Continuing on with my internal debate around street art and gentrification, I found this article at Wooster Collective “30 Pixadores stormed the Choque Cultural Gallery in protest against the “marketing, institutionalization and domestication of Street Art’ by the galleries and media“. I am not sure I am with the Pixadores on this, as I am more for deconstruction rather than destruction – I don’t call myself a postmodern housewife for nothing. However “domestication” is a much better term than gentrification for taking street art indoors. I had a brief discussion via email about this issue some time ago with one of the guys from Streetarse and also a LONG debate on Artbash has made me feel better about it over time.
And so I have ventured into domestication myself with my first purchase of this stencil art by Hawkes Bay artist Graspone.
Described as “one-off hand painted/stencilled renditions of trainyard graffiti” and what I think is the best in this series. I can see similarities to work by SOLE (which I love and dag-nam-it missed his show at Manky Chops recently). Personally I think he has huge potential.
Graspone an emerging artist* in this area, is now at design school in Wellington and has also recently been involved in a great Council grafitti initiative in Hastings creating a free legal space to display work on the seven pillars of a bridge between Napier and Hastings.
Grasonpone’s work on Hawkes Bays first legal grafitti bridge (Click image for larger pic).
This kind of initiative has to be good, even though some in the street art fraternity see ‘legals’ as a form of domestication. Jacqui Barnes from the council said “not everyone will approve of giving taggers a free legal space to work on, but at least it will keep some off the streets.“ I am not so sure that “off the streets” is necessarily a good thing, but on the other hand its great to be able to sit here at my desk and look at some really good stencil art. But now I am wondering if I should frame it….?
*I say emerging rather than young because ,well, everyone is younger than me in this area right?
Tags: Graspone, Manky Chops, Sole, Street art
