This site is dedicated to the beauty that is around us in the urban setting.
While I walk around the downtown area of Sacramento, California, I see the hard toll that a working life has on walls and other structures. Grafitti appears and is expunged by the maintenance guy.
This is the part I love – the attempt to cover up grafitti, with whatever color is available – browns, blues and greys are popular – and with as little effort as possible. The wall will be repainted soon anyway, so just put a block of flat color over it, just so it can’t be seen anymore.
The image to the right is a great example; In Clacton-on-Sea, the District Council obliterated a grafitti mural by Banksy after a single complaint from a visting American that it was ‘racist’, despite the mural being actually ‘anti-racist’.
You can see the ‘offensive’ work in this article.
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This then, is the “inadvertent art” that I see – it calls to me and reminds me of 20th Century abstract artworks by the likes of Mondrian, Rothko et. al. I attempt to remove the context, by simple cropping only – it’s not my place to attempt to improve on the “art” with digital tricks – I just want the work to stand out from it’s background.
I call this artistic removal of grafitti and ‘covering up’ of wear and damage with paint, “Exgrafitti”.
Please feel free to submit examples found in your own city.
Mark Urquhart, May 2016