I dislike street painting and tagging. Some people think the original painting is art; the guy doing the tagging thinks his is art. Both are entitled to their opinion, as am I. I think any street painting is an eyesore. Forest Hill is blighted by tacky paintings, especially the one by the Sylvaner Post. Makes the place look like a ghetto.
@InTheNightGarden the key differences being:
- “Love Them, Tell Them” was commissioned and had permission from the land owner (as do all festival street art pieces).
- The tag is wilful destruction of someone else’s art.
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Hopefully the artist will have used graffiti protective lacquer as if so, it should be relatively easy to remove the “tag”.
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I am probably nitpicking - but I couldn’t get past the referral to tagging as “work”. Perhaps replacing the two middle letters of that word with “an” would be more accurate.
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Have you a link to this thread?
It may not work for those who aren’t FB members, and who aren’t members of the “I love SE4” group
Thanks. Beyond the rightful indignation on this matter, there is a really interesting conversation developing there on the transience of street art and the clash between commissioned works versus more traditionally unsanctioned (guerrilla) works. As well as some good commentary on the linkages between tagging and street art today.
I’ve asked to join the group.
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The tag looks s**t. Had it looked better then maybe there’d be less uproar. I’ll hold the rest of my opinion as I can’t be bothered to have anyone jumping down my throat at the moment. I thought this post summed it all up nicely though.
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I could not have said it better.
I’m sure there are plenty of examples where thoughtfully commissioned street art and guerrilla graffiti complement each other brilliantly - and that’s great. But in this case, I really can’t see it.
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I’ll return the compliment. I’ve always thought you’d be a great contributor to Guido Fawkes.
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Tagging is attention seeking behaviour by adolescents (even if they are in their 20s or older) and is about territory marking and display. It’s got nothing to do with art or making any sort of statement other than ‘I am here!! Look at me!!
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Ridiculous. Are you saying I can write a pseudonym over the same tag in Comic Sans font and it’s just as credible amongst the graff community? Style is everything.
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I think it is a real shame this has been vandalised. I agree it is attention seeking & the perpetrators if they could be caught, should be made to clean it off. I bet they don’t even live round here!
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Would any artist want to speak out against these selfish, destructive, vain, talentless, territorial, adolescent taggers? I doubt it.
Artists risk getting all their work defaced if they upset taggers
That comment gave me a chuckle. I have this vision now of a group of well organised,. SE23.life savvy yet disaffected and destructive be-hooded yoofs huddled around their iPhone Xs at St. David’s coffee house reading the latest thoughts on this topic and planning their revenge.
At least the Brockley Street Art Festival co-organiser Phillipa Ellis hasn’t had a problem expressing her thoughts on this matter on the Facebook page. Though as more ‘curator’ than artist perhaps she doesn’t quite fear the same level of retribution. That and I’m led to understand kids don’t use Facebook anymore.
ETA. I gather this piece was commissioned through said Brockley Street Art Festival.
By the way the artist Nomeski aka Naomi Edmondsen has a really good site with a separate one for the project Survival Techniques which includes this piece in HOP. Lots of work form this project can be bought as posters from that site.
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I’d be interested to hear too. If their style is rooted in grafitti, a disruptive art form, then they may have some more nuanced views on the evolution of ‘vandalism’ into art.
I’m not condoning the tag as I think its disrespectful to the artist (personally). But the tag and the mural are, to me, two ends of the discipline’s spectrum and there’s definitly an interesting conversation around it.
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I too think there is an interesting conversation to be had with the taggers as to why they chose this specific site and image to tag over. It’s clearly a controversial thing to do and the fact it stayed tag free for so long is in itself a form of interaction between the two ends of the street art spectrum.
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From the artist:
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