Fri May 18, 2012
Artwork by Matt Fryer
Street Creed
By Matt Fryer, Bristol, UK – November 2009
Last summer it wasn’t the free admission that caused millions of people to queue up for as many as six hours outside the Bristol Museum. In fact, it was the Banksy versus the Bristol Museum exhibit they had waited in very long lines to see. The now renowned and elusive graffiti artist had made an unexpected return to his home city only to put on the largest exhibition of his work to date.
But while Banksy may be a headliner in media, he absolutely isn’t the only artist in residence in Bristol. In fact, as someone who has observed the tail end of the early days of hip hop culture in the South West since 1985, these are exciting times to be an artist in this city.
For a very long while there’s been a traditional Graffiti culture alive in Bristol and it still exists – albeit under the watchful eye of the law. What’s more from here, graffiti culture has moved throughout the rest of the world taking root in a diverse scene of letter writers, character designers and more abstract work that now incorporates a wider range of methods and approaches.
There are probably a myriad of reasons why graffiti art chose to explode early on in Bristol– a city with a strong Caribbean culture, music and arts scene. Sparked by such films as Wild Style, Beat Street and books like Subway Art and (not to mention the video for Malcolm Mclaren’s Buffalo Girls) it all really started up in 1983.
With that history in mind ‘Street Art’, ‘Graffiti Art’ or ‘Bombing’ has always had an interesting relationship with the ‘official’ art world. Often thought of as a youth movement or just plain vandalism, the art form and accompanying culture wave enjoyed a burst of high profile gallery shows during the early and mid 80’s.
Artists such as Seen, Lee, Dondi, Crash, Zephyr were the graffiti art renegades who went from trains and walls onto canvasses and gallery walls, influencing and inspiring others along their way to try their hand at this outlaw art form.
The local scene experienced a major turning point in 1985 with a gallery exhibition held at the city’s famous Arnolfini. The show included artists - mainly from Bristol - but also featured London ’s Pride from the Chrome Angelz alongside Zboys, Fade and Jaffa, BSD and Bristol legends, 3D and Nick Walker (who were to become famous names in the music and art worlds respectively).
Theses artists were some of the first to forge a new visual language using not just spray cans, but stencils, markers and paste up techniques, channeling the ideas and ethics of street art into something more personal to the artists.
This creative hotbed of art and music eventually started to spill into the style and culture magazines of the late 80’s and 90’s, spreading a unique take on hip hop culture. The Wild Bunch, Smith and Mighty and eventually Massive Attack and Portishead defined avant-garde artistic ideas with music that made tomorrow sound like now.
Fast forward to 2009 and Bristol is still a focal point for the development of the scene. Graffiti has travelled around the world and back hundreds of times, all the more evolving and mutating into new shapes (and sizes) and showing no signs of slowing down.
Banksy aside (but recognized) there is a hotbed of art activity here, from the copycat stencil artists to innovative crews like, TCF,DBZ,KTF,WHAT, collective and JAC – all of whom exist both inside and outside of the new Gallery scene which is spearheaded by Weapon Of Choice and Friend and Co.
Both these gallery’s are unique to Bristol. Weapon Of Choice evolved out of a successful street art and music based club night that is still going strong. Run by Cheba, an artist himself, the newly opened gallery has had its third show and has just released the first edition of its own magazine celebrating the vibrant street scene that has inspired them to take things a step further into the gallery world.
The Friend and Co gallery is born from a slightly different angle. Run by local art enthusiast Tom Friend, it started as a tiny window display in an old flower shop showcasing art by friends and collaborators from the Bristol area.
During the summer of 09 Friend held a series of street art inspired shows in Bedminster – a former soccer players drinking hole – as well as Bristol ’s pub, The Spotted Cow featuring artists such as Soker, Cheo, Nick Walker, Mudwig, Eko, Mr Jago, Awkward, Sainty, Paris and more.
Some have said that having shows in pubs is a strange choice, but these venues have helped spark interest amongst people who might not otherwise be exposed to the art scene. Further, Bedminster Skate Park – a permanent fixture with the UK’s graff scene since the early 80’s with its Hall Of Fame – could be viewed as a natural link to The Spotted Cow which is right up the road.
This kind of exposure has proven to be very successful. So successful that Friend and Co recently expanded their operations and now exhibits emerging and renowned artists work in a new and much larger gallery space.
Friend, who says he’s interested in “people making marks on all kinds of different surfaces – whether it’s street or urban art or fine art,” opened this new gallery recently to “a virtual roadblock of people” from Bristol and from London who were quite eager to see the new exhibit.
Along with all this positive enthusiasm for forging new paths, there is still the hardcore elite who are very anti graffiti being shown in a gallery setting – the artists who will take you by surprise with their art on the actual street, risking life limb and freedom to get their name or their art work into the public eye away from the gallery and the fickle art markets.
And it is this push and pull that makes this art-form so unique and yet out of reach to the uninitiated and weak of heart. As such it remains an unstoppable force that informs this art form and keeps it vibrant – something that Bristol’s most famous street art superstars are well aware of.
For more information have a look at
www.weaponofchoicegallery.co.uk
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