Graffiti Alive
This past Friday, Bacardi held a competition for local graffiti artists. The eight winners had 48 hours to paint a mural ad on the north wall of The Fox and Fiddle at John and Adelaide. The finished mural should be completed tonight.
I think that it's great that local artists are getting a chance to showcase their work, but I also have some mixed feelings. It's far too easy for a large company to gain a little street-cred by co-opting the graffiti community.
So while the effort by Bacardi is a bit transparent, it's also great to have local artists painting the ads we see everyday instead of nameless agencies. It was also probably a good idea to give the press free mojitos and chicken wings.
Photos after "the jump"...
Comments (10)
It would have been interesting if this post was titled "Graffiti is Dead"
I, too, have mixed feelings about this, but would not be surprised if another graffiti artist altered the mural.
I, for one, am a fan of free mojitos and chicken wings. I'm not sure about Bacardi's strategy here...did you get the chance to talk to any of the artists and see what they felt about the promotion?
i personally know those wrtiers who painted on that wall... i know half of them just needed the money to pay lawyer fees from vandal arrests.. and anyone who tries to claim this is graffiti needs to educate themselves.......
anyone who paints a legal or commissioned anything is NOT DOING GRAFFITI... you can call it MURALING or graffiti influence design but in no way shape or form is it graffiti... GRAFFITI IS ON THE STREETS , graffiti IS illigal. if you claim to be a graff writer and you only work for corporate sponsors and do canvases for you friends moms office then you need to get your head straight.... graffiti is BOMBING anything else is just art/ design/ urban styles whatever.... if you dont get up with tags bombs and burners you are nothing but a poser...
and im sure many of those writers on that bacardi wall will tell you the same thing...
If Bacardi gets street "cred" for this, it's only fair to take it from the artists who shilled for 'em.
I am on of the artists who worked on this event. I participated in the competition and was selected to produce the final ad/mural for Bacardi.
While my feelings on the competition were definitly mixed, I was happy with the judgement made towards the final piece, and the final result overall.
I felt the competition was a bit much of a PR showoff, and we were all aware of the subtext of using graffiti to appeal to youth/promote sales and drinking...but we (the finalists) all have done work like this before and simply approached the demo/competition as we would any other graffiti festival. We came to paint, and speaking for myself, I like a little attention. Graffiti is a large part about making a name for yourself, and getting fame for what you do, no matter the obstacles.
There were a lot of amatuer artists in the competition, I think because most large corporations just dont know where to find graffiti artists, while we work publicly, and we dont all have websites (mine is www.p4design.org -plugplug ;) So overall the competition was a bit unorganized...thankfully they did ask a well established graffiti artist Duro3 (www.durothethird.com) to be a part of the judging process. Duro3's long standing experience and familarity with the graffiti community, as well as with working on many corporate art and design projects, was able to infuse some wisdom into the judging process, and keep the decision based on some solid knowledge.
For the final production, there were 8 artists: Myself (Horus)Sight, Globe, ArtChild, Kismet, Elicsr, Bacon, and Ronie. The experience levels of the groups stretched from 5 to 10+ years of painting. Graffiti being a tight knit underground community, all knew each other, and had painted collaboratively at festivals or casually in the past so the working dynamic while a bit foreign, was still at least comfortable. The supervisors treated us very nicely, and were more concerned for our safety, than a lot of the actual mural branding.
We were given an original creative concept to work with, and only the stipulations of not changing the slogan, and the logo, as well as adhering to liquor ad laws re: visual content. Other than that, which we all felt weas within reason, we had full creative control to interpret the theme of the adcampaign (a bottle splashing into liquid).
We sat together and worked out a concept that would allow us all to create our names in graffiti style, while creating an overall design scheme.
Ive posted pictures of the full mural process on my blog at: http://p4design/blogspot.com
- I understand people being skeptical of the whole process, but were all big boys, and we know what's at stake. Graffiti writers are some fo the most exploited artists out there because we work publicly, and often can't even take credit for our passion, which many could say creates the texture of life in the city, that makes everything so vibrant and raw.
H-p4d
Oh, and yes, graffiti is bombing, tags, and burners, (that stuff you all hate)...we all know what graffiti ist, and what this was, there is no mistaking that disitinction...but any writer in the city will look at that was, and say yes, those are some tight pieces, this is a hot mural...
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