Graffiti Research

Graffiti : Street artist, Vandels, or Political free speach
 when looking at what areas to cover in our documentry there was many different roads in which we could take after looking at graffiti on the internet and the contriversal, issues surrounding the sensitive subject.

some of the questions that arose when discussing it was ; What is art? how do we define art? damage to property? and Is graffiti a form opf political free speach?

 While looking at the polictiacal side of the graffiti one name was high lighted. Banksy. bansky is a highly know UK street artist that that does political messages through his work.



a very political image that banksy has created the message saying "political and lords are a bunch of chimps"



one of the most famous pieces from banksy

I also look at the astetic appreaciation of graffiti, and how some poeple find it beautiful to look at.



a piece of work what displayed in londons south bank


There is also the criminality of graffiti. The laws on public property are very strict and anyone caught doing graffiti can be arrested and prosecuted under the Criminal Damage Act 1971. people that are found to be doing graffiti can be fined up to £5,000. If the damage caused is less than £5,000 they may be given a community service order instead of a fine.
as well as this the new Anti-social behaviour law (2003) gave local councils the power to punish offendersby making them clean illeagal graffiti. these include;

• On-the-spot fines of £50 to anyone caught doing graffiti on public property. These can be given out by police officers, community support officers or local authority officials
• Giving local authorities the power to give clean-up notices to owners of street furniture such as phone boxes if they have graffiti on them. If the property is not cleaned in 28 days the authority can remove the graffiti themselves and charge the owner for this service
• Making it an offence to sell spray paint to under-16s. If a shopkeeper can't prove they took reasonable steps to determine the age of the person, they can be fined up to £2,500.

Even with all these laws and regulations in place we find out self ask why do people still do graffiti.?

I also wanted to see the knds of different paint that is avaliable, after speaking to a graffiti artist they said the best type of paint was Montana gold. This is because of the duel pressure that the can can have so when doing a pencil thin linbe the can exerts a slow pressure and when doing a larage sapce the can then does a high pressure. This to graffiti artist of especially appealing becuase at £5.99 a can they can save paint as well as this there is over 120 different colours and for artist this means nthey can get the best possible finish and mixx the colours they want.