Graffiti: Art of the tag

"Bald", a graffiti writer, in an abandoned factory in Melbourne's west. Photo: Allissa Oughtred.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-04/the-art-of-graffiti-tagging/6959396
Originally posted: 4 Oct 2016, 10:09am

Tagging, the act of writing your graffiti name with spray paint or markers, is one of the most maligned, misunderstood and prosecuted forms of self expression.

From its early beginnings in struggling New York City neighbourhoods to suburban Australian alleyways, artists and some members of the public remain divided over the artistic value of graffiti.

Chapter I

Graffiti finds colour in poor New York neighbourhoods

In an era where street art and graffiti murals have never been more acceptable to society, tagging has a serious image problem: it's associated with gangs, it's considered mindless vandalism and it challenges our ideas of property ownership.

Even within graffiti culture, tagging is often overshadowed by murals or confused with other forms of graffiti marks like throw-ups (usually two letters consisting of an outline and a fill).

And if you add street art to the discussion, for the uninitiated the delineation of tagging will be as hazy as the fumes from a can of spray paint.

These factors make it difficult to have an intelligent discussion about the origins, motivations and aesthetics of tagging with even the most open-minded people.

Have we been preconditioned to dislike tagging, or is it an activity that has little or no aesthetic value?

Tags adorn a lock-up garage in the Melbourne suburb of Balaclava. Photo: Allissa Oughtred.

University of Melbourne graffiti scholar Dr Lachlan MacDowall said tagging was the cornerstone of graffiti culture that emerged from the impoverished neighbourhoods of New York in the late 1960s.

"Tagging is a prototype for a mural," he said.

"There is a direct link between a tag that became more and more ornamentalised and eventually became this full colour burner."

In 1971, when the New York Times published an article about TAKI 183 — one of the very first recorded graffiti artists — it didn't matter that he was a poor teenager from Manhattan.

At the time his tag was so prevalent on the New York City landscape, it was as recognisable as any actor with their name up in lights on Broadway.

Despite the city's high unemployment, tagging put fame, admiration and respect within reach of even the city's poorest inhabitants.

And now, more than 40 years later, tagging still offers the same rewards.

"When you're young and powerless, graffiti is an easy way — well, not that easy — to earn the respect of your peers with nothing but your own hard work," a graffiti artist from Melbourne's East named Paul said.

Paul, a graffiti artist from Melbourne’s east, walks down an alleyway. Photo:Allissa Oughtred.

Chapter II

Tourism drawcard versus illegal scrawls

In the early 1980s the first glimpses of New York graffiti arrived in Australia via documentaries such as Style Wars (1983) and books like Subway Art (1984).

And it did not take long for the culture to take root, possibly due in part to the political and protest graffiti culture that already existed in our cities, as evidenced in photographer Rennie Ellis' book Australian Graffiti (1975).

Attitudes to urban art have shifted significantly in the last four decades. Where once the vast majority of graffiti was viewed as vandalism, an explosion in street art in the late 1990s has lead to a greater appreciation of all forms of urban art, including graffiti murals. But tagging remains exempt from this shift in attitude.

A two colour tag by the late SINCH in the Melbourne suburb of Balaclava. Photo: Allissa Oughtred.

In a few short years, street art became such an important part of the Melbourne tourism experience that now it seems no trip is complete without visitors taking a selfie in one of the city's famed laneways.

Many other cities now seem keen to also capitalise on street art's popularity with tourists.

But while local governments encourage some forms of urban art at the expense of others, in terms of the law, the delineation between legal and illegal has not been so clear cut.

University of Melbourne criminology professor Alison Young said it did not matter whether it was street art, graffiti or tagging, a crime was a crime if the work was done without permission

"They [all] constitute a crime of marking graffiti or the crime of criminal damage or wilful damage," Professor Young said.

"The only difference lies in how the laws are enforced.

"In order to exercise discretion against prosecuting there needs to be some aesthetic justification, and for many people in society tagging doesn't provide that."

A city of Yarra employee removes tags from a shopfront in Collingwood, Victoria. Photo: Allissa Oughtred.

Chapter III

Australia finds its own graffiti 'wild style'

Dr MacDowall said some of the reasons people struggled with tagging was illegibility, placement and advertising-like repetition across multiple locations.

"It's intelligible in terms of communicating a message ... the placement, the way that the letters are working together; the use of materials; the flow ... none of those things are really making sense," he said.

But to deny tagging has any aesthetic value is to overlook the 40-year development of local hand styles.

As graffiti culture took root in Australia, regional styles evolved, and in Melbourne a distinctive "wild style", complete with suburban varieties, emerged.

Distinctive letterforms scrawled along train lines and could be traced back to early graffiti writers.

"You can go to Frankston and see a style that is very popular around that area, and then go to Hurtsbridge and see a completely different style," MC, DB, TSF graffiti crews member "Muscles" said.

"It's a certain type of tribalism, localism."

A graffiti writer in an abandoned Hitachi train in Melbourne's West. Photo: Allissa Oughtred.

Chapter IV

Taking tagging ownership

Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of tagging has been its placement.

Since the very first tags appeared on New York's transport network, tagging has challenged property ownership laws.

"If someone sprays a tag on your wall, [he or she] sees it as something that they have a right to alter, and that's a right, not based on like a legal writ or a document of ownership, but its a right based on proximity, from the fact that the wall kind of adjoins public space, the street, the pavement," Professor Young said.

'Jokes', a graffiti artist from Melbourne's West. Photo: Allissa Oughtred.

Much like advertising, graffiti is about impact, and many prolific taggers justify what they do as retaliation against the proliferation of corporate advertising.

"It is like the human response to hard-edge corporate logos ... that you can't go and buy at the shop," Clarke Aaron of Giant Productions, a Melbourne urban art supplies store, said.

Professor Young agreed: "One reason why tagging is challenging or unpopular, controversial, is because it's making explicit the idea that you don't have to buy into that kind of corporate culture, that you can create your own."

Although we tend to pay little attention to advertising, we are often quick to denounce tags as selfish acts of mindless vandalism.

But in a world where public space is sold off to advertisers, and where savvy brands are quick to co-opt elements of subcultures to push their products, tagging is one thing that is not for sale.

A fence with tags in the Melbourne suburb of Balaclava. Photo: Allissa Oughtred

Just like the political and protest graffiti that was once prevalent in our cities, in today's image-based culture, tagging serves as a reminder that in a democracy there will always be a way to challenge the status quo, seek notoriety, or simply engage in anonymous public mark-making.

"At the end of the day it's some paint on the wall; it doesn't matter. You can paint back over it and make it boring grey again," ZFG graffiti crew artist "Jokes" said.

Credits

• Reporting: Tim Stone

• Photography: Allissa Oughtred