Growing up first in the jungle, and then in the bush, I never really got the taste of an urban environment until high school. Even then it was more of a suburban one than something full of tall buildings, cluttered pavements, dirt, grime and honking horns. Hobart itself is only classified as a city because it would be embarrassing for the state to have a Capital Town rather than a Capital City. So when hip-hop culture finally hit me, I was hit pretty hard. I think it was Ill-Communication that did it.
Hardly anyone in school was into hip-hop, apart from me and a few Filipino guys, but we made do. Being a DJ was too expensive, being a MC was too popular, and break dancing was too hard, so I chose graffiti. Cans of paint were cheap, and tagging was easy. Sure I didn't have any sort of artistic skill, but neither did anyone else my age so it didn't matter. I'm glad that nothing remains of my 'work' though.
Stencils seemed like the perfect avenue for me, since I had nobody to teach me real graffiti writing, so I spent a lot of time doing those. To be honest I thought they were pretty good, at the time. I had a silhouette of 5 WWII soldiers fighting that I used to put everywhere, and my girlfriend helped me make a multi-layered one of the Beastie Boys that looked really good, but nothing remains of those now. Getting Hello Nasty around 2001 and hearing Mixmaster Mike turned me into the wannabe DJ that I could never convince my parents to let me be, so I gave up stencils. Seeing some works by Banksy on a trip to Bristol revived it for little while though. Seeing 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' has given me a familiar feeling in my stomach that I used to get before leaving the house at night to go and deface public/private property.
So anyway, I've always loved street art in all it's forms. I spent some time as a 'toy' watching other guys spray their pieces for a while, and I'm always very impressed with what my small city-esque town can achieve as far as talent is concerned.
I'd like people to post in this thread photos of street art in their area. If I wanted to see the best stuff from NYC/Paris trains I could Google it, so local graffiti is more interesting. I'm sure there are a lot of better stuff out there in Europe and the US than what Hobart is capable of, and I'd like to see it.
I've got loads of pictures and I'll post them all if people are interested. NOTE: NOT BY ME.
Above speech bubble says: "What a waste of time and resources"
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