphabet.’ (see Graham-Ward, 2007; and Gavin and Ward, 2008).

Interestingly the first six letters that Eine put on shutters he didn’t ask the shop owners for. However he said, ‘Once I'd done about six and had photographs of them, then I could approach the shop owners and say, "I'm an artist, this is what I'm doing, can I do yours?" Invariably they say yes and invariably they say, "My shop's called Ruby Handbags, can you paint an R and H'?" Towards the end I was desperate and I think the last letter was an 'O'.’

My personal experience of Eine started in the summer of 2007 when I started working in the City and noticed that someone was painting the metal shutters of shop fronts all over Shoreditch and Spitalfields. Having a keen eye for my environment, I noticed that some posters had been made up each one displaying a photograph of a newly decorated shop fronts. Still later towards autumn I saw a row of posters had been displayed on Bethnal Green Road spelling - 'Alphabeat'. I knew something was up but I couldn't get to the bottom of this Alphabetti Mystery - until 14th February 2008 - when I saw a small poster which had photographs of the posters laid out in a row - spelling Alphabeat with a link to a website, promoting - Alphabeat are a Danish pop band from Silkeborg. What came first I would like to know, the idea for the artwork, or the commission to launch a marketing campaign for Alphabeat.

Cartrain

Cartrain’s work seems to ooze an old style socialist disgust for modern living and the contrast between poverty and greed. Much of his work is pop art, utilizing newspaper and magazine cuttings, often framed in cardboard. He also does stencils. He has been criticised for being naïve and a little tiresome and meaningless, but he is very young and I think he has potential. Whereas most of the street artists seem lost in the floating bubble like world of their own aesthetics, rather like Vince Noir, Cartain is one of a very few artists who is not completely anaesthetised to political and social events.

Although Cartrain is present in East London he seems also to be widely known in Walthamstow, a dump of an area in the north east of London.

Old style ‘socialists’ like Billy Bragg and Diane Abbott MP; are famed for the money they have made from their socialist pretensions. People ‘buy into’ the protest, the message, the image and identity, but the irony is that ‘buying into’ protest, does very little other than fill the pockets of those who are intelligent enough to manufacture the message, giving them the capital they need to take advantage of the capitalistic system, to buy themselves two houses or send their children to private schools. Cartrain’s art mirrors this. Stevens (2007) commented, ‘Yet, Cartrain’s pieces, which feature on most play areas in E11, are seemingly devoid of any actual statement – Bush, Blair, some fighter planes, yes, but how does this provide any form of artistic statement?’

According to Trendall (2007) Cartrain’s work has appeared on walls opposite the House of Parliament.

D*face

D*face, who has created a series of prints on banknotes; and even done a sculpture at the Arctic Circle, is also responsible for a sculpture at the Truman Brewery near to Brick Lane, which consists of, ‘Drone Dog’ his signature character on top of a crumpled car near to his street-art gallery Stolen Space (Gavin and Ward, 2008).

Banksy

Banksy is the street artist par excellence. London’s street art scene is vibrant and diverse. There is some good, cure, kitschy stuff out there, but in terms of creativity and imagination Banksy leads by a city mile. His stuff is invariably shocking, funny, thought provoking and challenging.

Banksy considers himself to be a graffiti artist, which is what he grew up doing in the Bristol area in the late eighties. According to Hattenstone (2003) Banksy, who was expelled from his school, and who spent some time in prison for petty crimes, started graffiti at the age of 14, quickly switching over to stencils, which he uses today, because he didn’t find he had a particular talent for the former. His work today involves a mixture of graffiti and stencils although he has shown a capacity for using a multitude of materials.

Key works in London have included:

• In London Zoo he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted "We're bored of fish" in six-foot-high letters.
• In 2004 he placed a dead rat in a glass-fronted box, and stuck the box on a wall of the Natural History Museum.
• ‘A designated riot area’ at the bottom of Nelson’s Column.
• He placed a painting called Early Man Goes to Market, with a human figure hunting wildlife while pushing a shopping trolley, in the British Museum.

His work seems to be driven by an insatiable desire to go on producing. In an interview with Shepherd Fairey he said, ‘Anything that stands in the way of achieving that piece is the enemy, whether it’s your mum, the cops, someone telling you that you sold out, or someone saying, "Let’s just stay in tonight and get pizza." Banksy gives the impression of being a person in the mould of Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher or Lance Armstrong. Someone with undoubted talent and yet a true workaholic dedicated to his chosen profession.

Its also driven by the buzz of ‘getting away with it’. He said to Hattenstone, ‘The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting as it is when you go out and you paint something big where you shouldn't do. The feeling you get when you sit home on the sofa at the end of that, having a fag and thinking there's no way they're going to rumble me, it's amazing... better than sex, better than drugs, the buzz.’

Whilst Banksy has preferred to remain anonymous he does provide a website and does the occasional interview putting his work in context (see the Fairey interview).

Banksy’s anonymity is very important to him. Simon Hattenstone, who interviewed Banksy in 2003, said it was because graffiti was illegal, which makes Banksy a criminal. Banksy has not spoken directly on why he wishes to maintain his anonymity. It is clear that Banksy despises the notion of fame. The irony of course is that ‘Banksy’ the brand is far from being anonymous, given that the artist uses it on most if not all of his work. In using this brand name Banksy helps fulfil the need, which fuels a lot of graffiti artists, of wanting to be recognised, the need of ego.

Banksy is not against using his work to ‘pay the bills’ as he puts it. He has for example designed the cover of a Blur album, although he has pledged never to do a commercial job again, as a means of protecting his anonymity. Nevertheless he continues to produce limited edition pieces, which sell in galleries usually for prices, which give him a bit of spending money after he has paid the bills. Banksy has said, ‘If it’s something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn’t turn it to shit just because it’s commercial’ (Fairey, 2008). Banksy has over time passed from urban street artist into international artistic superstar, albeit an anonymous one.

Banksy has a definite concern for the oppressed in society. He often does small stencils of despised rats and ridiculous monkeys with signs saying things to the effect of ‘laugh now but one day we’ll be in charge’. Whilst some seem to read into this that Banksy is trying to ferment a revolutionary zeal in the dispossessed, such that one day they will rise up and slit the throats of the powers that be, so far his concern seems no more and no less than just a genuine human concern for the oppressed. Some of what seems to fuel his work is not so much his hatred of the system but at being at the bottom of it. He said to Hattenstone (2003) ‘Yeah, it's all about retribution really… Just doing a tag is about retribution. If you don't own a train company then you go and paint on one instead. It all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something - that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it’

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian has criticised Banksy for his depictions of a monkey wearing a sandwich board with 'lying to the police is never wrong' written on it. Certainly such a black and white statement seems out of kilter with more balanced assessments that Banksy has made. Brooker challenges Banksy asking whether Ian Huntley would have been right to have lied to the police?

Brooker has also criticized Banksy for the seemingly meaninglessness of some of this images. Brooker says, ‘Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her. Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff.’ Brooker has seemingly oversimplified Banksy’s message, if indeed Banksy has one, to fuel his own criticisms. It is easy to see that for many the Vietnam painting tells us that the United States likes to represent itself with happy smiling characters, that hide the effects of its nefarious activities responsible for the real life faces of distress seen on the young girl. Something that we should be constantly reminded of. But then that’s a matter of politics not of meaninglessness.

Banksy’s ingenuity comes through in his philosophy on progression, ‘I’m always trying to move on’ he says. In the interview he gave with Shepherd Fairey he explained that he has started reinvesting his money in to new more ambitious projects which have involved putting scaffolding put up against buildings, covering the scaffolding with plastic sheeting and then using the cover of the sheets to do his paintings unnoticed.

Banksy has balls. Outside of London he has painted images in Disney Land; and on the Israeli wall surrounding Palestine. How far is he willing to push it? What about trying something at the headquarters of the BNP, or on army barracks, or at a brothel or strip club employing sex slaves, or playing around with corporate advertising a la Adbusters?

The Ants Nest: Blackall Street

It was only in January 2008 that I happened upon Blackall Street, which I consider to be the ants’ nest of the street art scene in Shoreditch. The street, a dog shit infested, quiet lane with little traffic, runs behind the back of two rows of terraced warehouses. Walking up and down Blackall Street, one cannot but be amazed at the concentration and variety of work on offer, and start imagining what it must be like there at two o’clock at night. Do all the designers come out, with their torches, and headlamps, spraycans, and prepared stencils and posters, and get to work? Do they bring thermos flasks, and chat to each other, much like a couple of bricklayers might?

They probably do. In an interview given by Aiko of the Faile collective, the artist revealed, ‘We still enjoy going out for painting with local artists where we visit at midnight.’ (Shift, 2004).

The Aesthetic Beauty of Combinations of Colour

The old brick environments of Shoreditch and Spitalfields are a great canvas for much of the art work discussed so far. Beyond the individual pieces of art themselves, there are also the displays which result from a combination of scrawls, tags and pieces of art. It often seems that the various colours of the scrawls and tags, and their proportion, have been deliberately chosen to complement the surroundings.

Aiko, a member of the Faile collective, captured this aspect of street art well when he said, ‘What’s interesting is the invisible communication between artists which isn’t made up of words. A community is created naturally as artists overlap tags, posters or stickers one after another.’

The mess of art and tags and graffiti, and self-celebratory advertising has created a heady intoxicating mix, attracting people like bees round a pot of honey. The existence of this artwork challenges conventional rules, creates a warped reality, in which it become acceptable to post obscure posters and images onto lampposts, street signs etc. Art galleries like ‘The Future Can Wait’ have posted fliers on the walls. ‘The Future Can Wait’ is a gallery on Brick Lane.

‘Send Me Your Fears’ has also fly posted various bits of Shoreditch. Send Me Your Fears is a fascinating project. The website reads, ‘we all have hopes and fears. They're especially polarized in this day and age, a time of political rhetoric, consumerism, mass communication, and so on. We want to know if yours are the same as ours, what everyone's hopes and fears say about what we're all thinking about, worrying about and wishing for.’

Working as a Collective

Patrick Miller, interviewed in Swindle magazine said, ‘Working as a collaborative force pushes you in a lot of ways. You have the opportunity to take things further than you would individually because you have someone there, sharing the same vision, pushing you and the work forward. You have to be open to it, though. I think that the minute you let ego in, you start to close doors in that process. You can’t get too attached. There are times you may really see something and think it works and fight for it—but then realize, after letting go that accepting another path, that was the better option. Those are special moments. You really learn to trust each other and push the work forward.’

Location, Location, Location and Motivation, Motivation, Motivation

Many artists seem to limit their work to Shoreditch and Spitalfields. I really do think they should try work outside of this safe haven, where this kind of work is almost legitimate. Some artists have been more adventurous. Trendall (2007) for example has reported that ‘Banners carrying [Cartrain’s] distinctive emblem have been seen hanging from bridges and his stencils have been sprayed on walls opposite the Houses of Parliament. It all depends upon what your motivations are I suppose. The reasons for why artists might choose to put their work on the street are varied.

For some it is part of a philosophy that art should be for the people, free and accessible. The street represents a democratisation of the consumption of art, restrained from the interests of gallery owners and the social mores of the time. For example Invader, a French artist, who puts up tiny tiled mosaics of space invaders in cities around the world says, ‘Nothing is too much for the street. Because if you make a piece like this and you sell it to a collector, maybe his friends, his family and a few people are going to see it. I mean maybe ten, twenty, lets say fifty people. But if you put that in the street, in a good street, its fifty people every five minutes who are going to see your work, and that’s much more interesting, much more exciting.’

However there are other more selfish reasons at hand. May artists put their work on the street out of a selfish desire to promote their own ego. Whilst the might always subscribe to the artistic process being a good in itself, he or she is always likely to succumb to the desire to be loved, desire and wanted. There is no better way of doing this than of making yourself known on the streets around you. For example Cartrain’s centre was Walthamstow, but he moved on to Shoreditch and Brick Lane, claiming that no-one was taking any notice of his work in Walthamstow. Its an interesting fact that. Its perhaps not that people in Walthamstow were not noticing – I expect they were, its that they didn’t have a community of artists there who were going to talk about it – and in whose glory Cartrain could bask. There’s something about the heat, energy and enthusiasm which is caused by artists talking about each others work, which creates a hyperinflated enthusiasm, which is based on a battle of egos, which outsiders, consumers of the art then join in on.

A third reason why artists but their art in the street, as had already been established, is to advertise their wares. That is they are illegally extending the commercial colonisation of public space from the billboard and the phone booth to the pavement and wall. In many cases artists put their work on the street as part of a commercial strategy to make a name, which they can use to create merchandising operations via the internet, and through galleries once their name is made.

Besides those artists who deliberately use their art as a form of advertising there are others, who nevertheless are benefiting financially from the hyperinflated interest that surrounds street art today. Ward pointed that urban street art is making such a wave now that Bonhams held the capital’s first auction of street art in January 2008.

The street art scene has also begun to attract a second kind of animal – the coveter – who some might call robbers – whose mission it is to rip pieces of street art off the street if possible – so that they can later sell it. That is to say, the ‘interest’ promoted through fashionable circles and the internet, has increased the relative value of the street art, such that some, seeing social and/or financial capital to owning some of this street art have started trying to take it home with them. Invader for example put out a plea to whoever was ripping his mosaics down from the streets of Los Angeles to ‘stop the slaughter!’ Ossian Ward writing about Banksy said, ‘Banksy’s signature stencils of kissing coppers, flower-chucking terrorists and mischievous rats found on doorways and side streets have become so sought-after that they are being chipped out of walls and sold for ludicrous sums, exactly mirroring the early ’80s phenomenon of Brooklyn-born graffiti kid SAMO (better known as troubled painter Jean-Michel Basquiat).’

Most of the artists have international reaches. Eine for example has put letters on shutters in Paris, Stockholm, Brussels and Norway (Graham-Ward, 2007).

They also fund their work through art related jobs. Eine is a screen printer (Graham-Ward, 2007).

Furthermore there is evidence that in many cases, all the artists are doing, is simply extending the commercial message, albeit implicitly, and not with flashing neon lights, to buy their art.

While they don’t use their posters to scream ‘buy me’ many of them have their own online shops and do exhibitions to sell their works. According to Charlie Gower, ‘In effect the street work is there to act as advertising for their main work, for sale in galleries. These guys, the likes of Fairey, Banksy and Invader are very much brands now, by their own creation’. In many ways then, this street art scene is consumerism on the blind side, Obey Giant being the best example. So let’s not over romanticise this street art scene, and pretend that it is purely about art for art’s sake.

Neither is the street art scene about the working classes or some oppressed group getting streetwise and looking for a way to make life better for everyone. Whilst much of the work is iconoclastic and challenging, this open air art gallery is a playground for middle class adults. A lot of it is about ego. For example street artist and gallery owner Pure Evil says: ‘Seeing what everyone else is doing that makes you want to step up your act. We’re not doing it to be accepted by… our peers.’ Faile for example have worked on the design of a Duran Duran album (Shift, 2008). And if it’s not about ego it about making money. Cartrain was quoted by Rising East 7 as saying, "I don't do any more work in Leytonstone because no one pays any attention. I have since moved into Brick Lane and Hackney, where there have been a lot of websites talking about me."

Revolution or Ego and Bank Account?

One of the most invigorating aspects of street art, one which even the most hard line of conservatives would in a moment of Kierkegaardian weakness admit to themselves, is the challenge it presents to the colonisation of public space by consumer driven messages. Street art is a form of talking to each other in a way that doesn’t demand that we buy. It would be wonderful to think that the artists who ply their work on the streets might act as an inspiration, so that the mindless scrawl that you might find in places like Tottenham, will one day be replaced by urban masterpieces. But that would be to ignore the political economy which underpins this work. The guys who produce this stuff are educated, linked in, global, skilled up artists. Their work might be street, and not all of them might be loaded, but they are part of the scene.

Furthermore whilst they don’t use their posters to scream ‘buy me’ many of them have their own online shops and do exhibitions to sell their works. According to Charlie Gower, ‘In effect the street work is there to act as advertising for their main work, for sale in galleries. These guys, the likes of Fairey, Banksy and Invader are very much brands now, by their own creation. This is an intriguing scenario. This is by no means a bad thing. These hungry guys can do whatever they choose to get to where they want to be. They have all been doing this on the downlow for years and years and this seems to be their time, right now, so they should be milking it. It's simply very intriguing to see the whole grass roots process roll out, and the creation of brands without using traditional marketing.’ In many ways then, this street art scene is consumerism on the blind side, Obey Giant being the best example The artwork is often the product of local artists but is also the product of a global jet set elite who spend their time invading the major cities of the world, displaying their art on walls and local galleries and then leaving for their next destination.

So let’s not over romanticise this street art scene, and pretend that it is purely about art for art’s sake. Neither is the street art scene about the working classes or some oppressed group getting streetwise and looking for a way to make life better for everyone. One needs to bear in mind the educational and class differences of those who are producing pieces of artwork in the streets of Shoreditch, and the uneducated urban roughnecks from Brixton, Tottenham and other places, who are still spraying ugly indecipherable signatures on buildings. Whilst much of the work in East London is iconoclastic and challenging, this open air art gallery is a playground for middle class adults. A lot of it is about ego and if it’s not about ego it about making money.

Is Street Art Acceptable in Our Society?

The local authorities and City naturally claim that street art is illegal and in need of removal. But maybe in the case of the Shoreditch street art there’s a difference between what they ‘say’ and what they feel. In reality, most of the street art remains in place for as long as it takes for the rain to dissolve it, for another artist to displace it, or for some envious art collector to rip it off the wall. However there have been cases where street art has been destroyed. For example, in April 2007, Transport for London painted over Banksy's iconic image of a scene from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, with Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas.

In general, most artists use walls, which are in a bad state, i.e. could be improved by a bit of art. Occasionally you might see a small stencil in the City. Obey Giant, asks people using its materials to ‘use common sense and consideration when applying stickers or other propaganda materials’ commenting ‘there are extreme individuals who wish to label all street artist as vandals and push for harsher and harsher penalties and prosecution’. But then again where you put your art depends upon your motive. Obey Giant are under the delusion that they are parading art when what they are in fact doing is parading advertising. If the purpose of street art is to challenge and to say the uncomfortable, then maybe it needs to be in places that give it a bad name.

Eine seems to operate some moral code in his work too: ‘Interestingly the first six letters that Eine put on shutters he didn’t ask the shop owners for. However he said, ‘Once I'd done about six and had photographs of them, then I could approach the shop owners and say, "I'm an artist, this is what I'm doing, can I do yours?" Invariably they say yes and invariably they say, "My shop's called Ruby Handbags, can you paint an R and H'?" Towards the end I was desperate and I think the last letter was an 'O'.’ Although not much of a moral code, because he also said, ‘It was because when a shop said I could paint anything I wanted thought, "Right, you're having the Q because no one's going to have that" or "You're having the W" and so eliminated the awkward letters. I painted one shutter and the owner of the shop came out and asked me to paint his. It was called Coco Shoes so he wanted me to paint a 'C' but I'd already done three Cs so I just said that was fine and then when he'd gone home I painted an O and I've never been back.’ (Graham-Brown, 2007).

On ethics Cartrain has said, "I have a rule that I won't write on people's property. Tagging can be very territorial, it's about getting your name around more than anyone else. If you go over someone or they don't like your style, they will put a line through your work." (Trendall, 2007).

Art as Art or as Advertising

One of the most invigorating aspects of street art, one which even the most hard line of conservatives would in a moment of Kierkegaardian weakness admit to themselves, is the challenge it presents to the colonisation of public space by consumer driven messages. Street art is a form of talking to each other in a way that doesn’t demand that we buy.

It would be wonderful to think that the artists who ply their work on the streets might act as an inspiration, so that the mindless scrawl that you might find in places like Tottenham, will one day be replaced by urban masterpieces. Judging from the information that is available on Cartrain, it would seem that he has emerged as a local lad in Walthamstow, who has been influenced by the scene, and starting in his local area has taken his messages to the street. Certainly in the last year he has seemed more intent on putting his messages out there rather than making money from it. He says, ‘People that think graffiti is a nuisance should open their eyes. Graffiti doesn't tell people to buy crap they don't want, unlike advertising. I consider my work artistic and creative, not mindless rubbish designed to annoy people.’ (Trendall, 2007).

But to think that street art is in some sense a counter-revolutionary movement that will benefit the poor and oppressed is to ignore the political economy which underpins this work. The guys who produce this stuff are for the most part art college educated, linked in, global, skilled up artists. K-Guy for example, has a graphics degree (Souledoutstudios, 2008). Furthermore some of them whilst under the delusion that they are putting art on the streets, and for countercultural or philosophical purposes, are at the end of the day putting pretty non-aggressive advertising out there instead Their work might be street, and not all of them might be loaded, but they are part of the scene. Cedar Lewisohn, author of ‘Street Art’ has commented, ‘When you start seeing street art in your neighbourhood you know it’s on the up’ (Gavin and Ward, 2008).

So maybe from a purist point of view street art should only be considered such if it is the original piece of work that is posted on the street. Anything else is advertising. However under this criteria, a large number of artists listed on this site would not be mentioned.

View the Ravish London Street Art Gallery.

Links

• Shoreditch on wikipedia.
• Invader on wikipedia
• Eric Ailcane website.
• Blu
• Shoreditch Art Walk, recommended 2006.
• The Real Shoreditch Blog
• 101ers net
• Art is My Hustle
• Pure Evil Clothing
• Eine.
• The Krah on Myspace
• Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey: A critique by artist Mark Vallen.
• A Response to OBEY Plagiarist; Posted December 14, 2007 by jmacphee in In the News
• Urban Invasion Detected: A Reality Game by Invader
• Stop the Slaughter of the Invader Invasion, September 2005, Los Angeles.Q773
• Space Invader Studio Visit on YouTube.
• Blackall Street, January 2008.
• Shoreditch on wikipedia.
• Invader on wikipedia
• Eric Ailcane website.
• Blu
• Shoreditch Art Walk, recommended 2006.
• The Real Shoreditch Blog
• 101ers net
• Art is My Hustle
• Pure Evil Clothing
• Eine.
• The Krah on Myspace
• Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey: A critique by artist Mark Vallen.
• A Response to OBEY Plagiarist; Posted December 14, 2007 by jmacphee in In the News
• Urban Invasion Detected: A Reality Game by Invader
• Stop the Slaughter of the Invader Invasion, September 2005, Los Angeles.Q773
• Space Invader Studio Visit on YouTube.
• Blackall Street, January 2008.
• Ward, O. (2008) How graffiti became art, Time Out.
• Gavin, F. and Ward, O. (2008) London’s new street artists, Time Out, January 2008.
• Faile artist collective on wikipedia.
• Faile on the choosing of their name, September 2005.
• Faile, Shift, 2004.
• Fairey, S. and Keehn, A., Faile, Swindle Magazine, Issue 12.
• Faile net
• Graham-Brown, T. (2007) ‘Eine’ and the letters he paints on east London shop shutters, I Shot the Deputy, October 2007.
• The Future Can Wait gallery.
• Hopes and Fears.
• K-guy website
• Souled Out Studios artists, 2008.
• Stevens, A. (2007) Creativity and Graffiti; Cartrain: tagged on to Bansky? Rising East September 2007.
• Trendall, S. (2007) Graffiti artist, 15, follows in Banksy's footsteps, This is Local London.
• Cartrain in action on youtube.
• Hoxton: where have all the cool people gone?
• Banksy website
• I am Banksy - Esquire magazine
• Peacock, F. (2007) Why my Banksy piece is going under the hammer, The Guardian.
• Banksy shop.
• Valley, P. (2006) Banksy: the joker, The Independent.
• Fairey, S. (2008) Interview with Banksy, Swindle.
• Brooker, C. (2006) Supposing… Subversive genius Banksy is actually rubbish, The Guardian, September 2006
• Hattenstone, S. (2003) Something to Spray? The Guardian.