How does the city appear to its citizens? What is the impact of street art upon that appearance? Neither a purely legal nor an aesthetic approach can fully answer these questions. By focusing on the conditions that allowed street art to emerge as a distinctive urban cultural practice, and the characteristics that allow us to define whether an image is ‘street art’, ‘graffiti’, or some other kind of public intervention, this research provided an original framework for understanding the advent and impact of street art upon the contemporary city. With many jurisdictions adopting increaisngly harsh strategies to deal with illicit street art, the stakes for those involve din this cultural practice are high, and this research examined the ways in which the criminal law, property law, and definitions of ‘art’ and ‘crime’ have responded to the appearance of street art within city spaces.
related publications
(2014) Street Art, Public City
(2010, with Ghostpatrol, Miso and Timba Smits) Street/ Studio: The Place of Street Art in Melbourne (Thames & Hudson Australia
(2010) ‘Negotiated consent or zero tolerance?’ City
Researchers
Alison Young
