austrailia

Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to art of an illicit nature, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives.

The term can include traditional graffiti artwork, stencil graffiti, sticker art, wheatpasting and street poster art, street video projections, art intervention, and installation art. Typically, Street Art is used to distinguish contemporary public-space artwork from territorial graffiti, vandalism, and corporate art.

The motivations and objectives that drive street artists are as varried as the artists themselves. There is a strong current of activism and subversion in urban art. Street art can be a powerful platform for reaching the public, and frequent themes include adbusting, subvertising and other culture jamming, the abolishment of private property and reclaiming the streets. Other street artists simply see urban space as an untapped format for personal artwork, while others may appreciate the challenges and risks that are associated with installing illicit artwork in public places. However the universal theme in most, if not all street art, is that adapting visual artwork into a format which utilizes public space, allows artists who may otherwise feel disenfranchised, to reach a much broader audience than traditional artwork and galleries normally allow.

Techniques

Whereas traditional graffiti artists have primarily used free-hand aerosol paints to produce their works, "street art" encompasses many other media and techniques such as wheatpasting, stickers, stencil graffiti, mosaic tiling, video projection and 3D sculpture. For these reasons street art is sometimes considered "post-graffiti". The term is also occasionally used to refer to guerilla art, a type of street art which embraces a more active, aggressive and usually covert approach to adapting public space. Street art can be found around the world and street artists often travel to other countries foreign to them so they can spread their designs.

Documentation

Wooster Collective is perhaps the most widely recognized website documenting street art. PEELmagazine is a quarterly print publication documenting sticker and stencil street art. Many books have also been published on the subject including "Street logos" by Tristan Manco and "I NY - New York Street Art" by Kelly Burns, often books documenting graffiti include street art.

Street Artists

Despite its illegal nature, prominent street artists often earn innternational attention in the form of both criticism and praise. It isn't uncommon, as in the case of Banksy or Shepard Fairey, for street artists to achieve commercial success as a result of attention received from their illegal artwork.
This is a list of prominent, internationally known street artists. For a complete list, see: List of Street Artists.

• Above (artist) - Stencil Graffiti, Sticker art (USA)
• Banksy - Stencil Graffiti, Art intervention (UK)
• D*Face - Graphic Designer, Sticker art (UK)
• Invader (artist) - Mosaics, Sticker art
• Shepard Fairey - Graphic Designer, Street Poster Art, Sticker art (USA)

See also

• Guerilla art
• Graffiti
• Reclaim the streets
• Stencil
• Street Poster Art

External links

• Godisart.com - a repository of info on graffiti & street art
• ((StickerTraders.com)) Trade Street Art with other artists from around the world.
• Woostercollective Nyc blog
• Slashø
• Ekosystem.org Street-art portal
• Interviews More than 300 street-artist interviews
• Stencil Revolution Stencil portal
• [1] Melbourne Stencil Festival
• GraffitiTVInternational graffiti videos
• Grafik Warfare Brighton based street art collective, updated regularly.
• State of flux
• Visual Resistance
• BLDD - contemporary art, street art, urban art
• pop.ac - art with stickers
• Morning News article about Swoon
• Morning News article: Round Table: Street Art (with Michael de Feo, Faile, Swoon, Dan Witz and the Wooster Collective)
• Morning News article about Mark Jenkins
• odd wall - san francisco street art
• Graffitivivo
• A photo essay on Time.com about Street Art
• Streetsy: a photographic website
• Streetres
• Street Memes
• 50mm Los Angeles
• A.R.T.I.S.T. NYC street artist advocacy
• Godisart.com - a repository of info on street art
• Gatukonst.se - street art from Sweden