The sketch, doodle and illustration are at the heart of most artforms. They act as the template or blueprint of what it is the artist hopes to create. However, when it comes to street art the practice of illustration takes on a life of its own. After all, illustration is becoming more and more mainstream, especially as it enters the digital realm. The often haughty and critical art world has embraced the worldwide phenomenon that is new cartoonism, a movement that has its roots in the prolific underground of street art, which has also exploded into the big time. But how can an artist bring their illustrations out of their journals or hard drives, out from their homes, and on to the wild and savage canvas that is the street? Enter the paste up.

Paste ups are so called because they are pieces of paper – or sometimes even fabric or canvas – which are literally pasted up using glue. Publicity posters, the kind often found on the sides of derelict buildings or the bollards in the Perth Cultural Centre, are paste ups. Rose Skinner’s hot pink polystyrene ice cream cones which literally look as though they have been thrown at the wall are also paste ups, albeit merged with sculpture. However, the more typical paste up is one which is character driven and encapsulates a cartoonesque caricature, such as those done by The Yok and Creepy, or which merges design with space to create something between art and advertisement.

- Advertisement -

Whatever the case may be, the paste up, like the stencil, is an economic – if not more cumbersome – form of street art. After all, it allows the artist the opportunity to create an image in the privacy of their own home, a task that can take several hours to complete. Then, once out on the street the artist can use wallpaper glue or even flour and water (an amazing adhesive recipe appears in issue 1 of literary street art zine MoTHER [has words…] courtesy of lesbian street artist Bambi) to paste their work up. Yes, it becomes more involved coordinating a paint brush, pot of glue and the paste up itself, but the result can be quite fetching.

Overall, the paste up is a labour of love. There is a certain degree of patience required in creating the paste up, even if techniques such as stencil are utilized in creating it. The paste up is also a cumbersome practice and takes a little skill coordinating all the different aspect required to execute it on the streets. However, once executed, the paste up achieves something akin to a page from the street artists world appearing on the urban landscape, and can give a more detailed insight into the psyche of a particular artist, more so than the tag or stencil can. After all, the paste up allows for a greater degree of play on the artist’s behalf since – typically – it is used to portray an array of characters which the artist has initially created to only populate the pages of their journals and sketchbooks or the windows of their notebooks and computers. Initially that is.

Street Art on Show – Be sure to check out Creepy’s solo show Let’s Start a Fire which opens at Keith & Lottie Gallery on June 25.

—

OUTinPerth does not condone or recommend illegal paste ups.