Graffiti, Art or Rubbish?

Artist Ben Wilson creates mini artworks by painting the blobs of chewing gum on the pavement. Each 2cm piece tells a story recounted by a passer by; the place of a first kiss, where someone was knocked down …

Wilson has had over 500 encounters with the police so far although most have been amicable. He paints on the gum, not the pavement, and you can’t be charged with criminal damage to litter. Unlike the graffiti artist, Banksy, who has had to remain anonymous or face criminal charges, Wilson wants to connect his public art with people.

View many more of Ben’s mini works here.

Brent Street Art Launch

The Brent Street Art Project launch event will be held at Brent Town Hall on Tuesday 29th January between 6pm – 7pm. A number of potential participants have been invited to find out more about the project and will have the opportunity to sign up if they like what they see.

Download the invite brent-recruitment-invite.pdf

If you would like to attend please contact Vikash Mistry T: 020 8937 1973 E: vikash.mistry@brent.gov.uk

Graffiti Creator

Today I discovered a free Graffiti Creator site. You simply type in your letters and it creates Graffiti fonts which you can personailise and colour in. Have a go here.

Street Art Colouring Book

William Warren has produced this fantastic Street Art Colouring Book. It contains photographic images of South London walls with featuring street art master pieces. The outlines have been left for to colour in. Buy it here.

Boris Hoppek

Could Boris Hoppek’s style of painting on boxes provide an cheap, movable canvas for street art?

See more of Boris’s work here.

Secret Wars

Secret Wars are Wall Art battles between Street Artists. Conjured up by Monorex, the Street Art and design company, the events draw large crowds to watch established and up and coming artists create their master pieces.

There are rules to the competition; there is a time limit to create, the colour palette is uniform black and white and only pens and acrylic paint can be used.

There are a number of types of battle:

Braille Graffiti

Find out more about Blind here.

Reverse Graffiti

The street artist known as Goose creates graffiti by cleaning the streets. Sometimes he does this for commercial brands and other times he creates street art.

Some think this is a harmless way to express and create in public places others classify this as vandalism. What do you think?

Cleaning tunnels in Leeds

X Box Branding in Oxford Street

Urban Curators Project

Participants from the Urban Curators project recently transformed derelict areas of downtown Providence into an outdoor gallery space when they took to the streets and indulged in a little impromptu ‘curating.’ Passing residents were pleasantly bewildered when they stumbled upon a series of gold-painted frames haphazardly taped to graffiti-covered walls and the crumbling exteriors of abandoned sites. The intention of the group, which initially assembled as a collective after participating in RISD’s Semiotic Disobedience workshop last fall, was to highlight the urban ‘beauty’ of locales that most would condemn as decrepit and unsightly.