What is the purpose of street art? I found myself occupied by this question while sat on the train to Shoreditch (the unofficial capital of London street art culture) with Herself this Saturday. Over the last several years, I have photographed thousands of works of street art around the UK and abroad. I’ve stumbled across and captured all types of pieces, from murals in Whitechapel to installation pieces on Brick Lane and even poems written in chalk on the pavements and walls of Camden Town. I have been fortunate enough to have encountered and talked with a fair few artists while they were creating their works and once even met a portrait’s subject before the paint on their mural had barely been allowed to dry.
Despite the hundreds of hours I must have spent wandering the alleys and back streets of this city on the hunt to find new and undiscovered pieces, I have never actually taken a moment to consider why I do this. My level of expertise on the subject of street art is minimal at best. I have never taken a street art walking tour in London – or anywhere else for that matter. I don’t own any books about any sort of art – excepting a book on the life of Marcel Duchamp that I’ve never actually read. I probably couldn’t tell you anything that you don’t already know about Banksy or most of the big names in the street art world. I don’t go to galleries or anything involving the sale of art. I have little clue about the number of different categories of art there are, or the definition of what even constitutes art. However, as the Yorkshire man says, I know what I like.
I just started doing it and seem to have kept doing it for some time now. I really can’t articulate my thoughts on the matter much further than to simply tell you that that I enjoy it. And perhaps somewhere in there resides the answer to the question on street art’s purpose – or all art for that matter. People seem to take pleasure in creating it, and I am more than happy to admire and take my photographs. As far as I’m concerned, that’s really all there is to the matter and often the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Higher minds call that kind of thinking an example of an abductive heuristic, but you wouldn’t be let off the hook too easily for that kind of talk around my local.
Nevertheless, if there’s one thing I do know about art, it’s that somewhere there will be someone who not only disagrees with what I think but will go well out of their way to tell me why I’m not only wrong but also an idiot.
Back to our trip East. Sadly, by the time we got out of Shoreditch High Street Station and onto Brick Lane, the weather took a turn for the horrendous and before we knew it, the day was through and we were cold and soaked through. We took refuge from the downpour with a couple of bagels and cups of strong tea in the mighty Beigel Bake before calling it quits and venturing off to drier surroundings back in West London.
I was able to get quite a few good pictures and present them here.
You can now follow my increasingly strange adventures on Instagram here.
I enjoy street art, and photographing it to share very much. Enjoyed your photo essay very much. Some of the ones you have featured are quite the curiosities. Thank you so much.
My take on street art and graffit is that it takes an otherwise sterile, hostile and invasive environment and makes it personal. It is a way of saying “I am here.”
Very well put.