Recommendations On Culturally Significant Graffiti

Andrew Browne Recommendations on Culturally Significant Graffiti, November 2010
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Recommendations on Culturally Significant Graffiti

Advice for the Department of Planning and Community Development
''Graffiti isn't meant to last forever. I'd prefer someone draw a moustache and glasses on one of my pieces than encase it in Perspex ... I've always been uncomfortable with the way galleries put things on a pedestal. I think art should be a two-way conversation, not a lecture from behind glass.''1 Banksy
By Andrew Browne, City of Yarra, November 2010 xerocorp[at]hotmail.com

1
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/banksys-first-australian-interview20100528-wlj8.html
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Contents Abstract Introduction: The Cultural Significance of Graffiti and Street Art Chapter 1: Definitions: Taxonomy of Melbourne Graffiti 1.1 Slogan and autograph graffiti 1.2 New York style graffiti 1.3 Street art Chapter 2: Banksy in Melbourne 2.1 The Little Diver 2.2 Parachuting Rat 2.3 Extant Work Chapter 3: Literature Review 3.1 Policy documents 3.2 Popular responses 3.3 Other publications Chapter 4: Locations 4.1 Union Lane 4.2 Hosier and Routledge Lanes 4.3 Fitzroy / Yarra Chapter 5: Management Models 5.1 City of Yarras Management Model 5.2 City of Melbournes Management Model 5.3 Analysis of Management Models 5.4 Documentation Methods Conclusion: Opportunities, Risks, Recommendations Notes and Bibliography
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Abstract Street Art is a global art movement of considerable popularity which poses unique problems for Government. A negative public reaction to the recent erroneous removal of one particular work of cultural significance suggests some measure of legal protection should be afforded these sometimes illegal works. This review finds that such legal protection in fact already exists under the City of Melbournes management policy, and exists de facto (though not in published policy) under the City of Yarras management program. This report documents three attempts, since 1998, to apply traditional conservation strategies to these ephemeral works. All three such attempts failed to protect the works, and probably hastened their destruction. An alternative response is the recommendation of this report; a photographic street art archive web site, maintained by Government and contributed to by interested members of the public. This presents a legally unproblematic response that documents and preserves the appearance of the work without requiring additional legal strategies, and can assist graffiti management programs as well as offering to the public a valuable record of culturally significant work.
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Introduction: the cultural significance of graffiti and street art. Graffiti in Melbourne has been a social issue worthy of public comment since at least 1859, when it was noticed obscenities had been added to the noticeboard in the Carlton Gardens.2 Its form remained relatively constant until the culture of New York style graffiti reached Melbourne in the early 1980s; its tags remain a ubiquitous feature of modern urban life. A new genre of graffiti, street art, erupted in Melbourne in the first few years of the new millennium, and some of its creators and creations have since achieved considerable international popularity. Street art is a popular international art movement. At the time of writing, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is staging its first exhibition of Australian street art, entitled Space Invaders.3 A poll conducted by Lonely Planet in 2008 declared the street art in Melbourne laneways the nations top cultural tourist drawcard.4 The artist largely responsible for the rise and spread of the street art movement remains its most popular and successful. Banksy is the pseudonym of the worlds most famous street artist. While the artist hails from Bristol, street art is an international movement. Melbourne has been recognised internationally as a centre of this global movement. Recognising the citys prominence in this emerging movement, Banksy visited in 2003, and made his own contributions to the Melbourne streets without bothering to ask permission.5 Since one of his works sold in 2007 for 288,000, he has become internationally famous.6
The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, p315 http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/SPACEINVADERS/ 4 http://www.theage.com.au/national/antigraffiti-lobby-sees-red-at-heritagelisting-proposal20080622-2uzy.html 5 Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne, p86 6 http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL2531915420070425
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Figure 1: The Banksy work whose removal prompted this report, December 2009
In April 2010 a graffiti cleaning crew contracted by the City of Melbourne removed some graffiti from the wall of the Forum Theatre facing Hosier Lane. To the untrained eye the section was a mess of tags and old stencils, the kind of graffiti that would usually be removed. The old stencil was by Banksy and was one of his last remaining works in the CBD. From this a clamour erupted in the popular press, and international news wires buzzed with the story.7 Up until this point the only substantive response to graffiti by State and Local Governments had been to remove it. The outcry in response to the City of Melbourne removing this work by an internationally recognised artist marks a clear turning point in the requirements of graffiti policy. Previous to this incident, graffiti concerned Government in two ways. State Government is responsible for enforcing the laws against it, and Local Government is responsible for keeping their municipalities graffiti-free. That many people have come to regard this illegal art as culturally valuable poses two risks to Government. Firstly, the one described above, that Government is seen to be responsible for the destruction of culturally valuable works. The other, that Government is seen to be insufficiently determined to resist this social ill.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1045722/melbournes-banksy-blunder-mocked-overseas The Citylights Project blog also lists over 50 published responses to this incident; http://www.citylightsprojects.com/press/great-hosier-lane-banksy-debacle-compendium-linksarticles-around-web
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In order to satisfy competing stakeholder demands, the appropriate course to pursue in this changing terrain is one that aggressively pursues and eliminates unwanted graffiti, without aggressively stamping out this art movement that people like so much. How might Government distinguish between good and bad graffiti? The good news is, this is an issue of municipal policy, and the way has been expertly navigated by the City of Melbourne. In 2007, the City of Melbourne introduced a graffiti management program that effectively offered legal protection to these illegal artworks. This was not seen as encouraging criminal activity because of the design of the policy. The Street Art Permit system offers protection for street art works from being removed by Council cleaning crews. It offers this protection to two kinds of work; works which already exist, or a work that is proposed for a specific location. The process is such that a building owner may apply to Council for a Street Art Permit for a work that is proposed or already exists on the wall of their building. This application is assessed by a panel within Council, and if approved, the work is permitted. This program applies over and above current State policy which prevents Council removing graffiti from private property without written permission from the owner or tenant. By protecting existing works, the City of Melbourne was extending legal protection to illegal artworks. This was done without significant public reaction by conflating this illegal category of artwork with legal ones, that is, those yet to exist and done with permission. Other municipalities offer de facto protection for significant works by deciding informally not to remove them. Melbourne is the first municipality in Australia, if not the world, to enshrine this de facto arrangement as published policy. Its current policy8 stands as an outstanding example of balancing the need to remove unwanted graffiti with sensitivity to the cultural value of this emergent art form.
http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutCouncil/PlansandPublications/strategies/Documents/graffit i_management_plan_2009_2013.pdf
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Chapter 1: Definitions: Taxonomy of Melbourne Graffiti. There are three main genres of graffiti in Melbourne. Each of these genres represents a separate cultural tradition, with different practitioners, aims, conventions, techniques, aesthetics, terminologies and histories. These three genres are; slogan and autograph graffiti, New York style graffiti, and street art. 1.1 Slogan and Autograph Graffiti Slogan and autograph graffiti9 dates at least as far back as Ancient Greece. Some examples of this kind of graffiti are extremely culturally valuable, such as the Alexamenos graffito, which is the first known depiction of Jesus10, or the graffiti of Pompeii. This kind of graffiti is a visual background noise to urban life the world over, and is recorded in Melbourne as early as 1859.11 A couple of examples further illustrate the intersection of this type of graffiti with Australian cultural history. BUGA UP BUGA UP12 was a collective of public health activists who altered billboards advertising tobacco and other unhealthy products from 1978 until 1994, when the billboard advertising of tobacco was banned.13 This group constitutes the first recorded example of organised graffiti culture in Australia. In bringing political attention to the issue of tobacco control, and surely contributing to the current legal restrictions on tobacco advertising, the effect of this campaign was indeed pivotal outstanding [and] profound.14 While this is an example of slogan graffiti having a decided cultural impact and significance, there are no recorded attempts to conserve the products of the BUGA UP campaign. Not so some slogan graffiti in Richmond from the 1950s.
As discussed below, the best published photographic sources for this type of graffiti within Australia are three books by Rennie Ellis. 10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito 11 The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, p315 12 An acronym standing for Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions. 13 Chapman, Simon Civil disobedience and tobacco control: the case of BUGA UP Tobbaco Control, 1996, 5, p179-185, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1759523/pdf/v005p00179.pdf 14 ibid
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The Keon Graffito
Figure 2: The Keon Graffito
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In 1998, the National Trust Australia (Victoria) considered for classification a political slogan on the wall of a Richmond factory. Its draft report recognised the graffitis cultural significance; The Keon traitor to the ALP graffiti, painted between 1955 and 1961, is historically and socially significant at the local level. The graffiti is the only tangible reminder in the Richmond area of the great split of the Democratic Labor Party from the Australian Labor Party which occurred in 1955. This split turned the suburb of Richmond, a heartland of Labor politics, into one of the bitterest and most damaged battlegrounds. The graffiti demonstrates the depth of emotion in the streets during this period.15 As Avery notes, this NTAV consideration signifies both graffitis potential cultural value and the contested status of that value. In an irony that typifies the problems surrounding the conservation of such ephemera, the process of this heritage consideration was effectively short-circuited by its subsequent destruction, as follows.
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NTAV Draft Classification Report, cited in Avery, Values not Shared: the Street Art of Melbournes City Laneways, in Gibson and Pendlebury (eds) Valuing Historic Environments, Ashgate, 2009, p145
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The NTAV considered the piece for classification. That consideration generated media attention. This media attention is believed to have resulted in the graffitos vandalism. That vandalism necessarily put a stop to the heritage consideration process.16 This, and the example of Banksys Little Diver (discussed below), should both serve as cautionary tales against approaching graffiti with traditional heritage conservation strategies. 1.2 New York Style Graffiti Hip hop style graffiti17 is a global cultural movement based on a style of illegal markmaking first seen in New York in the late 1960s. By 1979, work of this genre was being exhibited in an art gallery in Rome18, and by the early 1980s it had found its way onto the public infrastructure of Melbourne.19 This genre is the most prolific and visible genre of graffiti in Melbourne. Indeed, tagging is ubiquitous throughout the cities of the developed world. While the distinctive visual signature of this activity immediately made its presence felt, this culture brought with it not just specific aesthetic forms, but also shared cultural understandings, traditions and terminology.
Figure 3: Tags in Melbourne
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Locally, this tradition is referred to as graf, its practitioners usually describe themselves as writers. The three main aesthetic forms of this genre are the tag,
Private correspondence with NTAV. Often described by its adherents as simply graffiti, this style of graffiti is herein described as New York style graffiti. The more general term is here usually used to describe more generally all three genres of illegal mark-making. 18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti 19 As discussed below, the definitive history of New York style graffiti in Melbourne is Cubrilo, Harvey and Stamer, King's Way: The Beginnings of Australian Graffiti: Melbourne 1983-93, Miegunyah, 2009
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the throwie and the piece. Like slogan writing but unlike street art, these forms all derive from the written word. New York style graffiti is surely the most graphically adventurous western tradition of writing to emerge since the advent of the printing press. The word tag refers primarily to the written physical artefact, the marked surface, but also to the pseudonym of the writer. A written tag usually takes the form of an illegible signature written with large marker or spray paint, often featuring decorative motifs such as quotation marks, stars, underlinings or arrows. It is usually less than 1m by 1m, and is surely the form of graffiti least liked by the wider community. The illegibility of tags is most often due to a wildly scrawling stylized abstraction, and sometimes dripping or running paint or ink. While this illegibility seems a source of offence to the wider community, to practitioners it characterises the genres decorative style. That these marks are offensive and even more illegible to nonpractitioners is a source of some pride; it signifies the difference between writers and the rest of the community. Common variations include tags sprayed on a larger scale with a hand-pumped spray bottle or repurposed fire extinguisher, the rollie, where the tag is painted in large letters with a long-handled roller, and the scratchy, in which the word is scratched into a surface such as glass with an abrasive implement, commonly sandpaper or an abrasive drill bit. These techniques allow less aesthetic refinement than tagging with a spray can or marker. Slightly more complicated than the tag is the throwie or throw-up. It usually consists of the writers pseudonym (or an abbreviation of it) spraypainted in two colours, a darker colour for outline and a lighter colour for filling in the outline.
Figure 4: Throw-ups or throwies (and tags), November 2010
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The piece is the prime exemplar of the New York derived graffiti genre. It is usually a writers pseudonym, though, like tags, often so stylized as to not be readable. A piece is always spraypainted and generally features at least three colours (usually an outline, a fill and a background), and must also be of a certain size. The basis for this size is derived from the size of a panel (the side of a train carriage). It usually extends from the ground to as high as a writers reach (around 2m), and long enough to spell out a word at that height. So an average size for a significant piece would be about 2m by 3m.
Figures 5 & 6: Pieces, November 2010
Sometimes a piece is accompanied by depiction of characters, a spraypainted cartoon-style depiction of a person or creature. A wall featuring more than one piece executed simultaneously is referred to as a production. While slogans and street art both have the public as their intended audience, this is not the case with New York style graffiti. Practitioners of this form of graffiti see their
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audience as other practitioners. Their main concern in this pursuit is the attainment of prestige (or fame) among their peers. The main mechanisms for attaining this fame are placement, geographic coverage and aesthetic finesse. The tag is main tool for achieving geographic coverage, while the piece is the main genre for demonstrating aesthetic sophistication. Greatest prestige is attached to work whose placement was highly risky, either physically or legally, or whose execution was complex. A piece high on the outside of a building or on the side of a train is much more highly valued by practitioners than a tag in a public toilet. A single tag in itself is not greatly valued, what attracts prestige most is an overall geographic pattern of coverage and placement, followed by aesthetic finesse. The ideal then, for these practitioners, is to be the author of a large number of highly aesthetic works in risky places over a wide geographic range. These practitioners see themselves as part of an extensive hierarchical system, dominated by those with the greatest record of achievement (referred to as kings). At the other end of the spectrum are inexperienced newcomers (toys). Toy also remains a term of derision among experienced writers. The practice of this genre of graffiti in the New York context is associated with criminal street gangs, and this translates to the local context as crews. A crew is a group of young people (almost always male) who practice graffiti and recognise some common allegiance. While some crews are concerned only with graffiti, others also engage in other petty crimes, such as shoplifting and mugging. Its a common belief of writers the world over that stealing is the only properly legitimate way of obtaining the spray paint used for this graffiti.20 Another preoccupation of this culture is trains. Presumably influenced by the New York origins of the genre, Melbourne writers prize most highly the territory coinciding with the railway network. It was here that the presence of this genre was first felt, and, despite massive efforts to contrary, here that the focus of the practitioners remains. While fierce cleaning and security regimes have made the rolling stock of the Melbourne railway network virtually unusable as a canvas, the outside of train carriages remain the holy grail of New York style graffiti targets.21 In the New York context of the 70s and 80s, writers painted trains and watched exultantly as the carriages carried their work through the city. In Melbourne of the 21st century, the bravest writers paint on trains and content themselves with only a photograph, in the almost certain knowledge that their handiwork will be removed before the train is returned to circulation.
Jisoe, the 2006 documentary film about a Melbourne graffitist, not only documents this belief, but also documents its practice. 21 The same film also documents writers breaking into a rail yard and painting on trains.
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Rivalry is a prominent feature of the relations among this community. Prominent wall space is subject to fierce competition between writers and crews, and hostility, threats and violence are common. Anecdotal evidence suggests this has even extended to the brandishing of guns and the burglarising of the houses of rivals to deprive them of even the photographic record of their work.22 Melbourne graffiti writers are quite conscious that their practice, especially tagging, is both illegal and disliked by the wider community, but, if anything, seem emboldened by this reaction. Its illegality and countercultural status are no doubt attractions to many of its practitioners. It is clearly graffiti of this genre and tradition that causes the biggest problems for Government, owing largely to its extent, its illegibility and apparently indiscriminate placement. The non-graffiti criminality associated with this genre and its practitioners should also be of concern, as it constitutes low level organised crime. While graffiti of this genre does enjoy some popular following among nonpractitioners, its cultural significance is not great for the general populace. Although it may change in future, there seem to be no recorded occasions of New York style graffiti requiring a heritage response from Victorian State or local Government. 1.3 Street Art Like New York style graffiti, Street Art is a global cultural movement.23 Street art combines the political consciousness of slogan writing with the aesthetic inventiveness of New York style graffiti, to create a genre of public mark-making with something of a fine art sensibility. It is distinct from public art in that its primary aesthetic forms derive from illegal practice. Like slogan writing, but unlike New York style graffiti, street art regards its audience as including the general public. In line with this, it also commonly expresses a political consciousness; anti-war, anti-corporate and anti-capitalist statements are not uncommon. This is not to say that political or intellectual content is the main thrust of street art. It is, as the name suggests, primarily an aesthetic movement. It is arguably the emergence of this genre of graffiti, more culturally accessible and valuable to a mainstream audience than that of the New York style, which has necessitated the current heritage reconsideration of graffiti in general. Street art differs from New York style graffiti in a number of ways. While the latter style regards the most desirable target real estate as that surrounding the railway
Private correspondence with anonymous graffiti writers The definitive distinction, found in both Avery, op cit, and on the current City of Melbourne website, between graffiti as illegal public mark-making, and street art as its legal counterpart is at odds with the history of both of these traditions. There are certainly examples of legal graffiti and illegal street art.
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network, street art thrives in pedestrian precincts. Because of this, the scale also differs. While New York style graffiti is designed to be viewed on or from a moving train, its primary form, pieces, are large scale and colourful. While comparable scale and colour can be found in some street art, street arts primary form, the stencil, is usually smaller and less colourful, relying instead on smaller-scale graphic detail. Street art in Melbourne is a relatively recent phenomenon. The movement started making its presence felt early in the millennium, and the first wave of Melbourne street art peaked around 2003-4.
Figures 7 & 8: Stencils
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What the piece is to New York style graffiti, the stencil is to street art; its best known and most recognisable manifestation. In regular English use, a stencil is a sheet of material perforated in a pattern. When paint or ink is passed through those perforations, it produces a decorative pictorial or textual pattern. These have traditionally been used for decorative and industrial purposes. Their first use for decorative graffiti is traced to France in the early 1980s.24 In street art vernacular, the term stencil refers both to the implement of markmaking, and to the mark itself. They are almost always spray painted. The implements and their images range from the size of a playing card to several storeys high. When placed illegally in public, they tend towards practical and portable size, and so are usually less than 1m by 1m. While the most common form is a single (usually dark) colour sprayed once through a single stencil, by combining different colours and layers of different stencils, the medium is turned into a sophisticated printing process. Other media common within the street art genre are paste-ups, which are printed or hand-made posters stuck on to walls, stickers, freehand painting and installation.
24
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stencil_graffiti
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Figure 9: A street art sticker
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Figure 10: A freehand street art character
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Chapter 2: Banksy in Melbourne. There is an annual design conference called Semi Permanent based in Sydney. In 2003 they invited Banksy to contribute to a street art exhibition they were staging. He accepted and, presumably having heard of its thriving street art scene, also visited Melbourne while he was in the country. In the few days he was in town, he put up 2 or 3 dozen stencilled artworks in the CBD and inner suburbs. In 2007 his work sold at auction for record prices and his fame spread internationally, amounting to a significant increase in the cultural value of his work. Because of that increase in value, Banksys Melbourne work has been subject to two conservation controversies. 2.1 The Little Diver The stencilled artwork which came to be known as the Little Diver was perhaps the most obvious trace left of the artists 2003 visit. The image was painted in Cocker Alley, just back from Melbournes main pedestrian thoroughfare, Swanston St, and opposite a police station. In 2007, the artists work sold at auction for 288,000.25 In 2008, the residents of the Nicholas Building, whose wall hosted the image, applied for a City of Melbourne street art permit and permission to install a Perspex shield, to conserve the work. Both were granted and the shield was installed.
Figure 11: Banksys Little Diver, Cocker Alley, behind the Perspex shield, September 2008
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25
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL2531915420070425
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The shield was a sheet of Perspex attached to the wall by six bolts, fixed about 5cm from the surface of the wall. While it was well designed to prevent vandalism by marker, it was not well designed to protect against someone pouring silver paint into the 5cm gap between the shield and the wall. This vandalism was a predictable response to both the artists increased fame and this attempt to conserve his work.
Figure 12: Vandalism of the piece, December 2008
Typical of the creative dialogue that characterises street art, another street artist subsequently reworked both the original artwork and its vandalism, in the place where they had once been. Silver paper cut into the shape of a torrent of paint was pasted on the wall. Over the top, a single layer version of the original image, reconstituting both the original work and its vandalism.
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Figure 13: The works reincarnation, April 2010
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2.2 Parachuting Rat The second of the two conservation controversies centred on an incident in April 2010. A cleaning crew contracted by the City of Melbourne removed graffiti from the side of the Forum theatre in Hosier Lane. According to one source within the City of Melbourne, this was in response to a request from the building owner. According to another, it was a human error made despite the fact that the area was protected under the Street Art Permit system. Either way, one of Banksys few remaining Melbourne works was removed. The parachuting rat of around A3 size had been subject to further vandalism and was not in good condition. The cleaners can be forgiven for not recognising its cultural significance.
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Figure 14: the contested Banksy stencil from Hosier Lane, December 2009
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Because this removal was on Councils instructions, the incident attracted significant media coverage both nationally and internationally. The prevailing opinion seemed to be that Council had failed to protect a culturally valuable artefact.26 Shortly thereafter the artist conducted an interview with the Age newspaper. In it he touched on these controversies and his response to heritage considerations of his work. ''Graffiti isn't meant to last forever. I'd prefer someone draw a moustache and glasses on one of my pieces than encase it in Perspex ... I've always been uncomfortable with the way galleries put things on a pedestal. I think art should be a two-way conversation, not a lecture from behind glass.''27 2.3 Extant Work Seven years is a long time in street art. While the artist initially put up at least 20 or 30 stencils in Melbourne in 2003, few have survived the intervening years. It seems likely that, as of November 2010, there are eight or so extant Banksy works visible on public walls in greater Melbourne in three locations; Duckboard Place in the CBD, on and around Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, and on and around Greville Street in
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1045722/melbournes-banksy-blunder-mocked-overseas The Citylights Project blog also lists over 50 published responses to this incident; http://www.citylightsprojects.com/press/great-hosier-lane-banksy-debacle-compendium-linksarticles-around-web 27 http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/banksys-first-australian-interview20100528-wlj8.html
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Prahran. Most of these have deteriorated significantly and are not in pristine condition. The only remaining works by Banksy in the Melbourne CBD are in Duckboard Place. This area is heavily graffitied, and the long term survival of the remaining works seems doubtful.
Figures 15 & 16: Banksy works in Duckboard Place, Melbourne, November 2010
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Three of the remaining works are in Fitzroy. A rat with a ghetto blaster on Brunswick St, and a rat with a saw and a girl with a bomb on Gore St. The latter two especially are at high risk of removal, because the building to which they are applied is currently for sale.
Figure 17: Banksy work rat with ghetto blaster, Brunswick St Fitzroy, November 2010 xiv (the eagle is a later addition by another artist)
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Figures 13& 14: Banksy works, Gore St. Fitzroy, November 2010
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The remaining two pieces are in Prahran. The City of Stonnington, in which Prahran is situated, espouses a zero tolerance policy, so their survival is not due to any municipal conservation attempts.
Figure 15: Banksy work, parachuting rat with briefcase, facing Izzet St Prahran, November 2010
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Figure 16: Banksy work, smiley reaper, Greville St Prahran, November 2010
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A significant work in this area was destroyed in recent weeks, but this was not at the behest of Council, and did not attract the attention of mainstream media outlets.
Figures 17 & 18: Banksy work, Greville St Prahran
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, & the site after repainting, October 2010
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While these remaining works are his only artworks on public walls in Australia, many cities internationally play host to his work. None of those have attracted the conservation controversies that these Melbourne works have, however. The best preserved examples of Banksys work to be found in Melbourne are painted on the inside of the Revolver nightclub in Chapel Street Prahran.
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Figure 19: Banksy work, inside Revolver Nightclub, Prahran
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Figure 20: Banksy work, inside Revolver nightclub, Prahran
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Chapter 3: Literature Review This section reviews State and Local Government policy documents, popular responses and other publications regarding the cultural value of graffiti and street art. Graffiti and street art have undeniable cultural value. Yet this value is contested. The vast majority of attention paid to graffiti by State and Local Government policy is as a crime or an infrastructure problem. In contrast to these policy documents, popular media and other publications detail and exemplify both this value and its contested status. Recent popular books, films and websites further prove the cultural value of graffiti and street art. 3.1 Policy Documents The problem for Government is that policy acknowledgement amounts to legal approval, and legally approving the product of illegal acts opens the door to accusations of contradiction or hypocrisy. The most elegant policy response is contained in the current City of Melbourne policy document. State Legislation Enacted legislation and published State Government policy considers graffiti to be a crime and an infrastructure problem. Prior to 2007, graffiti was defined as a crime under Victorian law by Section 197 of the Crimes Act 1958 and Section 9 of the Summary Offences Act 1966. In 2007 the State Parliament further defined graffiti as a crime by enacting the Graffiti Prevention Act 2007. The act was and remains controversial. It introduced more severe penalties, extended police powers and, some felt, reversed the common law presumption of innocence. The Law Institute of Victoria wrote letters to two newspapers condemning the Acts provisions as disproportionately punitive. The Law Institute Victoria believes that a maximum punishment of two years imprisonment for actually marking graffiti is disproportionate to the harm caused by the practice, and makes no distinction between types of graffiti. While tagging is simply dumb, some graffiti is considered an art form and neither are violent acts that require increased police powers.28 Victorian State law does not specifically address graffiti as an object of cultural value.
28
http://www.liv.asn.au/about-liv/media-centre/Media-Releases/Letter-to-the-Editor--PortlandObserver-Graffiti-L.aspx?rep=1&glist=0&sdiag=0
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Municipal Policy The vast majority of published Victorian Municipal policy shares with its State counterpart an understanding of graffiti as property crime. Few municipal policy documents, whether nationally or internationally, acknowledge the potential for cultural value of street art or graffiti. The standard form of municipal policy, as it applies to municipalities of the industrialised world, is to pledge rapid removal of unsightly graffiti. A common practice which softens this zero tolerance approach is that Councils often decide not to remove attractive or potentially significant work at their discretion. In the cases of the Cities of Stonnington and Yarra, this discretionary non-removal is standard practice but is not represented in published policy. In the case of the City of Bristol in the UK, this discretionary power is outlined in their published policy.29 Considered below are examples of policy that are noteworthy in going beyond this discretionary standard practice, by acknowledging factors that mitigate against a zero tolerance approach. The City of Yarras Whole of Community Graffiti Management Policy 2004 acknowledged that street art constitutes political and artistic expression; Council supports the right to and importance of freedom of political and artistic expression, including the rights of street artists.30 While these rights received minimal expression in actual policy terms, this rhetorical shift opened a space in which graffitis cultural value could be discussed in a policy context in Victoria. See Chapter 5 below for a more detailed account of the City of Yarra's current practices. Though it was not initially adopted as official policy, the City of Melbournes Draft Graffiti Policy 2005 remains the most enlightened acknowledgement of graffitis cultural value in a Local policy context. The report begins by outlining graffitis contested cultural status; While some see it as an index of social decline and youth criminality others find pleasure in the expression and find its results attractive.31
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=34126132 City of Yarras Whole of Community Graffiti Management Policy 2004 31 GRAFFITI STRATEGY, THE CITY OF MELBOURNE, August 2005 DRAFT, obtained on request from the City of Melbourne
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Perhaps the reports most controversial recommendation was for areas of the City of Melbourne to be designated spaces in which graffiti could thrive. Council will designate certain laneways and other sites as areas of higher tolerance for graffiti. Creating and supporting areas of higher tolerance in which high quality street art can exist, is recognition of the cultural significance that street art has for todays young people. 32 By 2005 it was becoming obvious that street arts cultural value was unavoidable. This recommendation was controversial in its heritage connotations; by endorsing a policy that grants street art a right to exist, Council is providing tacit legal approval for an illegal act. Of all Victorian municipalities, the City of Melbourne is the one for whom the problems of graffiti are the most pressing. The City of Melbourne Graffiti Management Policy 2009-2013, and the associated Council web pages, represent a sophisticated and decisive policy response to this complex issue. Of all current Australian municipal policy, the City of Melbournes is (perhaps necessarily) the one which most generously recognises graffitis cultural potential. This recognition is not merely rhetorical, but is substantively embodied by a number of operational management strategies. Most significant is the Citys Street Art Program. Starting in 2007, the City of Melbourne introduced a system of permits whereby existing or planned works could be protected from Council removal. This management strategy was the first occasion on which any level of Australian Government extended legal protection to illegal graffiti. That the City of Melbourne was able to introduce this system without significant public backlash33 must be regarded as quite an accomplishment, and a standard by which subsequent graffiti policy implementation should be judged. The current policy also acknowledges the cultural potential of graffiti with a number of other strategies; namely, the graffiti mentoring program, the Union Lane street art project, and the Adopt-a-Wall program. Also significant is the retention from the 2005 document of the recommendation of Council facilitating relationships between street artists and art galleries. Each of these strategies constitutes significant policy recognition of the potential cultural significance of graffiti and street art. While these policy directions by the City of Melbourne are comparatively fearless, the rhetoric with which they are presented is at pains to be safe and uncontroversial. Like most municipal graffiti policy documents, the City of Melbournes current policy restates the State Governments contention that graffiti adds to a community
ibid The Herald-Sun, which can otherwise be relied upon to provide graffiti with negative attention, found in the story only good news. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/street-art-getsnod/story-e6frf7kx-1111114739026
33
32
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perception of disorder.34 Notably lacking from these policy documents is the equally valid claim that the community also derives great pleasure from street art and graffiti. Internationally, there are similarly few policy documents that take into account graffiti and street arts potential cultural value. Even Bristol, the municipality from which Banksy hails and perhaps that containing most of his work, makes no substantive policy allowance for this value, leaving its preservation to the discretion of the Council.35 3.2 Popular responses A large and increasing number of books and other media attest to the considerable popularity of Melbourne street art and graffiti. The first published photographic documentation of Australian slogan and autograph graffiti was a book by Rennie Ellis, Australian Graffiti (1975).36 This was followed by Australian Graffiti Revisited (1979)37 and The All New Australian Graffiti (1985).38 It is interesting to note that the use of stencils for political sloganeering is documented in the first of these. A useful and comprehensive book about Melbourne street art is Uncommissioned Art by Christine Dew.39 Dew, a LaTrobe University academic, delivers a considered and reflective response which delves deeply into attendant issues and whose photographic coverage is encyclopedic. Smallman and Nymans Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne, documents the first wave of Melbourne street art from the years 2002-2005.40 The recently published Kings Way is the definitive published record of the early history of Melbournes New York style graffiti.41 More recent publications have focused more specifically on individual artists. Street/Studio profiles 10 artists who work both on the street and in studios,42 and the Everfresh: Black Book documents the work of the Everfresh Melbourne street art crew.43
http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutCouncil/PlansandPublications/strategies/Documents/graffi ti_management_plan_2009_2013.pdf 35 http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=34126132 36 Ellis, Rennie Australian Graffiti, Sun Books, 1975 37 Ellis, Rennie Australian Graffiti Revisited, Sun Books, 1979 38 Ellis, Rennie The All New Australian Graffiti, Sun Books, 1985 39 Dew, Christine, Uncommissioned Art: The A-Z Of Australian Graffiti, Miegunyah, 2007 40 Smallman & Nyman Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne, Mark Batty, 2006 41 Cubrilo, Harvey and Stamer, King's Way: The Beginnings of Australian Graffiti: Melbourne 1983-93, Miegunyah, 2009 42 Young et al Street/Studio Thames & Hudson, 2010 43 Everfresh: Black Book The Studio and Streets 2004-2010 Miegunyah, 2010
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A number of other media have documented Melbourne graffiti and street art as well. The definitive video documentary of the Melbourne street art movement is Rash, from 2005.44 Jisoe is a touching film documenting the life of one Melbourne graffiti writer, and provides significant sociological background to the culture of New York style graffiti.45 70K, a film which has been refused classification, provides harrowing documentation of the vandalism of trains and other public infrastructure by the notorious graffiti crew of the same name.46 A good website for the documentation of Melbournes New York style graffiti is Melbourne Graffiti.47 While it has since acquired a more international outlook, the Stencil Revolution website is remarkable for having been an early organizational hub for the Melbourne street art movement.48 It remains a valuable archive of Melbourne street art, specifically stencils, from 2003 onwards. Innumerable publications cover the movement elsewhere or as a more international phenomenon. A good starting place for broader study is the Wooster Collective website.49 3.3 Other publications A number of local academics continue to study street art as a local and global phenomenon from a number of angles. Noteworthy contributions come from Alison Young of the University of Melbourne50 (whose 2005 draft policy for the City of Melbourne is mentioned above) and Lachlan MacDowall from VCA51. An article in Art Monthly Australia in 2000 was unusual in subjecting Melbournes New York style graffiti to an artistic appraisal. While the movement is seen as culturally interesting, the article ultimately finds this graffiti to be artistically lacking. The uncomfortable truth is that much graffiti is a drab, ugly mess. Little of it jumps above the level of wannabe Science Fiction illustration or Schoolboy Surrealism which has been jazzed up with shiners, drop shadows, 3D effects, scrolls and other rudimentary signwriting tricks.52 Of course for the most part the practitioners dont regard what they do as fine art and would have little interest in such an analysis.
44 45
Rash, directed by Nicholas Hansen, Mutiny Media, 2005 Jisoe, directed by Eddie Martin, Siren, 2005 46 70k, directed by Jamie Howarth, 2006 47 http://www.melbournegraffiti.com/ 48 http://www.stencilrevolution.com/ 49 http://www.woostercollective.com/ 50 http://imagestoliveby.wordpress.com/ 51 http://www.graffitistudies.info/ 52 Heathcote, Christopher Discovering Graffiti, in Art Monthly Australia, September 2000
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Most relevant to the current study is the article by Tracey Avery, Values Not Shared.53 It is the most valuable and lucid examination of the topic in the local context. In it, Avery notes the tension between heritage considerations of graffiti and the danger that Government is seen to be condoning vandalism.54 She documents the fraught history of local attempts at conservation, and the difficulty such attempts face.
Avery, Tracey Values not Shared: the Street Art of Melbournes City Laneways, in Gibson and Pendlebury (eds) Valuing Historic Environments, Ashgate, 2009 54 Ibid.
53
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Chapter 4: Locations Street art in Melbourne is most concentrated in the CBD, and commonly found in inner northern and eastern suburbs. As contested ephemeral phenomena, its specific distribution varies over days, weeks, months and years. Historically (over the last ten years), certain sites have become more or less popular for artists and have at times presented striking open air galleries to passersby. One example of this was a wall facing Canada Lane in Carlton, which was frequented by Melbourne stencil artists, especially in 2003 to 2004. The site, once a valuable historical document, has since been painted over.
Figure 21: Canada Lane, Carlton, 2007
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While there is still interesting street art spontaneously (and illegally) contributed the walls of the City and its inner suburbs, it is not really organised geographically, except in the sanctioned locations outlined below. The above example notwithstanding, there do not seem to be spontaneous illegal open-air galleries of significant cultural value that require consideration and protection by Government. For two main reasons, the production and reception of street art, unlike New York style graffiti, has followed a specific trajectory from being an almost invisible conversation between disparate individual artists, to being an organised and managed popular cultural movement. The first of these reasons has been the increasing broad public acceptance and commercial value of street art. These have led street artists from clandestine and
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illegal forms of self-expression to legal and legitimate ones; be that commissions, commercial gallery opportunities or local government-regulated legal street art programs. The second of these reasons was the introduction of the 2007 Graffiti Prevention Act, which introduced more severe legal penalties for illegal graffiti. These mechanisms guided Melbourne street art from an ongoing and seemingly endless conversation (as it seems to be in the years 2002-2005), to its current state, more like an open-air museum, with professional curators showcasing the work of its professional practitioners. This change has seen the movements democratic and spontaneous creativity replaced with a more contrived aesthetic polish. Due to the programs and policies put in place by the Cities of Melbourne and Yarra, there are three main locations within Victoria where high quality street art is thriving. All are currently protected by Municipal management, (that is, Councils cleaners know not to remove the works) and all three locations are curated by individuals with extensive prior street art experience. It is apparent that this curatorial expertise is instrumental to the high standard of output at these sites. 4.1 Union Lane The Union Lane Street Art Project was identified in an audit by the City of Melbourne as a problem area for graffiti. Cleaning the lane was proving costly and ineffective, and so since 2007 the site has been managed as a sanctioned street art gallery by the Citys Arts and Participation Program.55 The site is designated a permissible street art site by the Citys Street Art Permit system and is also covered by relevant planning permission. The co-operation of the Arts and Participation Program with the sites curator, JD Mittman, ensures that the project features street art that is of high quality and that it is maintained at a high level of integrity.
55
http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutMelbourne/ArtsandEvents/ArtsParticipation/Pages/UnionL ane.aspx
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Figure 22: Street art in Union Lane, November 2010
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Figure 23: Street art in Union Lane, November 2010
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4.2 Hosier and Routledge Lanes Citylights Projects has maintained a number of light boxes in Hosier Lane as a permanent open air art site since 1996. In the intervening years the site, and adjacent Routledge Lane, attracted a lot of graffiti and street art, to the extent that it became the most outstanding and notable street art location in Melbourne, as it continues to be. The City of Melbourne recognised the significance of this location in granting it two Street Art Permits. The site continues to be the most vibrant gallery of Melbourne street art due to both this reputation and to its being effectively curated by the director of Citylights Project, Andrew MacDonald.
Figure 24: Street art in Hosier Lane, November 2010
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Figure 25: Street art in Routledge Lane, November 2010
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4.3 Fitzroy / Yarra A third area where high quality street art continues to thrive is within the City of Yarra. In an informal arrangement between the Citys Engineering Department and Napier Studio youth work program (detailed below), high quality curated street art murals are executed at problem sites within the municipality. Notable mural sites are at the corner of Liecester and Brunswick Streets Fitzroy, and the corner of Napier and Johnston Streets, also in Fitzroy. The curation of these projects is currently managed by Youth Arts Officer, Adrian Doyle.
Figures 26 & 27: Street art in Fitzroy, November 2010
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Other locations There are numerous other sites where quality street art can be found, but the dynamic nature of graffiti, street art, bill postering, other advertising, real estate development and other uses mean that any list of such examples would soon be out of date. As examples, Caledonian Lane and Centre Way in the CBD have both at times presented dramatic and attractive street art galleries, but now are both reminders of their former glory as nearby real estate development has changed the use of the spaces, and therefore the presence and quality of street art and graffiti. In the case of Centre Way, the area which had previously become a graffiti gallery had been a dead end used only for the storage of rubbish bins. More recently, a doorway to a neighbouring retail development was installed, increasing through traffic and use of the space. This re-use of the space seems to have accompanied a decline in the quality of the street art and graffiti work there.
Figure 28: Graffiti and billposters in Centre Way, November 2010
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In the case of Caledonian Lane, the Lane was previously home to a popular bar, St, Jeromes. The bar and other shops on that side of the street have been recently demolished, leaving open space (presumably awaiting redevelopment). This demolition has deprived street artists of both a gathering point, and the privacy necessary for the production of illegal work. Another significant avenue of street art production is private commissions, which decorate the outer or inner walls of businesses or private residences, usually in the city and inner suburban areas. Notable examples of this include the one mentioned above, of Banksys work on the inside of Revolver nightclub, and the Everfresh mural on the side of the Night Cat in Fitzroy.
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Figure 29: Everfresh mural, Fitzroy, November 2010
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Ultimately, the production of high quality street art relies on some measure of protection for its practitioners. Previously the best protection commonly available was the measure of privacy available in a narrow thoroughfare at night. More recently, however, private commissions and legal street art programs provide greater protection, and therefore higher quality (though possibly more contrived) street art.
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Chapter 5: Management models The graffiti management models of the Cities of Yarra and Melbourne are clearly successful in both allowing the production of high quality graffiti and street art murals, and in reducing the appearance of the less desirable forms of graffiti. Reading solely from published policy documents, the management model of the City of Yarra differs little from other municipalities espousing a zero tolerance approach to graffiti. Yet in practice, a number of informal strategies allow the proliferation of quality street art and ensure a reduced visibility for unwanted graffiti. It is quite possible other municipalities are conducting similarly successful management plans in a similarly informal way. The City of Melbournes model is significant in that what in other municipalities are informal arrangements are here embodied in published policy. 5.1 City of Yarras Management Model The current City of Yarra graffiti management model does not depend on a published policy document, but rather on an informal relationship between two sections of Council; Engineering Services and the Napier Studio, a Youth Services program. Engineering Services are responsible for routine removal of graffiti, especially in high-use areas, and for responding to complaints about specific incidences of graffiti. The Napier Studio is a Youth Services youth work program in which young people practice graffiti and street art. On its website, the City of Yarra recognises the effectiveness of public art murals as a graffiti management strategy.56 By engaging young participants to execute public art murals, usually in street art and graffiti style, the City of Yarra is providing three services to the municipality. It is providing the participating young people with a safe and legal means of artistic expression, it is providing the local community with high quality public art, and it is providing Engineering services with a cost effective means of managing sites which would otherwise be subject to frequent graffiti removal. By engaging both young participants and established street artists to execute curated murals in problem areas, the Napier Studio (and comparable arrangements within the City of Melbourne) not only perform these municipal functions, but encourage ongoing excellence in Melbourne street art. These models, established by the Cities of Melbourne and Yarra can be considered to constitute best practice in terms of graffiti management policy that not only reduces unwanted graffiti, but encourages the continuing production (and protection) of high quality, culturally valuable street art.
These [public art] projects are effective in discouraging graffiti while at the same time supporting young local artists and contributing to the creative culture of Yarra. http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/Services/Infrastructure/graffiti/Public-Art-Projects/
56
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A number of other informal strategies have been recently trialled within Yarra to respond to the potential cultural value of graffiti within the municipality. In recent routine cleaning of Little George St, Fitzroy, Engineering Services liaised with the Napier Studio to assess the site. The team reviewed the visible graffiti in the street, and decided which should be removed and which should not. Napier Studios also began the task of cataloguing potentially significant graffiti works within the municipality, with the intention of the catalog being made available to Engineering Services. 5.2 The City of Melbournes Management model As noted above, the salient fact regarding the success of Melbournes graffiti management is that the cultural significance of graffiti and street art is actually represented in published policy. The Street Art Permit system not only provides permission for future works, but also provides protection from removal for existing works which have had permits granted. The Street Art Permit system is overseen by Engineering Services, who liaise with building owners, artists and the Councils Arts and Culture department as necessary. Sources within the City of Melbourne have emphasized the multivalent and nuanced nature of the administration of their program across a number of departments. Unfortunately, a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of the City of Melbournes graffiti management program (beyond that contained above in Chapter 3) is beyond the scope of the current study, but an analysis of this kind is certainly worthwhile as regards future Victorian policy development. 5.3 Analysis of Management Models The success of these models depends on their use of legal public graffiti and street art projects as a strategy that greatly reduces further vandalism of specific sites and probably also diverts energies which otherwise might be illegally expressed. This is an effective strategy because it is the meeting point between permissible policy and graffiti cultures. Within the cultures of both graffiti and street art, wall space is seen as a finite commodity. Attractive sites are highly sought-after, and competition for them is often fierce, sometimes even violent. To obliterate the work of someone else is the fundamental act of disrespect. Yet attractive sites are often crowded with work; which means that contributing to them often does mean going over other peoples work. A way for practitioners to negotiate this tension is by their giving priority to the more accomplished work. It is more acceptable for practitioners that a low quality work be replaced with a high quality one than vice versa. Legally painted murals are almost always at the top of this graffiti food chain, and so the walls bearing them are less likely to be tagged than nearby blank walls.
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While making areas less subject to tagging one wall at a time might seem like a slow and inefficient means of managing graffiti, it is found to rapidly reduce the expense of maintaining problem sites. Over a number of sites, the reduction of this cost annually is considerable. This has been found to be the experience of both the Cities of Melbourne and Yarra. Another possible reason for the effectiveness of these programs is that they may well engage participants who might otherwise channel their creative energies into illegal graffiti. When combined with the potential of serious legal consequences, the prospect of being able to accomplish high quality output legally and in daylight soon becomes the preferable alternative. 5.4 Documentation methods We have seen that traditional conservation approaches to graffiti have failed and that Municipal Councils have successfully implemented curated management strategies. Given the low success rate of traditional conservation strategies, a reasonable response that remains possible which might act to preserve evidence of these culturally significant works is to document them. The documentation of Melbourne street art is a popular hobby and a thriving field of publishing. There is no shortage of photographic documentation of this material, but there is no significant archival public repository dedicated solely to Melbourne street art. The City of Melbourne currently maintains a geographically indexed photographic database of graffiti, which is not accessible to the public, for the purpose of auditing and removal. It is the recommendation of this report that Government establish a similar database, but one that is accessible to the public. Such is the popularity of this genre that the public are more than happy to perform a documentary function by photographing and publishing photographs of this work at a great rate. This web site would provide both a repository for these photographs and a system of cataloguing them. A non-proprietary system called geotagging provides an effective arrangement for cataloguing these works of cultural value. The website Bristol Graffiti Map demonstrates this system.57 It shows a map of the City of Bristol, with pins in it. Each pin corresponds to both a photograph of a work and its specific location. The user clicks on a pin, and a photograph appears. This is the essence of geotagging; that the data recorded (in this case, photographs of graffiti) are associated with, and organised by, notation of their geographic location.
57
http://www.bristolgraffitimap.com
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Close management and administration of the site would allow it to function as an effective graffiti management database, not only recording valuable works, but also facilitating the removal of unwanted graffiti. Given the problematic history outlined above of traditional conservation techniques, it might be wondered whether the apparent hastening of the works destruction would occur with a documentary website, as it did with attempts at Heritage classification or physical protection. It is the opinion of this author that those attempts at conservation failed because they singled out particular works as more valuable than others. An archival website could be more democratic in its attribution of value. The contested value of these works could be incorporated into the sites design by allowing users to assess the works value. Given that the archive would presumably represent the works of many artists, no particular works would necessarily be singled out as being especially worthy of conservation over other comparable works, and this would likely reduce the vandalism to works associated with traditional conservation strategies.
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Conclusion: Opportunities, Risks and Recommendations It is a problematic fact that illegal graffiti and street art are sometimes culturally valuable, ephemeral, and highly susceptible to environmental damage. There is no current legal requirement to protect such work, though theoretically they can be protected under the Heritage Act, provided they satisfy the significance assessment criteria. The case of the Keon graffito discussed above suggests the risks involved in this process. Any Government management strategy must navigate between two risks: on the one hand, being seen to condone illegal activity, and, on the other, inadvertently destroying culturally valuable works. Fortunately for State Government, these perilous regions have already been negotiated at the municipal level. The example of the City of Melbourne shows that it is possible to implement a graffiti management policy that incorporates an understanding of cultural value without significant risk of negative backlash. Given the ephemeral nature of the works, the response recommended by this report, of an archival web site, is likely to satisfy any reasonable demand to protect them. That it does so without risking potentially unpopular and unsuccessful attempts at conservation or legal protection not only takes into account the lessons provided by recent history, but also has the added advantage of providing the electorate with the impression of an interactive and responsive Government. While its exact design and management remain to be determined, an archival web site of culturally significant Melbourne street art has the potential to become a valuable cultural document in its own right.
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Notes and Bibliography

Statutes and policy documents City of Bristol Graffiti Management Policy http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=34126132 Current City of Melbourne Graffiti Management Plan http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutCouncil/PlansandPublications/strategies/Documents/graffiti _management_plan_2009_2013.pdf City of Melbournes Draft Graffiti Policy 2005 City of Melbournes Union Lane Project http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/AboutMelbourne/ArtsandEvents/ArtsParticipation/Pages/UnionLa ne.aspx City of Yarra Public Art Projects http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/Services/Infrastructure/graffiti/Public-Art-Projects City of Yarras Whole of Community Graffiti Management Policy 2004 Crimes Act (Victoria) 1958 Graffiti Prevention Act (Victoria) 2007 Summary Offences Act (Victoria) 1966
Publications Avery, Tracey Values not Shared: the Street Art of Melbournes City Laneways, in Gibson and Pendlebury (eds) Valuing Historic Environments, Ashgate, 2009, pp138-154 Brown-May, Andrew (ed) The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2005 Cubrilo, Harvey and Stamer, King's Way: The Beginnings of Australian Graffiti: Melbourne 1983-93, Miegunyah, 2009 Dew, Christine, Uncommissioned Art: The A-Z Of Australian Graffiti, Miegunyah, 2007 Ellis, Rennie Australian Graffiti, Sun Books, 1975 Ellis, Rennie Australian Graffiti Revisited, Sun Books, 1979 Ellis, Rennie The All New Australian Graffiti, Sun Books, 1985 Everfresh Everfresh: Black Book The Studio and Streets 2004-2010 Miegunyah, 2010 Heathcote, Christopher Discovering Graffiti, in Art Monthly Australia, September 2000, pp4-8 Smallman & Nyman Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne, Mark Batty, 2006 Young et al Street/Studio Thames & Hudson, 2010
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Films Rash, directed by Nicholas Hansen, Mutiny Media, 2005 Jisoe, directed by Eddie Martin, Siren, 2005 70K, directed by Jamie Howarth, 2006 Websites (accessed November 2010) Alison Young Blog http://imagestoliveby.wordpress.com/ Blog lists responses to the Hosier Lane Banksy removal http://www.citylightsprojects.com/press/great-hosier-lane-banksy-debacle-compendium-linksarticles-around-web Bristol Graffiti Map http://www.bristolgraffitimap.com Chapman, Simon Civil disobedience and tobacco control: the case of BUGA UP Tobbaco Control, 1996, 5, p179-185 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1759523/pdf/v005p00179.pdf Herald Sun Article on Street Art Permits http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/street-art-gets-nod/story-e6frf7kx-1111114739026 Lachlan MacDowell http://www.graffitistudies.info/ Law Institute responds to Graffiti Prevention Act http://www.liv.asn.au/about-liv/media-centre/Media-Releases/Letter-to-the-Editor--PortlandObserver-Graffiti-L.aspx?rep=1&glist=0&sdiag=0 Melbourne Graffiti http://www.melbournegraffiti.com NGA Space Invaders Exhibition http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/SPACEINVADERS/ Ninemsn notes overseas responses to Hosier Lane Banksy removal http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1045722/melbournes-banksy-blunder-mocked-overseas Reuters Article on Banksy Sale http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL2531915420070425 Stencil Revolution http://www.stencilrevolution.com/ The Age Banksy Interview
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http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/banksys-first-australian-interview20100528-wlj8.html
Wikipedia Alexamenos Graffito http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito Wikipedia - Graffiti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti Wikipedia Stencil Graffiti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stencil_graffiti Wooster Collective http://www.woostercollective.com/
Picture credits Frontispiece: photo by the author Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4183967873/ ii Photo supplied by NTAV, reproduced with permission. iii Photo by the author iv Photo by the author v Photos by the author vi Works by the author; photo by the author; photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4264119685/in/set-72157622721448704/ vii Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4264105095/sizes/z/in/photostream/ viii Work and photo by the author ix Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4186739684/sizes/l/in/photostream/ x Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4186739822/sizes/l/in/photostream/ xi Photo by David Wignall, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phoenixthestreetartist/4560603020/sizes/z/in/set72157623756476405/ xii Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4183967873/ xiii Photos by the author xiv Photo by the author xv Photos by the author xvi Photo by the author xvii Photo by the author xviii Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4069849449/sizes/l/in/photostream/ xix Photo by the author xx Photo by Chris Scott, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgs327/4184727606/sizes/z/in/photostream/ xxi Photo by the author xxii Photo by Johanna Hobbs, reproduced with permission: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johannahobbs/431074335 xxiii Photo by the author
i
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Photo by the author Photo by the author xxvi Photo by the author xxvii Photos by the author xxviii Photo by the author xxix Photo by the author
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Andrew Browne Recommendations on Culturally Significant Graffiti, November 2010