We live in a culture where the media bombards and saturates our lives. Any given day we are awash in an onslaught of images, slogans and ideas, all of which are aimed at selling us something. It is no surprise then that in such an era, street art or graffiti has emerged as a prevalent and important form of expression. After all, which is likely to have more impact: that which you see squeezed in among the pages of a glossy magazine, or something spectacular, grand, well thought and well presented on a wall that you encounter on your way down to the local shops?
In the 90s, street art was still called graffiti. It had a bad rap, with many a front cover of the community newspapers dedicated to berating this work. These artists and their chosen form of expression – namely aerosol on government property – were seen in terms of how much monetary damage it caused.
This attitude persisted until the mid 90s when a local graffiti artist called Jamie Mills, or Stormie, returned from LA and initiated a youth arts project in the northern suburbs that began changing the way graffiti was viewed. Put simply, he channeled the artistic expression of an entire generation into a more productive and conducive outlet by having them decorate virtually every bus shelters north of Warwick Road.
In the past, these concrete bus shelters were prime targets for taggers. The perfunctory ugliness of these constructions often meant that those graffiti artists with more than a little nonce used them as a chance to beautify the suburbs. This was the core aim of Mills’ project, which was such a success that examples of it are still visible today.
In 1998 when the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) agreed to house the Kids At War (KAW) Exhibition, featuring murals from young and local graffiti artists, many at-risk youth. The exhibition was the first time aerosol work appeared on the walls of a Perth gallery, and it set a precedent for exhibiting large-scale pieces of intricate design.
By 2001, the young children Stormie influenced had become young adults. More importantly, they had become the AM crew, possibly one of the most influential crews to ever hit the streets of Perth. Their rich and varied work included stencils, paste ups and stickers, as well as the more traditional forms of texta and aerosol, although they did mix things up with chalk and crayons too. At the close of that year they held a group exhibition which showcased French street artist Invader, who used tiles and mosaics as his form of expression.
Now graffiti exhibitions are all the d’jour. Artrage recently exhibited the extensive Stencil Festival at The Toy Shop, while Keith & Lottie’s gallery space often features the work of emerging street artists. In future issues, it is the aim of this column to explore the rich and varied practice of this worldwide phenomenon.
