Peteskibreen's Blog

There is something backward about removing works of art to maintain order. A controlled environment, eg a gallery is the space where the filters have done their job.  In a city, galleries are beautiful and good and inspiring things. But why would someone want to chop off the digits of artists and calligraphers who have slipped by the controlled filters of law and order and made steel canvases moving galleries – indeed, art in NON-art places? A caller to ABC radio last week suggested this as a possible deterrent for the perpetrators of the “graffiti scourge” on our trains. Violence is no deterrent! While our miners demand relaxing of restrictions on toxins into our rivers and streams and insurers leave generosity out of their code of conduct post the floods, another approach to art in non-art places might be to celebrate the skill, beauty and imagination of our street artists. The national gallery [ACT] is now “collecting” street art and admits it becomes less than what it was by storing it in its white boxes. Tax payers money spent on collecting street art in safe places is some kind of violence to creative expression and could be seen as not much more than lopping off fingers and diluting the stream of creative expression.