News.com.au reports on Canberra politician Steve Pratt, who managed to spend several hours destroying a commissioned mural in a stunt about reducing graffiti. The MP described the work as an
obnoxious piece of vivid graffiti vandalism
and proceeded to painstakingly scrub it off the wall on which it was painted.
Unfortunately for the well-named Pratt, it was actually a mural funded by a local sporting club, who are now asking him to pay for it to be replaced. Police are also investigating whether charges should be brought against him.
Squid points to a similar incident in Britain recently where the oldest surviving work by the world’s most (in)famous street-artist, Banksy, was painted over by council workers.
The whole thing shows what a disaster it is when the state gets involved in making aesthetic judgments (another good example of this problem can be reviewed here). It is perhaps also a reflection of Australia’s extremely underdeveloped attitude to street art – outside of parts of inner Melbourne most Australian cities and towns seem to regard public spaces as entirely off-limits to art not commissioned by the local Rotary Club.
I’m not saying that Banksy’s piece in Bristol should have been painted over by the council-workers, but to me it looks like another piece of graffiti. How would they know that this particular piece of street-art is acceptable and is not to be painted over?
Good point. Actually further investigation reveals that this Banksy mural was painted over in London, but it seems to be different to the one referred to above – it’s clearly not ordinary graffiti. I’m not clear on whether these are two different episodes, or whether The Sun story is just bogus/inaccurate – I would trust the BBC over The Sun, somehow.
Actually, it looks like there have been a string of Banksy painting destructions in the UK, including the one in Bristol and several in London.
The Pratt incident was covered by Media Watch this week.
On the topic of Banksy, how can they put a value on a piece of immovable, unsellable art where the canvas is the property of (I presume) the London Underground? Or have they estimated the cost to move the wall into a gallery and re-brick the hole and arrived at the £300,000 number?