Unveiling the Complex World of Graffiti Art: A Crime or a Creative Expression?
In the realm of art, where creativity knows no bounds, a debate rages on: is graffiti art a criminal act or a legitimate form of expression? This question, as complex as it is controversial, forms the crux of the exhibition 'Searchers: Graffiti + Contemporary Art' at the National Art School in Darlinghurst. The exhibition, curated by Fiona Lowry and Katrina Cashman, challenges the traditional boundaries between street art and fine art, inviting viewers to explore the politics and poetics of spray.
The story begins with TAVEN, a renowned Sydney graffiti writer, who in a YouTube video, wanders through the Art Gallery of NSW, seeking a section dedicated to graffiti. His quest is met with responses that highlight the disconnect between street art and official art spaces. This leads us to question: what happens when graffiti art is brought into a gallery?
Fiona Lowry, the curator, clarifies that the exhibition is not about legitimizing graffiti by hanging it in a conventional gallery. Instead, it's about exploring the tension between different value systems. Graffiti, on the street, holds power through risk, speed, territory, and peer recognition. In the gallery, its value shifts to form, discipline, lineage, and the deep relationship to authorship and mark-making. Lowry's son, who was swept up in the graffiti world, played a pivotal role in inspiring the show.
The exhibition occupies two levels of the National Art School Gallery, each presenting a unique experience. The lower level, darker and more intimate, is described as a 'charged space'. Lowry wanted it to unfold in sequences, almost like a film. The upper level shifts into a different register, lighter and more optical, exploring spray as drift and breath.
At the heart of the exhibition is the spray can, a tool that gave birth to contemporary graffiti culture in the 1970s. Spray cans, unremarkable in their everyday use, are also incredibly dangerous, locked away in cages in places like Bunnings. The spray can allows skilled writers to produce hard and soft edges by manipulating factors such as distance from the wall, creating an immediate and satisfying experience.
The transgressive, criminalized context of graffiti art is an integral part of the discussion. It provokes strong emotions, with Sydney Trains spending over $30 million annually removing graffiti. The NSW Graffiti Hotline is dedicated to eradicating spray work, and in New York in the 1990s, catching writers and wiping out graffiti was the tip of the spear of then mayor Rudy Giuliani's notorious 'broken windows' policy. Writing on walls can also have an outsized political effect, as seen when Dave Burgess and Will Saunders painted 'No War' on the Opera House sails in 2003.
Graffiti art also prompts questions of the ownership of public space and who gets to have a voice. Lowry believes that many writers don't have a voice and that the exhibition is making space for them in the world. It resists the easy binary of 'vandalism versus art', focusing instead on questions of visibility, permission, public space, and who gets to be seen.
For Lowry, 'Searchers' is not strictly a show about graffiti in the narrowest sense. It's about the politics and poetics of spray, spray as a material and a visual language, and the way it moves between worlds - underground, suburban, cinematic, and contemporary art - carrying with it the charge of graffiti without being limited to it. Graffiti is central to that story, but it isn't the whole story.
The exhibition 'Searchers: Graffiti + Contemporary Art' is on display at the National Art School, Darlinghurst, until April 11. It invites viewers to explore the complex world of graffiti art, challenging traditional boundaries and sparking thought-provoking discussions.
