There’s graffiti, and then there’s graffiti. The rubbish tags in the carriages on the tube are just painful to see. It’s like someone’s only recourse to making a mark in the world is to damage something.
Graffiti in general exists on the margins. And Calvin Street in Tower Hamlets. between Spitalfields and Bethnal Green Road and Brick Lane is a marginal area. Look up behind the buildings and you see the looming modern office blocks and blocks of flats, circling and waiting for their moment to pounce.
The art on Calvin Street should be preserved, but it’s not going to happen. Sooner or later the walls will be demolished and the art will go. Meanwhile, these and others are here.
I have no idea whether they are derivative, copies from comic books, or whether they are original ideas.
I like the last one – it speaks to me and I hope it is an original idea.
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