The public has had a love/hate relationship with graffiti. On the “good press” side, creatives like Banksy have made graffiti an aesthetic pleasure, applying stencils to produce technically tricky graphics with political points attached. This sort of graffiti was likely to get fashionable with the public and the artworld : visually pleasing and intellectually satisfying. This type of graffiti is now even acquired as prints on canvas, and hung on the walls of middleclass homes and office reception areas.

Yet, what of the common or garden sort - the tagger, the gangbanger sort - this sort of graffiti is often seen as hooliganism, an offence committed by the talentless. But is graffiti only an artform? To many individuals, it’s not only art, but a means to mark a neighbourhood, or even two fingers up at society : anti-establishment, anti-social, even anti-art.

Graffiti has always been a covert activity, although the results are very much public. The targeted audience is often unidentified. Is it for a rival gang? A message to a single person? To the public? Or….possibly it’s simply gratuitous and out of nothing else to do.

Whatever the reasons may be, there seems to be a permanent need to spray on walls. Some cities have acknowledged that graffiti isn’t going to go away, so they’ve designated zones where graffiti is allowed - normally uninhabited areas, but now and again more civic zones like temporary boarding surrounding urban construction sites.