Stencil Graffiti

dont think this is something new, i remember some around dublin around ten years ago of a guy in a long coat with a shot gun and cross hairs, does remember these ?…… seen some really interesting ones around galway resently alot just by the bridge at the end of quay street……
also nice site
http://www.stencilarchive.org

why not join the fun

http://www.aouw.org

there is some nice sticker action around these days too..

/www.stickernation.net

re the car & caravan, i dont know if it is the same artist but i did see some images very similar…… there was one of an u-bahn train pretruding from the ground in the middle of a town square and another the same but just the top of a submarine busting out of the ground… very nice
m.j.

the stencils would be great if they stuck to hoardings and stayed away from stone, but they don’t, so they piss me off.

I’ve seen a few anti-war/anti-globalisation stencils in Dublin and some are very good.

Stencils certainly beat tagging as a street art form.

I quite like the use of blood red in this one:

An anti-war stencil in Dublin.

Just because these stencils may have some artistic merit in their own right, does that mean that it is acceptable to deface pavements, buildings etc. with them or any other form of graffiti? Tagging has to be one of the most offensive and moronic forms of so called street art around at the moment.

I agree that defacing a permanent structure isn’t acceptable, especially tagging, but stencilling hoarding and other temporary structures is acceptable in my view. They can liven up a blank wall. On pavements, the stencilled work does not last very long therefore is not a problem.

Is it art though? Any cretin with a stencil and a spray can can leave behind an image. True artistic graffiti without the use of stencils must rank as superior.

Is it art?

Well art is “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others” (Britannica) and creating the stencil takes skill and imagination, which creates an image that some people enjoy.

Graffiti has its artistic merits too but I prefer stencil graffiti because it’s subtler.

Taste I suppose!

<>
http://www.banksy.co.uk
this guy is amazing

look around you almost every bit of space these days is telling you/selling you someting, you may not be able to afford to advertise on billboards, but stencilling allows you do put ‘your message there for free’.
maybe not too much in dublin, but i love when you can walk around cities and see this creativeness all over everyting in the urban realm, this call tell you a lot about the people who occupy these spaces. also you can ofen see the different areas where different ‘urban’ artists frequent,

Is it art though? Any cretin with a stencil and a spray can can leave behind an image. True artistic graffiti without the use of stencils must rank as superior

Any cretin with a spray can can leave behind an image too, dont tink you can say one is better that the other. stencils reqire great thought and skill too, tinking of a good idea, designing,printing, cuting, and putting it up in an effective space.

i dont know if this is true ???
but this stencil says, TRAFFIC FUMES ARE SERIOUSLY DAMAGING YOUR HEALTH. sparyed on a pedestrian crossing in Tralee. surely the health warning shouldbe on all cars ????

fekking vandals…… does pose another question are health warnings taking away from the beauty of you cigarette pack ??

perhapsthe note on the pedestrian crossing should say “if you are reading this you are not looking out for traffic and could be hit at any moment by a large truck”

Red glowsticks, green LED, purple-lit underground carparks. Seems that there’s an itch (one might call it a manic urge) to bring some color to the docklands. There’s loads of attention being heaped upon the Martha Schwartz plaza in Vegas, I mean, Grand Canal Dock south of the Liffey. Anyone seen these yet on the northside? These pieces would appear to be part of a large commissioned public art project, though I wasn’t able to find any specifics on the artist from a preliminary search. I know the DDDA had named 6 artists last year to participate in a public art scheme in the docklands, and proposals for the artists were due in Autumn 2006. This would appear to be a brainchild with some funding behind it.

There’s some excellent subtle stencil work done on the blue wall to the left, outlining the shadow cast by the Sheriff Street bridge. The juxtaposition of bright color with crumbling rusted dockish imagery is pleasing, and at least (unlike the light-a-thon south of the river) it goes to sleep at night.

Then, for something a bit more ‘old skool,’ complete with some shape revisionism in the foreground:
(Sighs of relief on all sides that GRIFT seems to have kept his/her aerosol trigger finger in check. . . so far)

If anyone knows more of this project, I’d be interested. I tried but, ahem . . . no dice.

And then, for those who like to rail against the destruction of our social fabric and the scourge of vandalism (I do like to offer a bit of something for everyone), some more ‘traditional’ (AKA non-commissioned, done on the sly) stencil graffiti. Clearly, the worth of these (is it art or vandalism?) is always up for debate, but I think it’s interesting to note the ways in which artists can use shape, color and image to ignore, complement, or work against the fabric of the built environment.

There’s something ephemeral about these images that endears them to me, whatever their ‘worth’ as design or ornament. Because they are nothing more than a coat of paint, they can easily be glossed over, leaving nothing remaining but their memory. They aren’t selling anything to me. They don’t bully me into a point of view or badger me to buy a product. They aren’t (like the tiny message in the crosswalk in a previous post) endangering my safety. And I know one day they’ll disappear and end up in the great cow parade pasture in the sky. But until then, love them or hate them, they exist. Part of the city that fell through the cracks, transient landmarks.

The camera fella pops up in several locales throughout the city, including a triptych on Pearse Street I have somehow missed in this particular gallery.

Like Banksy, only without the blistering social commentary. Or is there a blistering social commentary shrouded in the Asian-nurse-with-bear that I am somehow missing? Ah, hell. I knew I should have paid more attention in my semiotics class.

And if you don’t like them (or happen to love them), feel free to treat this as an addendum to the ‘How Well do You Know Dublin’ thread. No politics or palaver, just good old fashioned city scavenger hunting. Where have you seen these characters last?

@notjim wrote:

the stencils would be great if they stuck to hoardings and stayed away from stone.

Agreed.

Of those 6 pics, the only one I have to guess is the last one- is it the boarded up building with the funny shopfront under the bridge behind Trinity on Pearse Street?

Also, a tongue-in-cheek (or is it painfully accurate?) crit of Banksy from The Guardian 🙂 :

@ctesiphon wrote:

Of those 6 pics, the only one I have to guess is the last one- is it the boarded up building with the funny shopfront under the bridge behind Trinity on Pearse Street?

That’s the one!

Great article on Banksy. Thanks, ctesiphon. Now that’s how I prefer to encounter my blistering social commentary: in print form with a cup of coffee. But that’s just me. Perhaps I need to dust off my anarchist’s handbook and revisit my recipe for Molotov cocktails.

For a slightly different (and more nuanced) take on the subject, there was a great bit in the New York Times’ 6th annual Year in Ideas issue about a British artist who uses what’s often termed ‘reverse graffiti’. It may or may not be art, but it raises interesting questions about the ethics and aesthetics of altering public space:

I saw some of that reverse graffiti in london a few weeks back. It was an ad for a taxicab company sandblasted or powerwashed onto the pavement. Fairly cheap form of adverising I’ld bet.

I like that idea. Reverse graffiti.
Very clever.

Has anyone noticed the Phil Lynott stencilled graffiti around Dublin? It was done a few years ago.

vandalism. pure vandalism

Care to elaborate, wearnicehats? For example, are you referring to the ‘reverse graffiti’, to graffiti on hoardings, to graffiti on stonework, or to all of the above?

@manifesta wrote:

In terms of stencil graffiti/art/vandalism (take your pick), is it mainly the choice of location that is problematic? Hoardings are OK but stone is out? Or is it primarily a question of permanence and materials, e.g. would a chalk drawing on stone be less offensive? Or is it just a question of the image itself, where one person’s idea of a cool piece of art is another’s asinine guff? Returning to the example in the north docklands, would something like the Sheriff Street bridge project have more value for the city because it was granted permission first? It’s easy to slam flat-out vandals, easy even to slam Banksy. But figuring out what is pleasing about these bits of unexpected art– that might be harder, and more worth the debate.

manifesta-
I don’t think I’d put the Sherriff St stuff in the category of graffiti. Street art, yes]The Conscience of the Eye[/I]. He compared NYC, Style Wars-era subway graffiti from the 1970s/1980s with Parisian late-1960s graffiti, saying, in essence, that the NYC stuff showed scant regard for context, being all about promotion of the ego, whereas the Parisian stuff was more in the category of social commentary. (This was a time before the NYC stuff a) was commodified by the gallery system, and b) became for the practitioners an aesthetic end in itself [as, for example, in the Smithfield case cited above]).

Funnily enough, I passed a bar in Seoul the other day that seemed to have the art of Jean Michel Basquiat as its theme (and Seoul bars sure know how to do attention to detail like few other places I’ve been- out-Basquiating Basquiat! :)). Then on my way ‘home’ in Sihung, I noticed a shoe shop that used the Basquiat name in its window advertising (I’d go out for a pic, but it’s lashing rain right now [hence the, eh, rambling post :o]). I mention this because afaik Basquiat worked in many transient materials on the street – chalk, etc – and was bemused / disgusted by the fact that art he had intended as transient became collectible purely because his name was on it. Same goes for Keith Haring, much of whose art was done in chalk on unpostered NYC subway advertising boards (though obviously he also embraced the highly commercial side of the art world too) . So not all ‘graffitists’ crave permanence and recognition- for some, the very transience of their chosen medium is the attraction, aiming simply to brighten up the day of the lucky few who happen to glimpse it before cleaners / the rain / the commodity scavengers get their hands on it.

Vandalism, pure vandalism? I can’t agree. It’s far too nuanced to be dismissed so simplistically.

And I can think of a dozen other ‘visual interventions’ in the publicrealm that I’d categorise as vandalism before all but the most crass graffiti made it onto my list. Sure isn’t the election, with all its attendant postering, just around the corner? Did someone say metropoles? The fridges on the bridge? Henrietta Street? Jeez, I’m beginning to sound like hutton. 😀 😀 😀 😀 😮

Oh look, the rain is beginning to clear…

@blue wrote:

I’ve seen a few anti-war/anti-globalisation stencils in Dublin and some are very good.

Stencils certainly beat tagging as a street art form.

I quite like the use of blood red in this one:

An anti-war stencil in Dublin.

Bah

Lily Brik, I hardly knew ya.

@ctesiphon wrote:

Care to elaborate, wearnicehats? For example, are you referring to the ‘reverse graffiti’, to graffiti on hoardings, to graffiti on stonework, or to all of the above?

Vandalism, pure vandalism? I can’t agree. It’s far too nuanced to be dismissed so simplistically.

…

I don’t see any nuance in painting pictures on things that don’t belong to you. I recently completed a building with a very expensive stone cladding. The day after pc some local “artist” had added a very nice moniker to it – something that cost a great deal of unnecessary money to remove. If they had sprayed on some stencil art, should I have been ecstatic? perhaps the client should have put it in his marketing brochure to show how public spirited he is. Vandalism is the deliberately mischievous or malicious destruction or damage of property. It’s against the law. It causes distress and unnecessary expense to ordinary people. You can dress it up with any poncy name you like. Perhaps I should get away with drunk driving because I drive a funky car or was drinking a particularly trendy drink at the time. Perhaps burglars should be ignored provided they rearrange people’s furniture in an avante garde manner before they flee. You can’t stop people doing it but don’t try to condone it as some kind of new movement. Tell you what – why don’t all the supporters of it open up their houses – allow the lads to spray away to their hearts content on your gable wall.

Whats Lily Saying? Kill the capitalist pigs?

Value of mural painted over by transport workers

Irish Independent

TRANSPORT workers in London have painted over a mural by world-renowned graffiti artist Banksy, erasing a piece of art estimated to be worth €370,000.

The mural, depicting a scene from the Quentin Tarantino movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ in which Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta are holding bananas instead of guns, was
spray-painted on the side of an electricity substation around five years ago.

Some of his thought-provoking work currently adorning Drumcondra railway bridge.

Indeed it would appear a fellow colleague has picked up on his omnipresence through the city.

Though, is Bord Bia’s and Vodafone’s commandeering of the public domain via an official stamp of approval much better?

Yeah Gift or Griff or whatever his name is, what a tool. People shouldn’t be advertising the like of Griff anywhere on the web. Griff or Grift should be consigned to the rubbish heap, uninspired graffiti scrawled on the DART line. His name is just derived from the word “Graffiti” thats how original that fool is. “What will I call myself, grafitti artist that I am?, let me think..graffiti..griffita..griff. Yes that’s it. Griff.” Plank more like.

Perhaps it’s my own fault for including this in a thread dubbed ‘Stencil Graffiti.’ Perhaps I was fully prepared for another barrage of civic-minded individuals lashing out against at the so-called handiwork of lesser organisms such as Grift who — I don’t think anyone is defending these cretins, by the way, it’s simply an easy reference point– litter the land with their crap. But I am curious to hear opinions on the Sherrif Street public art project, which does bear reference to the style and spirit of non-sanctioned graffiti everywhere, if a far cry from it in execution:

The blue tracing outline of the bridge (pictured toward the left of the image) is particularly interesting in that it loosely references stencil graffiti in technique… it also reminded me of the work of a street artist in Brooklyn named Ellis G who outlines the shadows of common objects in chalk on pavements throughout his neighborhood. While some may not call it art, it’s undeniable that his work brings a little smile to people who are strolling through the streets and are distracted by the sight of these manipulations of environment. Plus, it’s ephemeral. Washes away by morning, along with it the memory. Images and link for the curious: here.

Thoughts? Or if I have interrupted an otherwise enjoyable bout of vandal-bashing, then carry on.