Women on Walls | Engaging street art through the eyes of female artists

Alix Maria Beattie

Master of Research Thesis

Western Sydney University

2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I am truly thankful for the support and guidance of my supervisory panel, Dr Rachel Bentley and Professor Lynette Sheridan-Burns. In particular, my primary supervisor Rachel, who not only guided me through my research but offered an endless amount of support, critical engagement and general brainstorming driven by a love of street art. Lynette’s experience, words of encouragement and sharp red pen provided me with the right advice at the right time.

I am also thankful to my artists: Mini Graff, Kaff-eine, Buttons, Vexta and Baby Guerrilla. They were generous in their time, thoughts, art, and passion. This work is only possible because of them.

To all my lecturers throughout my Master of Research journey – particular Dr Jack Tsonis and Dr Alex Norman – who were tireless in their efforts, helping me become the writer and researcher I am today. Likewise, I want to thank Dominique Spice for creating such a supportive environment for all of us MRes students.

To my fellow MRes students - Toshi and in particular Lucie and Beth (aka the awesome clams) – you are all, without doubt the best part of completing this research. Awesome clams, you provided continuous support and good humour –I truly thank you both.

Finally, to my friends and family who have been relentless in their support via texts and calls – you know who you are and I am eternally grateful. A special mention and thank you to my wonderful sister Clasina and great friend Tanya, who did a final read through of my thesis.

To my husband James – thank you for everything – your love and support through this thesis has meant the world to me.

Image on Title Page - Alice Pasquini – Madrid, Spain – Photograph by Author, 2017

STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION

The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledge in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or at any other institution.

……………………………..

Alix Maria Beattie

CONTENTS

TABLE OF FIGURES I

ABSTRACT II

CHAPTER 1 | INTRODUCTION 1

RESEARCH QUESTIONS 2 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 3 GRAFFITI 4 STREET ART CLASSIFICATION 8 SUBCULTURE 13 STREET ART DEFINITION 14 FRAMEWORKS 16 CULTURAL AND SOCIAL DIMENSION 16 INTERNET & SOCIAL MEDIA 18 GENDER 19 CHAPTER SUMMARY 20

CHAPTER 2 | METHODOLOGY 21

MIXED METHOD APPROACH 22 ARTISTS 24 MINI GRAFF 25 BUTTONS (CHERIE LYNCH) 26 BABY GUERRILLA 27 KAFF-EINE 28 VEXTA 30 INTERVIEWING 31 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWING 32 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 33 ARTS-BASED RESEARCH 34 DATA ANALYSIS 35 PRACTICE-LED RESEARCH 38 PRACTICE LED RESEARCH | @BEATSTREETART 39

CHAPTER 3 | CULTURAL AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK 41 CONVERSATIONS 42 WHO IS THE AUDIENCE? 42 COMMUNICATION AND THE AUDIENCE 43 TRANSLATIONS 43 DIALOGUES AND INTERPRETATIONS 44 CREATION OF MEANING 47 LAWS & REGULATIONS 49 RE-SHAPING OF NEIGHBOURHOODS AND COMMUNITIES 51 COMMUNITIES CREATED 52 CASE STUDY | MINI GRAFF 54 CHAPTER SUMMARY 55

CHAPTER 4 | INTERNET & SOCIAL MEDIA 56 SOCIAL MEDIA 57 DOCUMENTATION OF ARTWORKS 58 SPACE 60 VIRTUAL SPACE 60 URBAN SPACE AS THE VIRTUAL SPACE 62 NETWORKS 62 NETWORKED INDIVIDUALISM 64 NETWORKED SYSTEMS 65 NETWORKS CREATED 67 CONNECTIONS 68 CASE STUDY | BUTTONS & MAID 69 CHAPTER SUMMARY 71

CHAPTER 5 | GENDER ANALYSIS 72

GENDER ROLES AND STEREOTYPING 73 THE FEMINIST LENS 74 RISE OF FEMALE ARTISTS 76 ‘I HAVE TO GO ABOVE AND BEYOND’ 79 AUTONOMOUS ARTIST 80 SAFETY 82 DOCUMENTATION 83 CHAPTER SUMMARY 84

CHAPTER 6 | KEY FINDINGS 85 ADVERTISING 85 AUDIENCE INTERACTION 87 NETWORKS 89 SAFETY: THE CITY IS ‘OURS’ 91 GENDER 91

CHAPTER 7 | CONCLUSION 93 IDENTIFY 93 INTERACT 94 INTERPRET 94 FINAL SUMMARY 95

REFERENCES 96

APPENDICES 100 APPENDIX A – INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 100

TABLE OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1 - ‘TAGS’ - ARTISTS UNKNOWN – NEWTOWN, SYDNEY 5 FIGURE 2 - ‘THROWIES’ - MAID & RETRO – NEWTOWN, SYDNEY 6 FIGURE 3 - ‘MASTERPIECES’ OR ‘PIECES’ - ATOME, TEAZER & SPICE – PARRAMATTA, SYDNEY 6 FIGURE 4 - ‘MURAL’ - KAFF-EINE - BONDI JUNCTION, SYDNEY 9 FIGURE 5 - ‘STENCIL’ - E.L.K – BRUNSWICK, MELBOURNE 10 FIGURE 6 - ‘SCULPTURE’ - WILL COLES – NEWTOWN, SYDNEY 11 FIGURE 7 - ‘PASTE-UP’ – BE-FREE - REDFERN, SYDNEY 11 FIGURE 8 - MINI GRAFF – SURRY HILLS, SYDNEY 25 FIGURE 9 - MINI GRAFF – SURRY HILLS, SYDNEY 25 FIGURE 10 - BUTTONS – CBD, WOLLONGONG 26 FIGURE 11- BUTTONS, CHAIGO & CHOQ – FITZROY, MELBOURNE 26 FIGURE 12 - BABY GUERRILLA - FOOTSCRAY, MELBOURNE 27 FIGURE 13 - BABY GUERRILLA - CBD, MELBOURNE 27 FIGURE 14 - KAFF-EINE - CBD, MELBOURNE 28 FIGURE 15 - KAFF-EINE - BRUNSWICK, MELBOURNE 29 FIGURE 16 - KAFF-EINE - FITZROY, MELBOURNE 29 FIGURE 17 - VEXTA & ELLE - CBD, MELBOURNE 30 FIGURE 18 - VEXTA - CBD, MELBOURNE 30 FIGURE 19 - @BEATSTREETART INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT 40 FIGURE 20 - MINI GRAFF - SURRY HILLS, SYDNEY 48 FIGURE 21 - MINI GRAFF – UNCLE MIKE 55 FIGURE 22 - BUTTONS AND MAID - NEWTOWN SYDNEY 70 FIGURE 23 - KAFF-EINE – BENALLA, VIC 88

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ABSTRACT

Street art has become increasingly common in urban landscapes around the world. As an outgrowth of the modern graffiti movement, and fuelled today by social media, street art has moved from subversive origins to become a highly prized art form, including the commissioning of new works, and gallery representation. However, like the subculture from which it stems, street art remains a masculine domain, despite increasing numbers of female artists being recognised in the field. This research focuses on five artists who identified as female and contribute to street art practices. It specifically investigates how these female artists identify, interact and interpret the subculture of street art. As such, the current literature is expanded by exploring the cultural and social frameworks of street art, the impact of the internet and social media, the role of gender and bringing the contribution of women into focus.

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Chapter 1 | INTRODUCTION

“I like the anonymity and freedom this form of art poses”

Baby Guerrilla, 2017

Over the last decade, working within a small, independent art gallery, I have witnessed a number of changes in the Australian art industry including the rise of street art in popularity. My personal experience has highlighted how this art form has come to challenge the viewer. The audience faced a new art form that broke free from the “white cubes” of gallery spaces (Austin, 2010). Artworks were location specific, utilising the physical walls of the street as the canvas replacement. Due to the historical nature of the origins of street art in the graffiti movement, with its gang affiliations and illegal aspects of marking the city undercover at night, a masculine culture has come to dominate this subculture (Macdonald, 2001).

As I will discuss in this research, this masculine culture has transferred to the street art subculture, despite the context of production being different for graffiti artists and street artists. There are relatively few female street artists in comparison to the male artists, arguably because the subculture’s historical strong links to the graffiti culture are still remnant (Macdonald, 2016). This exegesis explores the subculture from a female artist perspective, through a mixed method approach including qualitative interviews and practice–led research.

Street art continues to reveal and establish new research areas due to the multiple frameworks of the subculture. In contemporary Australian contexts, the following dimensions have emerged: legal aspects, which incorporate the ownership of the streets with the concept of the ‘public city’ (Young, 2014); social and cultural frameworks including the networking and collaborations between artists (MacDowall, 2015); the influence of technology, such as the internet (Drew, 2012); street art’s ability to ‘activate space’ and aid in the de-criminalisation of graffiti (McAuliffe, 2012, p. 190); the use of planning instead of policy against the ‘war on graffiti’ (Iveson, 1

2010); and photo-documentary practices document these normally ephemeral artworks (Cubrilo, Harvey & Stamer, 2009; Vassallo, 2009). And, as noted, one area that is often ignored is the work of female artists and the gendered dimension of the practice.

Research Questions

In this research, I focus on five artists who identified as female and contributed to street art practice between January 2016 and August 2017. Through investigating how these female artists identify, interact and interpret the subculture of street art, I will examine the following research questions:

1. Why do female artists select this medium – and how do they identify with the genre? 2. Does gender play a role in the artists’ participation in the street art subculture and does this affect their self-identification? 3. Through the street art medium, what dialogues are created between the female artist and the audience?

These research questions are applied and discussed through specifically analysing three identified frameworks: • the subculture of Australian street art; • the influence of the Internet and social media on the practice of street art, and • a gender analysis of the subculture.

By engaging with these frameworks in the context of current research, this research is a critical analysis of female street artists and their involvement in this traditionally masculine subculture. It provides further insight into the subculture as a primary analysis of why female artists select this medium as an art form, allowing for greater visibility of female artists in the subculture.

Due to the limitations in both scope and time, five female artists were selected to participate. The five artists selected are either Australian-born or currently live in

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Australia and have conducted artistic practices during 2016 -2017. Each artist has a social media account and the degree to which this is used as a communication tool with their audience varies. The participating artists were: Kaff-eine, Mini Graff, Buttons (Cherie Lynch), Baby Guerrilla and Vexta.

This research is not intended to be definitive. It is a primary analysis of a selected group of female artists and aims to add to the developing body of research on street art, specifically focused on female artists conducting street art practices.

To contextualise the female street artist experience, I will now give an overview of the graffiti movement, identify the broader classifications of the practices reflected in ‘street art’, before turning to provide a definition of street art developed for this research.

Background to the study

The definition of street art is in perpetual debate, for the art form is varied in both media and imagery (MacDowall, 2014; Wacławek, 2011; Young, 2014). Before ascribing a working definition to street art, and its relationship to the graffiti movement, it is important to look at the historical context of these subcultures.

Street art emerged as a medium in London (UK) and New York (USA) during the 2000s, as a way of viewing art outside of gallery spaces. Wacławek (2011) found that street art has the capacity to simultaneously challenge and alter the urban landscape, and that using the street as a canvas transforms the ways in which the audience connects with, and views artworks. It also creates conversations between the community and the artwork produced (Biedarieva, 2016), affects how audiences assign meaning to artworks (Schacter, 2014), and re-shapes and humanises the urban landscape (Blanché, 2015). Artworks can actively respond to current events (Bull, 2015), and consequently challenge the placement of artworks from the crisp white walls of the traditional settings of gallery and institutions, to creating artwork within the urban environment (Riggle, 2010).

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Street art and graffiti are often interrelated and interchangeable, and the links between these two subcultures becomes evident by analysing the various meanings and descriptions of works and practices. This link is perfectly captured by Dickens (2008), who argues that street art can be described as “post graffiti” (p. 472). Graffiti can be described in multiple ways including a “…range of physical marks…placed on surfaces through the built environment” (Crisp, Clarke, & Frederick, 2014, p.84), as a mark making practice (Baird & Taylor, 2016; Crisp et al., 2014), a medium for self- expression (Truman, 2010), as well as vandalism (Little & Sheble,1987). These descriptions noted can be applied to both graffiti and street art.

Graffiti

Graffiti is dated to Ancient Mediterranean cities during the c. 700 BCE – 500 CE (Baird & Taylor, 2016). Here, graffiti markings were placed in homes, on the street, and in religious sights. They were conversations, a means of documenting memories, political or social responses of the time and amusing images or words. The etymology of the word ‘graffiti’ is argued as emerging from the term ‘Sgraffitto’ which relates to a technique of scratched patterns that were used during the renaissance for the façade of houses (Blanché, 2015).

This thesis draws upon the modern graffiti movement which began in Philadelphia in the late 1960s (Wacławek, 2011). Street art developed from the modern graffiti movement which began in Philadelphia and New York during the 1960s and 1970s (Blanché, 2015; Wacławek, 2011; Young, 2014). Graffiti writers used the urban landscape for the marking of territories, by writing and inscribing their names into the urban environment. This marking of territories was used as both a means of communication between the artists (Snyder, 2009), as well as an affiliation with gang culture (Phillips, 2016).

Phillips (2016) states that gangs, “used graffiti to define neighbourhood space, to create lists of members, to signal affiliation, identify, enmity or alliance with other individuals or groups” (p.48). This defining of space and the controlling of territories created links of masculinity to the graffiti subculture. These practices were illegal due

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to the perceived vandalism of private property. The high-risk activity of gangs accessing hard to reach spaces in the middle of the night, cemented the masculine nature of the graffiti subculture.

Graffiti writers would mark their territories by using a specific style of graffiti called ‘tagging’ or ‘tags’ (see Figure 1). Artists would spray paint or draw using a permanent marker, their name or pseudonym ‘street name’ in the urban environment. By completing this act, graffiti writers created their own identities by marking the urban environment.

Figure 1 - ‘Tags’ - Artists unknown – Newtown, Sydney

Photograph by Author, 2016

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Graffiti writers expanded their practices by developing larger tags called ‘throwies’, with the addition of colour and a change of typography (see Figure 2). These larger ‘throwies’ enabled artists to break form the restriction of the tags, which were limited to a quick repeated execution of their street name. With the addition of colour and change in typography, graffiti artists began to showcase their own individual artistic talents and practices (Wacławek, 2011).

Figure 2 - ‘Throwies’ - Maid & Retro – Newtown, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2016

The next phase of this expanding practice was the emergence of ‘masterpieces’ or ‘pieces’ (see Figure 3). These were larger ‘throwies’ which were more elaborate, involving additional colour and symbols on a larger scale (Wacławek, 2011).

Figure 3 - ‘Masterpieces’ or ‘Pieces’ - Atome, Teazer & Spice – Parramatta, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2016

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With links to gang culture, graffiti has historically been location-based: that is, the art has been used as a mechanism to mark territorial claims by gang members (Wacławek, 2011). This connection to gang culture and the illegality of graffiti can be linked with the socially constructed gender roles of masculinity that are tied to the movement. Gangs were predominantly male, and the constructed gender roles created a masculine environment that deterred women from becoming part of the subculture (Macdonald, 2001).

Macdonald (2001) argues that male graffiti writers would, “…construct and confirm their masculine identities” (p. 96) through graffiti. Over the next two decades the graffiti movement attracted some female artists, however, these female artists needed to adapt to certain aspects of the subculture to become accepted.

In reviewing the literature covering graffiti, the omittance of female street artists presents a gap in the academic discourse. Despite this, there are some exceptions, Bentley (2015), McGaw (2008) and Young (2014, 2016) in the Australian context and Macdonald (2001) in an American context. Likewise, in the non-academic art-based literature, few female street artists are featured with the exception of Lady Pink, who often discusses the need for female artists to express certain masculine qualities. It is here that this research contributes to the emerging analysis of the street art movement. By focussing on female street artists, this research examines the unique experiences of female street artists and how they reflect on their practices within a masculine environment.

Snyder (2009) argues that there have been female writers from the beginning of the graffiti movement albeit a minority in comparison to the number of male artists. The first female graffiti artist identified was Lady Pink (Kreizman, 2013; Snyder, 2009). She was raised in New York, and began painting subway trains from 1979 (Siegel, 1993). From the age of 21, Lady Pink began exhibiting in galleries as well as creating works for the street. Being one of the first women to be part of this subculture, she confronted socially constructed gender roles by adopting her own form of masculinity:

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We defend our artworks with our fists and our crazy courage. When you have guys that disrespect you, you’re gonna have to teach them a lesson, otherwise they are going to keep walking all over you (Lady Pink, n.d). 1

Lady Pink’s statement responds to the masculinity, as she states her ‘fists’ and ‘our crazy courage’ implies the nature of the masculine socially constructed gender roles that are required to be a graffiti writer. This response shows the masculine environment that encompassed the graffiti movement. Street art as an extension of graffiti, a masculine environment is evident and is still reverberating through the subculture. While this background is fundamental in understanding the current street art movement, a more detailed discussion of this is beyond the scope of this thesis. Street art is the focus of this research, though the importance of understanding the historical background of the graffiti movement will establish new insights and analysis of the subculture of street art.

As mentioned, street art can be classified as ‘post-graffiti’ (Dickens, 2008), linking the subculture to graffiti roots. It can also be argued that the masculine environment that surrounded the graffiti subculture has extended into the street art movement (McAuliffe, 2012; Wacławek, 2011). While the street art movement has involved more women in the current decade (Macdonald, 2016), to understand these themes a background overview of graffiti practices is required to understand the current classifications of street art.

Street art classification

There are multiple definitions and taxonomies in academic discourse for both street art and graffiti – each one must be considered individually as well as the way they interrelate. This interrelationship is captured by Dickens (2008) who argues that street art can be best described as ‘post graffiti’. The two movements intertwine with the artworks located on the streets, using motifs which could be argued as the same as ‘tagging’ a name. The name can be seen though the images that are created or the specific use of symbols. ‘Post graffiti’ can be ‘mark-making’ as well as ‘image-

1 Brooklyn Museum. (n.d). Lady Pink. Retrieved from https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/lady-pink Accessed 25 April 2016. 8

making’ (Schacter, 2013, p. 10). Schacter (2013) discusses these mark-making practices which are embedded into the urban landscape.

Street art also encompasses multiple media, freeing the artists from just the use of a spray can and tagging their name, though sitting alongside the graffiti movement, sharing the ideals of using the street as a canvas (Macdonald, 2016). These medias include murals, stencils, sculptures and paste-ups (Dickens, 2008; Wacławek, 2011). Murals are large-scale works which can be both sanctioned and un-sanctioned. (see Figure 4).

Figure 4 - ‘Mural’ - Kaff-eine - Bondi Junction, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2016

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Stencils are images that are created using layers of cardboard stencils spray painted onto the urban landscape. These stencils can be single or multi-layered (see Figure 5).

Figure 5 - ‘Stencil’ - E.L.K – Brunswick, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2016

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Sculptures, as the name suggests, are monuments of some kind, created to fit in with the urban environment. These reflect the graffiti works specifically placed in the urban landscape, and as such, are most frequently location specific (see Figure 6).

Figure 6 - ‘Sculpture’ - Will Coles – Newtown, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2016

The next category are paste-ups – which can also be called posters. Paste-ups are posters designed to be exhibited in the urban environment (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 - ‘Paste-up’ – Be-Free - Redfern, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2017 11

Through its use of multiple medias, street art can be understood as “…a contemporary style of inscribing the city” (Dickens, 2008, p. 473). These inscriptions can be compared to the definition of graffiti as physical marks (Crisp et al., 2014).

Historically, street art can be argued as individual artists’ expression of their thoughts and ideas (Wacławek, 2011). The physical location of a work is selected by the artist to either juxtapose their artwork or respond to another artist’s artwork.

Through the artists’ work with different media, elements such as location, repetitive imagery, repeated text and repeated ideas interrelate in the works. Schacter (2016), for example, argues that graffiti is a text based marking with the use of permanent marker, paint and spray paint – consisting of tags, pieces and throw-ups. This contrasts with street art, which is image-based markings that use a more extensive range of media consisting of murals, stencils, paste-ups and sculpture in urban landscapes.

Baird and Taylor (2016) argue that graffiti is bound by, “…convention, context and performance” (p. 22). This interpretation of graffiti allows for understanding of the expansion into multiple media that characterises street art. Street art’s emergence, following these ideas, has allowed for the practice to expand and challenge these environments. Yet again, these links create a way to understand how street art and graffiti are so intertwined.

Blanché (2015) defines street art as follows:

Street art consists of self-authorized pictures, characters and forms created in or applied to surfaces in the urban space that intentionally seek communication with a larger circle of people. Street art is done in a performative and often site-specific, ephemeral and participatory way (p. 33).

This current definition supports Schacter’s (2016) theories around image and text and Baird and Taylor’s (2016) discussion on how both subcultures can take on these aspects of communicating with the viewer. Most definitions lead to the concept ‘marking’ of a city. 12

This brief overview shows the interrelation of both movements and how street art draws on multiple aspects of graffiti, including the connection to masculine culture is repeated in street art practices. Both street art and graffiti are acknowledged as subcultures, and it is important to define ‘subculture’ and why both these movements can be said to meet the definition.

Subculture

It is important to define how the concept of ‘subculture’ is employed in my analysis. Within societies, structures are systematically organised through a set of hidden rules that are comprised of codes and conventions. Drawing from Hebdige (1979), subcultures both create and form new identities within a group that consequently produce meaning. Subcultures form to endorse but more frequently to challenge societal norms that are captured by the abovementioned codes and conventions. Individuals within a subculture who use the many signs as communication, which in turn both creates and reinforces meaning.

Subcultures most frequently challenge the hegemonic norms of the everyday by creating another way of thinking, and as such, challenge the ‘unwritten rules of culture’ (Hebdige, 1979). This is summarised by Hebdige (1979) as follows:

Subcultures represent ‘noise’ (as opposed to sound): interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media (p. 90).

Snyder (2009) also found ‘noise’ that challenges the ‘orderly sequences’ in the graffiti subculture focussed on subway ‘pieces’ and ‘burners’ in the United States. He described how graffiti writers come together and paint or ‘mark’ trains – placing their names out into the public domain and challenging the orderly functioning of commuting: they alter the stale and orderly environment.

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A second dimension of the practices of the graffiti subculture is the way it interrogates the separation of public and private property. The movement confronts both the legal and ‘unwritten’ rules of society by challenging the orderly sequence of property law and separation between the public and private. These subcultures exhibit their artworks on the street, even though it is deemed illegal, allowing commuters to enjoy the break from the mundane of the everyday. As quoted in Cooper (2008), Artist Claes Oldenburg stated in 1973 in New York Magazine:

You’re standing there in the station, everything is gray and gloomy, and all of a sudden one of those graffiti trains slides in and brightens the place (Oldenberg, 1973, as cited in Cooper, 2008 p.71).2

This combination of challenging both formal and unwritten rules explains why the discussions surrounding graffiti either vilify or praise the subculture (Baird & Taylor, 2016). This is evident today with the use of cities to attract tourists (Brown, 2015; Evans, 2016; McGaw, 2008; Young, 2014). Melbourne’s publicity of graffiti and street art practices promotes tourism in Victoria.3 Simultaneously, however, the subculture is discouraged through harsh enforcement of property rights with graffiti writers and street artists criminally prosecuted if they ‘damage’ the urban environment.4 This highlights how subcultures can both reinforce and challenge the norms of society. By defining how subcultures are formed, and applying the background to graffiti and investigating the academic classification of street art, I have created a more holistic definition of street art for the purpose of this research.

Street Art Definition

My definition of street art draws on three specific qualities that best capture the subculture: artwork, location and audience. The type of artwork can be a mural, piece or any the other classifications used above. Street art, as the name suggests,

2 The first anti-graffiti law was passed in 1972, by New York Mayor John Lindsay – It stipulated “no person could write, paint or draw inscriptions, shapes or marks of any kind on public property” – see Cooper (2008). 3 City of Melbourne (n.d) What’s on. Retrieved from http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Placestogo/PublicArt/Pages/StreetArt.aspx Accessed 7 May 2016. 4 Crime Prevention, Victorian Government. (n.d). Laws and penalties for graffiti vandalism. Retrieved from https://www.crimeprevention.vic.gov.au/resources/graffiti/laws-and-penalties-for-graffiti-vandalism Accessed 7 May 2016. 14

is art that appears on the street, and can be described as, “…a fresh and unexpected new skirmish line in modern art” (Austin, 2010, p. 44). As such, it is an art practice that uses site-specific spaces in the urban landscape. The practice varies in media and location, regardless of whether the artwork is sanctioned or un- sanctioned.

There are three dimensions to the definition of street art used here. First, street art defies the gallery space by increasing the audience. Artworks on the street reach a larger audience than the confinements of the gallery. Secondly, its location – the street – is the focus of the artwork (Danysz, 2010). Artists use the street as a type of canvas to produce their artworks, thereby creating conversations between the artist and the viewer. These conversations are created by the confrontation and surprise element of viewing artworks in the street. This creates a disruption of thought, for the audience is exposed to artwork without knowing, altering the audiences thought process. This street context is key to understanding the difference between graffiti and street art, for the interactions with the audience are different.

Audience is the third dimension. This is captured in Bentley’s (2015) interview with Jaklyn Babington of the National Gallery of Australia, who argues that it is the audience of each practice that signifies the difference between movements. Babington noted that graffiti writers speak to other graffiti writers, whereas the audience of street art is anyone who encounters the work.

Both street art and graffiti use the street as a canvas, regardless whether it is sanctioned or un-sanctioned. Street art and graffiti overlap – creating conversations with the location and different audiences. Though the two movements remain separate, it is important to note how street art has stemmed from graffiti, and the interrelated qualities that both encompass: that is, location, art form be it image or text based, and the conversations with the specified audience. Such conversations are created by the image that disrupts the thoughts of the viewer. It is the audience that is the defining quality that separates the two practices.

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Frameworks

By acknowledging the background of graffiti, it is evident that street art has stemmed from the modern-day graffiti movement. Our focus has been placed on the culture that surrounds the practice and how this aids in the conversations that are created between the artist and the audience – which, as I have noted, is a defining characteristic of street art.

In this section, I will outline three broad frameworks that highlight the varying ideas, practices and motivations of the female artists to gain insights how they negotiate this medium. By looking at different frameworks, the motivations of the artist’s practices emerge. These frameworks are: the cultural and social framework, the use of the internet and social media, and gender.

The frameworks are used to provide insight into the work of the female artists – and an understanding of their practice. It is important to note that the three frameworks selected are interrelated and interconnected much like the subcultures of street art and graffiti.

Cultural and social dimension

Recent research has investigated the social, cultural and political ideas behind the street art subculture. Social aspects include interactions that occur between the artist, the artwork and the viewers, and the impacts of these conversations within the community (Brighenti, 2016). The cultural dimensions include street art as a medium, and how the artworks interact with, and navigate the urban landscape (McAuliffe, 2012). The political aspects include highly politicised visualisations and placements of the artworks (Hansen & Danny, 2015).

The cultural framework encompasses multiple dimensions, and four key themes emerge that reflect this definition. These are: dialogues, regulations, altering of neighbourhoods and the created communities. Current research into the dialogues that are created draws on translations, dialogue, and interpretations of artworks across the community (Biedarieva, 2016; Hansen & Danny, 2015). Schacter (2014) 16

discusses how street artworks can be viewed as cultural artefacts because artists and viewers assign meaning to the created work. This assigning of meaning allows for an interaction with the artworks located in the urban environments.

A key dimension in understanding street art is a discussion and analysis of the laws and regulations within society, that can negatively impact the subculture (Young, 2014). Street art and graffiti simultaneously can be viewed as vandalism and visual pollution or, in contrast, as highly prized artworks.

A further dimension within the cultural framework is the influence that street art has in re-shaping and altering neighbourhoods. Street art has the ability to potentially revitalise neighbourhoods and communities.5 This re-shaping and humanising of the isolating urban landscape is an outcome of our modern culture (Blanché, 2015). This change projects a positive dimension onto the subculture, in comparison to the negative impacts of the laws. In saying that, in Brighenti’s (2016) analysis of street art through a Marxist lens, concerns are raised about the valorisation of the art form. This position here is that street art can potentially alter economic relationships as it ‘adds value’ to neighbourhoods, displacing the economically vulnerable.

The final dimension is to look at the communities created by the artists themselves. This aspect can be drawn from the biological concept of ‘stigmergy’, that relates to the way termites work both collectively and individually. MacDowall (2015) argues that street artists reflect a similar pattern. Drawing on this perspective allows for an understanding of Riggle (2010), who looks at communities that form around private and public institutions through working with street art. Riggle (2010) argues that street art challenges these institutions, creating a blurred line between the public and private gallery. Through economic models of acquisition, marketing and featured prominence, galleries and institutions can influence artistic practices. By comparison, artists who use the street as a canvas have more freedom in artistic practice.

5 Ford, M. (2017, April, 3). Street art replaces graffiti through Sydney art program connecting artists and property owners. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-03/street-art-replaces-unwanted-graffiti-in-sydneys- inner-west/8385372 Accessed 3 April 2017.

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By understanding this complex interplay within the cultural dimension, we can also gain insights into the ways in which female artists identify, interact and interpret the subculture of street art within a practice that is fuelled by “…gender prejudices” (Parisi, 2015, p.60). Analysing the cultural framework can also lead to a dissection of the socially constructed gender roles that are instilled in the subculture.

Internet & Social Media

The second framework refers to the influence of the internet and social media. Street art is used as a method of creating conversations (Biedarieva, 2016; Hansen & Danny, 2015) and these conversations are a direct engagement with the visual works. However, the internet and social media are challenging the notion of ‘location’, because artworks are shared via distributed networks. This is discussed by Young (2014) who argues that, “urban space has become the virtual space” (p. 159). Street art is now accessible across the world and is no longer confined to any single location. An artwork can be physically located in a street in Melbourne, but the internet has allowed for the image to be broadcast across the world. This enables conversations to be between the artwork, the artist and the viewer to occur, on both a local and global scale (Warf & Arias, 2009).

Due to the nature and spread of this visual media it is important to note that photographers such as Lou Chamberlin (2013, 2015), Duro Cubrilo et al. (2009) and Rafael Schacter (2013) have been crucial to the documentation of street art. The internet has allowed for the sharing of images which document artworks that are otherwise ephemeral. This process is valuable for it documents the artworks and the motifs associated with each artist – particularly as many artists do not sign their works. Specific artists remain anonymous and others rarely sign un-commissioned works due to the legal implications (Parisi, 2015).

This crossing over of the physical and virtual world, including the merging of artist and audience, has created a “hyper-fertility” (Drew, 2012, p. 42) through networks between multiple people. This in turn expands the conversations that are created, as noted above.

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It can be argued that the use of social media and the internet has redefined to some extent the ways in which female street artists situate themselves within the subculture of street art. The ‘hyper-fertility’ that Drew (2012) discusses can also be applied to what Warf and Arias (2009, p.1) call “the spatial turn”. The internet has allowed cross-world interactions to occur, where space is no longer defined by physical terms only. These different dimensions of space have developed due to technological advancements that are increasing the space in which interactions can now occur (Goodchild & Janelle, 2010).

These interactions are evident in Macdonald (2016), who argues that we can gain insights into the ways in which the internet and social media impact female street artists. Artists use these networks as way of creating communities, while still working as individuals (Macdonald, 2001) – linking to MacDowall’s (2015) abovementioned concept of ‘stigmergy’. Social media encourages the ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ of ideas which contributes to artists forming networks not limited by geography.

By understanding the ways in which the internet and social media are now key to street art practices, it is important to note that these two themes of the cultural framework and the internet work together collectively. In addition, the third framework of gender that I will now introduce, intertwines with the above-mentioned themes.

Gender

The third theme investigates the gendered nature of street art. While historical connections from the graffiti subculture continue to support a masculine environment (Macdonald, 2001), new cultural frames and the increasing influence of the internet has altered the landscape. This creates a space for female artists to be judged on merit and seen as autonomous artists, not judged via gender prejudices (Parisi, 2015). Due to the masculine culture and the prejudices that Parisi (2015) discusses, the impact of gender roles have influenced the movement. These gender roles are socially constructed (Buiten, 2015). The impact of these socially constructed gender

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roles creates stereotyping and false expectations (Cunningham & Macrae, 2011). Cunningham and Macrae (2011) argue this leads to an “…insidious societal problem, creating false expectations and related cues” (p. 599).

Parisi (2015) discusses that female artists want to be seen as artists, not ‘female street artists’ (p. 61). If this does not happen, Parisi (2015) argues that female artists will continue to be viewed as a spectacle and not aligned with their male counter parts.

Macdonald (2016) found that female graffiti writers are subjected to greater scrutiny than their male counterparts, for they are exposed to sexual innuendos and have their dedication challenged. This leads to the core part of this research: to document street art participation from a female perspective, to assess if lived experiences are changing.

There has been examination of data documented of female artist representation in The Countess Report (Richardson, 2016). This report addresses the gender representation in the Australian arts industry from 2008, and this exegesis will comment on these conclusions in further detail in Chapter 5.

Chapter Summary

This chapter outlined both the background of the graffiti movement, the link between street art subculture and classifications of street art. A working definition has been defined relevant to this research project. The selected analytical frameworks will now be analysed in relation to the data that has been collected from the interviews of the following five artists: Kaff-eine, Buttons (Cherie Lynch), Mini-Graff, Baby Guerrilla and Vexta.

In Chapter 2, I will outline how the research was conducted and the mixed methodology approach that was adopted. Chapter 2 also includes the artist’s biographies and information about their practices.

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Chapter 2 | METHODOLOGY

“It is a selfish thing…I paint cause I love it”

Kaff-eine, 2017

In Chapter 1, this exegesis discussed street art as a subculture with multiple layers: the practice, the culture and the influence of the internet. Due to these multiple layers, including the crossing of boundaries between the physical to the virtual world, this research required a mixed method approach. Further, arts-based practices require the researcher to move beyond traditional research methods in an attempt to capture the entirety of the project due to the limitations of a traditional research paradigm.

As previously noted, the majority of contemporary research on street art is focused on male artists while this dissertation investigates the experiences from a female perspective. As such, my mixed method also engaged with feminist literature.

According to Creswell (2014), a mixed method approach involves collecting, analysing and integrating data from multiple sources. A focus of this research are qualitative interviews – with an emphasis on in-depth interviewing techniques (Minichiello, Aroni, & Hays, 2008). The information gathered from these interviews was then combined with publicly available information about the artists, including their own social media presence – a presence I was able to interact with due to my own online presence. This created a feedback loop: both informing the interview approach employed as well as allowing me to cross reference the answers given by my interview subjects. This feedback loop meets Creswell’s (2014) requirements of verification.

Once the qualitative research had been conducted, an analysis of the transcripts was undertaken drawing upon Silverman’s (2013) concept of ‘looking at the ordinary’: something key as experiences of gender emerge in the everyday practices 21

(Buiten, 2015) – see Section, Data analysis (p.35). This allowed for an understanding of how gender may be reflected in the actions and practices of the artists even if not in their answers. As such, the research is guided by the input of the artist through the qualitative interviews.

As the focus is on an art-based medium, a traditional research paradigm needs to be adapted that includes communications and media studies. One of the methods employed, for example, was to set up a street art focussed Instagram account to understand how images are distributed, and how artists create and use online networks - see Section, Practice-led research (p.38).

As I will discuss below, additional methods employed for this research project included photo-documentary practices (Chamberlin, 2013, 2015; Cubrilo et al., 2009; Schacter, 2013; Young, 2015, 2016), aspects of both arts-based research (Finley, 2012) and practice-led research (Haseman, 2006).

Mixed Method Approach

Using Creswell’s (2014) approach enables engagement of the researcher, providing the best outcome and results from the data collected. This mixed method approach complements the work of Haseman (2006) and Haseman and Mafe (2009) when discussing a third research paradigm, emerging from the need to employ alternative methods when conducting research outside the traditional sphere. Due to the visual nature of street art, multiple methods are required to engage with both the artist and their artworks in both a physical and virtual space.

Creswell (1994) states that the best way to address qualitative research is through the following six steps. These steps that are in bold have been applied to this project: 1. Process: working out the best way to approach the research question by focussing on the process, not the outcomes at the beginning of the research; 2. Meaning: interpreting and understanding the artist’s experiences as to why they selected street art as an artistic practice;

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3. Research: understanding the motivation of the artists as a primary tool. The more informed one can be about the artist; the more information can be harvested allowing for a more in-depth understanding of the artist within the subculture; 4. Fieldwork: in this case, employing photo-documentary method. This involved me searching out artworks that have been created in the street and to use the photographs to show their involvement in the practice and imagery. From here, applying the first three steps to understand this imagery; 5. Descriptive: that is, combining the interviews and the images of the artworks produced, allowing insights into the meaning created through both of these portals; and, 6. Inductive: investigating the reasons as to why artists have chosen this media and produce the findings to be able to solve the problem – or answer the research questions - that have been outlined (p.145).

The qualitative research is complemented by other methods when conducting the analysis. This is also important when confronting potential negative assumptions that may arise from the qualitative research. Biases can form, misguiding the research and hindering the outcome (Creswell, 1994). These biases can be monitored with the use of the mixed method approach as outlined above. By incorporating a myriad of research methods and different approaches, this research not only challenges the traditional research paradigms, it confirms the mixed method approach is the best suited for this research.

As noted, to meet the mixed methods requirements outlined by Creswell, I employed the following approaches: included in-depth qualitative interviews, detailed analysis of the public profiles of the artists, drawing upon Silverman’s (2013) concept of ‘looking at the ordinary’ when analysing the responses from the artists, photo- documentary practices, arts-based research and practice-led research. I will discuss these in more detail after I briefly outline some background on each of the artists interviewed.

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Artists

The selection of artists required academic and non-academic research. The various sources included current academic literature, social media and the artists’ personal websites. Additional information was sought from a wide range of additional non- academic sources including mainstream newspapers, films and art focussed magazines. It should be noted that three of the selected artists do appear in academic research: Kaff-eine and Vexta (Bentley, 2015; Young, 2014, 2016) and Mini-Graff (Bentley, 2015).

In addition to Kaff-eine, Vexta and Mini Graff, the five artists interviewed include Baby Guerrilla and Buttons (Cherie Lynch). The selection criteria adopted for this research were that the artists were either Australian born or Australian based, having conducted street art practices in Australia between 2016-17, and identified as female artists. In addition, these artists were also selected for their practices varied in medias and through the practice-led research – I became familiar with their selected imagery and motifs.

Each artist was contacted via the contact details provided on their own personal website or via social media (Facebook & Instagram). Three of the five artists agreed to face to face interviews while commitments meant that two of the interviews – Vexta and Baby Guerrilla – occurred via email. Both Baby Guerrilla and Mini Graff requested to remain anonymous.

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Mini Graff

Mini Graff was born in New Zealand and is currently based in Sydney. Working with stencils, posters, paste-ups and stickers, her practice involves using a Letraset to create her posters, hand printing each poster. She uses her art practice for social commentary allowing her work to represent a voice in the community. The interview was conducted face to face in Sydney, Australia.

Figure 8 - Mini Graff – Surry Hills, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2017

Figure 9 - Mini Graff – Surry Hills, Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2016

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Buttons (Cherie Lynch)

Australia born and a self-taught artist based in Brisbane. Buttons uses different forms of media, though works with aerosol and acrylic in the urban environment. Her work is inspired by her love of Japanese culture and the female form, bright colourful pieces that embraces the audience. Her interview was conducted face to face in Brisbane, Australia.

Figure 10 - Buttons – CBD, Wollongong

Photograph by the Author, 2016

Figure 11- Buttons, Chaigo & Choq – Fitzroy, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2016 26

Baby Guerrilla

Baby Guerrilla is a Melbourne based artist who uses multiple medias, enjoying large scale murals. Originally trained in at Victorian College of The Arts in oil painting, she then transitioned into drawing, leading into her paste-ups which are her drawings enlarged and placed on walls. Her images depict people either falling or floating - that are black and white, inspired by nature and its unpredictability. Because she requested anonymity, this interview was conducted via email.

Figure 12 - Baby Guerrilla - Footscray, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2017

Figure 13 - Baby Guerrilla - CBD, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2017

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Kaff-eine

A Melbourne based artist who paints using both aerosol and acrylic paints. The melancholic images that are painted are stylised human and animal characters. Giving up the corporate world in 2012 and becoming a full-time artist, Kaff-eine has conducted her art form both internationally and in Australia. This interview was conducted face to face in Melbourne, Australia.

Figure 14 - Kaff-eine - CBD, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2017

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Figure 15 - Kaff-eine - Brunswick, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2017

Figure 16 - Kaff-eine - Fitzroy, Melbourne

Photograph by the author, 2017

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Vexta

Sydney, Australia born and now based overseas, Vexta’s imagery uses aerosol and acrylic paint to create her murals. Using geometric shapes and bright colours to represent her, this allows her to then create an image that is both not specific to gender – much like other artists that use the colour palette to depict their artwork. Due to extensive travelling, this interview was conducted via email.

Figure 17 - Vexta & Elle - CBD, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2017

Figure 18 - Vexta - CBD, Melbourne

Photograph by the Author, 2017 30

Interviewing

The core of this research method employed is in-depth interviewing of the abovementioned artists. The interview questions were constructed by incorporating the three frameworks outlined in Chapter 1 - cultural and social context, internet and social media and gender. Additional research from both academic and non-academic sources allowed me to slightly modify the questions to gain specific insights into the artists.

The interviews drew upon Creswell’s (2014) seven protocols for conducting qualitative interviews. These protocols were selected for they provided both structure and flexibility when conducting interviews. The seven protocols include:

1. Heading: Title of the research project; 2. Instruction to the interviewer: Opening statement about the research; 3. Key research questions: These questions were based on the framework selected and the research questions; 4. Probes following the key questions: Responding to the responses through the interview to gain further information; 5. Space for recording responses: Key words noted from the interview; 6. Thank you: Acknowledgement to the artists for their time and insights; and, 7. Researcher’s reflective notes: Notes created following each interview (p.194).

By applying these seven protocols to the interview process in combination with the detailed background research, I was able to create a synergy between the artist and me as the researcher. This synergy enabled conversations that were simultaneously structured and flexible. As such, a fluid conversation was created and allowed for me to follow up with probes on key questions, expanding on the information that was discussed with the artist.

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In-depth interviewing

In addition to the guidance provided by Creswell (2014), the qualitative interviews also applied Minichiello et al.’s (2008) concepts of in-depth interviewing. This includes the incorporation of a participant’s life history into the questions as a research technique: That is, the “…history of an individual’s life given by the living person living it and solicited by the researcher” (Minichiello et al., 2008, p.125).

The participants were asked to recall their own life history in their own voice, directly to the researcher. As the name suggests, in-depth interviewing requires multiple interviews however due to the scope of this research, I applied the life history aspects to their participation in the street art subculture. This recollection of the artist’s life history creates agency for the artist by emphasising the importance of their life experience.

This approach leads Minichiello et al., (2008), to draw on the theoretical assumptions of Plummer (1983) who discusses “symbolic interactionism” (Plummer, 1983 as cited in Minichiello et al., 2008, p.130). Symbolic interactionism views life as information that is valuable in its own right. Minichiello et al., (2008) posit that the best way to gain information is through lived experience. Placing the artist’s own experience as a key role in how they view themselves within the street art subculture. To achieve this, Minichiello et al., (2008, p.130) recommend the following three perspectives when interviewing the artists was applied:

1. Life is viewed as concrete experience; 2. Life is regarded as an emerging relativistic perspective; and, 3. Life is viewed as inherently marginal and ambiguous.

Whilst concrete experience is regarded as an significant feature, it is also important to note how reflections can be distorted (Minichiello et al., 2008). These personal experiences will be mediated through the interview process to minimise ambiguity in the answers.

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By considering both the life history of the artist and symbolic interactionism, insights can be gained about their motivation. This is emphasised by Blumer (1939) who states, “an account of individual experience which reveals the individuals action as human agent and as a participant in social life” (Blumer, 1939, as cited in Minichiello et al., 2008, p.141). The agency that is created through the in-depth interviews allows for the individual’s experiences to be reflected on both positively and negatively. That is, allowing the artists to reflect on personal experience whilst the researcher facilitates the questions negating these ambiguous answers. Due to the time limitations of this thesis, in-depth interviews had to be limited. Despite this, I was able to draw on these aspects to discover how the artists interact, identify and interpret the subculture.

Interview Questions

The Interview questions were created around the three frameworks as outlined in Chapter 1 (see Appendix 1). With the application of Creswell’s (2014) protocols for conducting interviews, it created an opportunity for me as the researcher to engage with the artist creating a conversation through the interview. The face to face interviews were between 60-90 minutes and were conducted with Mini Graff, Kaff- eine and Buttons.

Two artists interviews were conducted via email due to travel commitments, Vexta and the request of anonymity, Baby Guerrilla. The questions, as per appendix 1, were minimised and the artists responded in their own time and what questions they wanted to respond to.

Once the interviews were completed and I received the email responses, the last protocol of Creswell (2014) was used: a reflection on the interviews. Completing each interview including reading the emailed responses, I wrote reflective notes of key topics, and created ‘hashtags’ for each theme that arose. This application of method created a loop of knowledge, producing a voice for both the researcher and the participant. Creating a collaboration between the artist and the researcher. Emphasising the importance to reflect on research methods, including arts based

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research, by forming a space to research the local, personal, everyday places and events.

By applying Creswell’s (2014) protocols and Plummer’s (1983) understanding of symbolic interactionism, the artist and the researcher collectively work together. Furthermore, I combined these two approaches with what Finley (2012) describes as arts-based research: that is, framing the artists as an expert not the researcher (see the following section).

It was by employing this mixed methods research that I was able to understand how the female artists, Identify, Interact and Interpret with the street art subculture.

Arts-based research

Finley (2012) argues that, “arts-based research involves processes of discovery and invention” (p. 3). It is this type of experience that Finley (2012) argues as allowing the experience of the researcher to engage and interact with the research subjects, while simultaneously learning from each other. These experiences enable the artist to reflect on their street art life – much like the symbolic interactionism– whilst the researcher facilitates the conversation that will provide insight into why these artists have chosen to engage in this practice.

This is captured by Finley (2012) when arguing that “…arts-based methodologies bring both arts and social inquiry out of the elitist institutions of academe and art museums, and relocate inquiry within the realm of local, personal, everyday places and events” (p. 2).

Challenges can occur through using these methods of sharing experiences for they allow the artist to reflect or display self-expression which may be overlooked by the traditional research approaches. This creates an imaginative thinking process – looking at the world from a different angle and challenging the traditional research processes.

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The gender imbalance that is evident in the street art subculture requires a mixed method approach to understand the point of view of the marginalised, in this case female artists. As such, Finley (2012) draws from Denzin’s discussion of how the marginalised gain a voice through arts-based research (Denzin, 2003, as cited in Finley, 2012, p. 5). By combining the above methods, I was able to ensure that the female street artists were able to discuss and draw out their opinions.

In addition to the voice of the participant, Finley (2012) discusses the role of the academic as the expert, and the need to renounce this role to the participant. In this case the artist is assigned the role as the expert for their experiences and opinions will shape the research outcome.

Artists reflect on their experiences and create a dialogue with the researcher, allowing for an understanding as to how they fit within the street art subculture. Emphasising the importance of using arts-based research and a mixed method approach to produce the data for the analysis of the interviews.

I achieved this through the interview process by utilizing Creswell’s (2014) probes following the artist’s answers. When asked a question and the participant mentioned an important topic, I would then ask further questions and the conversations would then continue exploring different ideas or even to some degree touching on some of the questions that I was to ask later in the interview.

Data Analysis

Once the interviews were conducted using the above approach, the analysis followed. This analysis of the qualitative research required organisation. I applied Tesch’s (1990) eight steps used for forming codes within qualitative research. Tesch described these eight steps as a way of “segmenting” the data: “…a systemic process of analyzing textual data” (Tesch 1990, as cited in Creswell, 1994, p. 155). Using this method created a way of breaking down the interviews into codes to review the information and undertake a comparative look at the combined data. Tesch (1990) discusses eight steps used for forming codes:

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1. Read each transcript to make sense of the interview as a whole; 2. Write thoughts of the interview as a whole (each interview) – ask the question “What is this about?”; 3. Make a list of topics that are evident; 4. Abbreviate and make codes – organise in a way to see if the categories or codes appear/emerge; 5. Descriptive words – reducing the original list; 6. Final decision of abbreviations and alphabetise the codes; 7. Assemble the data; and, 8. If required, recode existing data (as cited in Creswell, 1994, p. 155).

By applying these eight steps, I was able to segment the data for analysis. Firstly, I completed the transcription and looked at the data collected as an entire conversation. Secondly, commencing after each interview, reflective notes were written including descriptive key words as recommended by approach – see above. By completing these reflective notes, the third step of listing the topics followed. By reading through each interview, I was able to apply this step and include additional topics that were missed from the original reflective notes.

Fourthly, I used ‘hashtags; to categorise the interviews. Specifically, I was looking at the information from three different frameworks and due to the interview process, questions were asked at different stages through each interview – depending on the nature of the conversation.

Step five and six were completed collectively and extending on the created hashtags from step four. This allowed for a comparison of the data collected and the current Australian literature on street art.

Step seven was the assembly stage, by using the hashtags, I was able to construct the data into order and look at the information from each artist together in a combined form. Step eight was not required. With the application of this method, the data was categorised and arranged for analysis.

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In addition to the methods of Tesch (1990) outlined above, I also engaged with Silverman’s (2013) approach to data analysis. Silverman (2013) states that “qualitative research is at its most powerful in exploring things which are every day and taken for granted” (p. 235). These things in the everyday are crucial for this research project for it is through these everyday experiences that will allow for understanding in how the street artist identify, interact and interpret the street art subculture and how, if at all, gender plays a role.

Silverman (2013) argues that with early data analysis, one key error that a researcher can make is placing a “…focus upon unusual or even extraordinary stories or incidents” (p. 234). Here Silverman argues that finding these obvious ‘extraordinary’ stories or incidents within the data can shadow the final analysis. Silverman points out the need to review the data from different angles, allowing the information to be thoroughly analysed. This is something I achieve by employing a mixed methods approach.

There are five steps that Silverman (2013) uses when undertaking data analysis;

1. Employ different ways of conducting the analysis – to see what analysis suits the data; 2. Avoid early hypothesis – this can hinder findings; 3. Look at the data fairly – avoiding creating biases; 4. Focus on a small part of the data intensively; and, 5. Focus on sequences (of talk, written material or interaction) (p. 234).

With the application of these five steps the data can be analysed without creating biases that could form through the analysis – a potential weakness of qualitative analysis I noted above. By eliminating these created biases, the data can be analysed as neutrally as possible. Silverman’s (2013) position is that researchers must look at the ordinary to find the extraordinary. The ordinary could be seen through the interactions of the participant and the researcher or by finding additional themes that evolve through the interview process.

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By using both the methods of data analysis (Tesch, 2009 as cited in Creswell, 1994; Silverman, 2013), the extraordinary can be found in the ordinary creating an alternative view of looking at data.

Practice-led Research

The final part of the mixed method approach was to apply a form of practice-led research (Haseman, 2006; Haseman & Mafe, 2009) I am not an artist but active in the arts industry (see Chapter 1). I did this by engaging through a social media vehicle (see Figure 19 @beatstreetart).

Importantly for this research project, Finley’s (2012) discovery and invention concepts flows from Haseman’s (2006) concept of practice-led research. Haseman (2006) explains that practice-led research method is designed for undertaking research that does not have a definitive answer. It is employed to find a problem and then use practice to solve the problem. This approach allows for the interview process to be driven by the analysis. To see what information is drawn from the specific questions used and using the analysis to reiterate the artist’s responses.

Haseman (2006) argues that following traditional research paradigms for the arts is not necessarily a clear way of viewing the art form. Traditional methods include; quantitative and qualitative methods which are the basis of numbers and words, and the third which needs to be addressed is the research of performative. This approach allows for the researcher to embed themselves into the research to gain new knowledge and solve problems through practice (Haseman & Mafe, 2009). As I am not a street artist myself, the practice-led research evolved with the interview process and the photo-documentary practices that I took on whilst completing this research.

Photo-documentary practices are imperative for this art form and is a practice employed by academics and photographers (Chamberlin, 2013, 2015; Cubrilo et al., 2009; Schacter, 2013; Young, 2015, 2016), This is because such documentation allows for this ephemeral art form to be recorded. These practices also allow for the

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identification of artists’ works – be the work sanctioned and un-sanctioned. By employing these practices, I was able to record the work of specific artists whose motifs I recognise, as well as develop greater knowledge of works which had been unknown to me.

By using a mixed method approach in combination with practice-led research, it has allowed me as a researcher to be involved in the subculture. Furthermore, by applying documentary practices, I have been able to engage with both the artists and their art-based medium.

Practice led Research | @beatstreetart

As noted, I employed practice-led research methods (Haseman, 2006; Haseman & Mafe, 2009), not only through the interview process but also through the documentation of street art. By taking photographs of street art and uploading the images to social media, I established an Instagram account @beatstreetart (see Figure 19). By using this account, I have been connecting with artists across the world as well as joining their multiple networks. Taking photographs as part of the research allowed for me to post the artworks online and join in as an audience member.

Through the photo that I posted and the use of my Instagram account, the painting comes ‘alive’, disseminated through networked systems with the use of hashtags and tagging the artists name – discussed in Chapter 4. New social media networks were formed and people began following my account in 2016. With ‘comments’, ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ of photos, this communication channel assisted the research process by facilitating networking with different audiences including artists. People ‘liking’ the photograph who follow these specific artists have gone on to follow my Instagram account @beatstreetart.

As such, I have been able to experience different networks that have emerged around the street art subculture. The process allowed me to create agency as an audience member whilst creating a visual documentary of the research.

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Figure 19 - @beatstreetart Instagram account6

6 Beatstreetart (2017, August 8) https://www.instagram.com/beatstreetart/ Accessed 8 August 2017 40

Chapter 3 | CULTURAL AND SOCIAL FRAMEWORK

“That’s the great thing about the street anything that goes up you are entering a conversation”

Mini Graff, 2017

As detailed in Chapter 1, there are multiple approaches to the analysis of street art. For this project, the following three frameworks have been selected: the cultural and social framework that encompasses street art, the impact of the internet and social media and gender. This chapter focuses on the cultural and social framework with four themes selected: the conversations created between the artist and viewers; the laws and regulations of street art; the ability of street art to re-shape neighbourhoods; and, the communities created.

The four themes identified are examined through the research whilst juxtaposing the information received through the interview process. Creating a way to analyse the artist’s words, ideas and thoughts through the interview. Following on, the two additional frameworks; the internet and social media (Chapter 4), and gender (Chapter 5) will further expand some of the emerging concepts identified in this chapter.

As stated in Chapter 1, it is important to remember that all these frameworks interrelate and interconnect and will be analysed from the different perspectives, views and opinions collected from the interviews. These additional insights into the street art are through the eyes of the five participants selected.

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Conversations

Who is the Audience?

Conversations through street art are created by the interactions between the artist and the audience viewing the artwork in the urban landscape. That is, the artwork acts as a vehicle to create a discussion between the artist and the audience. The audience communicates (Blanché, 2015), produces translations (Biedarieva, 2016) and generates dialogues and interpretations (Hansen & Danny, 2015). The audience directs what information is collected and created through the imagery – allowing them to reflect on the messages received and their own interpretation of artworks.

While there have always been such conversations between artists and audiences, street art is different because it takes it outside the confined and controlled space of curated galleries. The conversations can act as disruptors of the everyday – highlighting a key element of street art identified in Chapter 1.

Traditionally, due the nature of street art being ephemeral and using the street as a temporary canvas, the interactions are both hard to measure and difficult to document. Consequently, street art can be described as a ‘silent communicator’ – something that changes as photographs and social media allow audience dialogues to occur. As such, these conversations are expanded through social media, documenting multiple conversations. This changing of space through social media and the internet will be expanded in Chapter 4.

In the interviews, each artist was asked who their intended audience was: all said their work was aimed at the broadest possible audience. Buttons creates her work because she enjoys creating large scale murals – seeing the broader public as her audience. Likewise, Baby Guerrilla and Mini-Graff said there was no specific audience, “the broader the better in a way…I don’t make it for an intended audience” (Mini Graff, personal communication, May 17, 2008). This then creates an understanding that the audience is any person on the street who encounters the artwork and chooses to engage with it, thereby creating interactions between themselves and the artwork.

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Interestingly, Kaff-eine described herself as the audience. Despite this, her large- scale interactions in both Australia and internationally confirmed that she too identified the broader public as engaging with her work.

Communication and the audience

While the interactions are initiated by the artist, it is the audience that furthers the interaction by contemplating the imagery, the placement of the work and meanings that the artist has assigned. As Blanché (2015) confirms street art “intentionally seeks communication with a larger circle of people” (p.33). This process of ‘seeking’ communication is highlighted by Mini-Graff in the way she attempts to create a conversation with the audience through her artworks. Mini Graff not only uses powerful imagery to create conversations, in one project she actually undertook a specific strategy to entice the audience to respond to a work. She achieved this by purchasing a ‘1800 number’ which was designed for people to call if they wanted to purchase illegal drugs and waited see if how the public responded to the poster. The experiment was more popular than she imagined as calls flooded in and she was faced with a large phone bill, ending her project.

Street art captures the attention of an audience and this example shows how the communication can take many forms. It can be a political statement that creates a discussion between groups7 or, as in this example, something that creates an action with the audience. Importantly, like the artwork some of these conversations can be long-term and on-going, while others can be designed to be ephemeral.

Translations

These conversations can also be a type of ‘translation’. As Biedarieva (2016) argues, the process of translation:

… is reciprocal, which means that we deal with a mutual exchange between source and target texts. At the same time, the target text of an artwork

7 Refer to Figure 21, Case study - Mini Graff, p.55. 43

(spatial, visual, verbal, etc.) has the potential to become a source text for the further translation back to the language of everyday reality (p. 12).

This translation discussed by Bierdarieva (2016) creates an exchange of information between the artist, the artwork and the audience. This reciprocation allows for a mutual exchange of thoughts. The artist produces a work, the audience then translates and decodes the imagery, and then applies the information to the everyday. These conversations that are created, allow the audience to translate the information and think about what the artwork is attempting to communicate.

In the interviews, I asked the respondents to reflect on the way an audience translates their work. Kaff-eine, who produced portraits of the community living on garbage dumps in the Philippines as part of the Happyland collaborative project8, stated she hoped the audience translates these images into feelings of humanity and empathy.

Despite such reflections, there is no way to measure or understand the translation of the audience as they reflect on the physical form. This is altered once entering the world of the internet and social media because the audience can comment, and a kind of reciprocation of the translation occurs, something I discuss in more detail in Chapter 4.

Dialogues and Interpretations

These translations expand into the domain of what Hansen and Danny (2015) argue are dialogues and interpretations across communities. Importantly, dialogues and interpretations can alter an artwork that is in the urban landscape. Hansen and Danny (2015) state that:

8 Cheeseagle. (2016). Happyland. Retrieved from https://www.cheeseagle.com/currentartprojects/ Accessed 26 October 2016. The organisation Cheese-eagle is a collaboration of artists who are using art as a tool to start conversations about social impact, specifically in disadvantage communities such as metro Manila’s slum communities in the Philippines. This community sorts and organises Manila’s rubbish intake. Their houses, which are located in and near the dump, are made up of whatever they can scavenge including old boxes, broken wood, plastic and glass. Happyland is the creation of art to use for shelter in this community. Kaff-eine, is the creative director and has produced murals of some of the local community members onto tarpaulins which are being used as shelter. 44

A process of active interpretation is evident in the additions to the work made by members of the public, which demonstrate the capacity of viewers to appropriate and translate the work in their own terms (p. 904).

Active interpretation encourages the audience to view the artwork and produce meaning from the imagery. This can be seen through Kaff-eine’s work with the Wall to Wall street art festival in Benalla, VIC9. Kaff-eine designed an artwork for the rainbow community living in Benalla to raise awareness of minority groups in rural areas (see figure 23). For Kaff-eine, it is important to facilitate empowerment through the artwork by producing a space to discuss topics, allowing the audience to interpret and create dialogues.

…for everyone that comes to the festival, Benalla for the rainbow folks in rural areas this is for them, everybody else can make it for what they like (Kaff- eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

Kaff-eine says she wants people to engage and interact with her work, regardless of the imagery that is created. Although the artwork is created for a specific group, Kaff- eine is comfortable for the audience to take away their own interpretations. As such, while she has created the artwork for a community, she understands that her work creates a dialogue amongst other members of the community, something that she encourages.

The notion of active interpretation is also echoed by Mini Graff. The artworks that she produces contain her opinions of current social, political or cultural events she wishes to respond to. She creates an interaction by stating the point and then allowing the audience to make their own interpretation of the subject or even direct the audience to this specific event to create engagement with the audience.

9 Benalla Street Art. (2017). Wall to wall festival. Retrieved from http://www.benallastreetart.com.au/ Accessed 22 April 2017. 45

Mini Graff states that the audience’s engagement creates conversations that involve everyone, from the person walking down the street, to other artists, to the council who are removing the work and even the building owners:

Yes and it is often open ended, I am not offering a solution, in some ways I am not offering a really solid opinion…something that is open to interpretation (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini-Graff uses her artworks to allow the audience to interpret and translate what they want from the imagery, thus creating an active dialogue through the artwork.

Buttons approaches this active interpretation from another position. She discusses how her artworks are created by her influences. She uses imagery to reflect her mood and challenges the audience to interact with the artwork from an alternative angle.

However, I feel at the time is how my drawing will turn out and I like to think that energy can almost be transferred to the person who is looking at it (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

This alternative angle challenges the audience for the active interpretation then crosses over to emotions, much like the way Mini-Graff uses her works to create a conversation about a certain news topic or event. In this case however, Buttons produces imagery to challenge the audience’s emotions when they interpret her art.

These examples of active interpretations, display the importance of the audience’s conversations, dialogues and translations noted above. These are produced from the audience viewing the artwork, and the emotions, thoughts and interpretations that are created through this viewing.

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Creation of meaning

By understanding these processes of communication, translations, dialogues and interpretations, we gain insights into how both the artist and the audience create meaning from the imagery. Schacter (2016) discusses how graffiti and street art are contemporary ornamentation. Drawing on Belting (2005) who states that images have: “…a rich spectrum of meaning and purpose” (p.302), this contemporary ornamentation and the crossover of meaning creates new dialogues that are constructed through street art. “No visible medium reaches us unmediated” (Belting, 2005, p.304).

The conversations created by the audience viewing the artwork enables the audience to interpret the image and create meaning. Vexta also uses her artworks to create such conversations stating that: “[I] try to leave space for people to bring their own meaning and narrative to my work” (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017). This provides a space for the audience to interact with her artwork and create meaning.

Mini-Graff agrees, emphasising that street art should contain a meaning or a message that is being conveyed to the audience (Hansen & Dany, 2015). An artwork that responds to political or social issues encourages the audience to reflect and think about what they have seen or are experiencing.

This can be seen through Mini-Graff’s eternity poster series – see Figure 20. One of the posters created displays the first female construction labourer. The poster appropriates Arthur Stace’s graffiti tag ‘Eternity’10 – replacing it with the word ‘Equality’ and superimposing the font on the image of the first woman to enter a construction site.

Mini-Graff’s design of this poster raised conversations of gender equality to the audience – despite her initial statement that gender plays no role in her work (see

10 Murphy, D. (2017, July, 30). Eternity: How Arthur Stace’s handwritten chalk message became a symbol of Sydney. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/arthur-stace-one-word-wonder- 20170727-gxk7ow.html Accessed 30 July 2017. 47

Chapter 1). In this example, the audience is encouraged to interpret the image of this anonymous woman, the shovel, the context and the word ‘equality’ in a familiar font.

Figure 20 - Mini Graff - Surry Hills, Sydney

Photograph by Author, 2017

Street art’s ability to create such conversations between the artwork and the audience is evident in both Kaff-eine’s Benalla mural and Mini Graff’s Eternity poster. The audience interacts with the artworks and allows for both translation and interpretations to occur – thus creating conversations and meaning with the artworks and further acknowledging the impact of street art on the audience.

This research argues how a social and cultural framework of street art shapes conversations between the street artist, the art and the audience, I now turn to discuss the impact of law and regulations.

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Laws & Regulations

At the outset, it is important to note that the focus on law and regulations is from a social and cultural perspective rather than a legal analysis. The legal infrastructure shapes our social and culture interactions (Couch & Cooper, 2016) and this is particularly with a practice of street art that has a history of operating outside the law (see Chapter 1).

Through the cultural practices of street art, artists use the urban landscape as a canvas to create artworks. Due to the placement of artworks on the streets, there are laws and regulations in place, and are specifically around property rights (Iveson, 2009). In Australia, different states and territories have different graffiti policies in place and specifically looking at the NSW it states:

Graffiti vandalism is a crime. It is the act of marking or defacing premises or other property without permission.11

Street art can be both ‘sanctioned’ and ‘un-sanctioned’ and it is here where it sits within this graffiti sphere as part of the vandalism of property if it is un-sanctioned. The city of Melbourne appointed Professor Alison Young (2010) to draft a strategy for graffiti and street art in 2004. The strategy that was employed by Young was to re-shape the council’s conservative view on graffiti to a more progressive response. Young argued for ‘negotiated consent’ and ‘zones of tolerance’, this was understood to have zones that allowed for the creation of artworks within the public city which had consent by the communities, however this strategy was denied by the City of Melbourne and instead they insisted on a zero-tolerance projection. This creates legal implications of fines, imprisonment or community service for both graffiti and street artists.12

11 NSW government: Justice. (n.d). Graffiti Vandalism. Retrieved from http://www.crimeprevention.nsw.gov.au/Pages/cpd/protectcommunity/graffitivandalism/graffitivandalism.aspx Accessed 29 July 2017. 12 NSW government: Justice. (n.d). Graffiti and the law. Retrieved from http://www.crimeprevention.nsw.gov.au/Pages/cpd/protectcommunity/graffitivandalism/the_laws_relating_to_graff iti.aspx Accessed 29 July 2017. 49

Street artists use space within the legislated city to create situational artworks by amalgamating both the landscape and concepts. Young discusses the legislated city and how citizens fit within the laws and regulations. Space allows for the creation of “cities within cities” that, according to Young, create “…public cities” (2014, p.57). These public cities allow for a community for the artists to come together to produce artworks and an alternative community – one away from the hyper-commercialised space we associate with cities such as Sydney and New York.

Brown (2015) argues that street art is driving tourism but there is a disconnection between the desire for increased tourism and the laws that are invoked when it comes to street art and graffiti. Young (2016) argues that street art provides visual consumption and entertainment for tourists. This is displayed by the City of Melbourne as they use street art as a tourist attraction, encouraging tourists to come and see the alleyways in the heart of the Melbourne CBD.13 However, a contradiction emerges when laws are enforced that prevent and criminalise graffiti and street art while also promoting it as a tourist attraction (Young, 2010). As such, the public space is in contention.

Mini Graff discussed how her practice was shaped by laws criminalising street art. She moved away from certain aspects to still be able to create works in the city.

The law changed around malicious damage and they changed the Graffiti Amendment Act to include intent to cause malicious damage and that changed my practice…I looked at different ways of making my posters and making my work for the street (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

In response to the laws and regulations that are in place for street artists, Baby Guerrilla expresses her dislike to authority;

I like the politics of street art. I don't believe in blind obedience to authority (Baby Guerrilla, personal communication, 11 May 2017).

13 City of Melbourne. (n.d). What’s on: Street art. Retrieved from https://whatson.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Placestogo/PublicArt/Pages/StreetArt.aspx Accessed 28 March 2017 - Included is a map of the city which you can take your own walking tour of all the graffiti and street art in the CBD. 50

Baby Guerrilla chose street art because she enjoys having a voice in public space even though it can bring her into conflict with authorities such as police and local government councils. These comments made by Mini Graff and Baby Guerrilla, though different, both emphasise how the artists continue to produce artworks that work around the laws restricting the practice.

Re-shaping of neighbourhoods and communities

Street art has the capacity to reshape urban landscapes in both positive and negative ways. This re-shaping is discussed in multiple ways and allows an understanding of how this re-shaping is important for female artists. Firstly, by looking at the positive reshaping of neighbourhoods through what Blanché (2015) argues as being, the ‘marks’ that re-shape and humanise the urban landscape that too often isolates, creating potential to revitalise neighbourhoods and communities.

In contrast, Brighenti (2016) undertakes a Marxist analysis of street art, raising concerns about the valorisation of the art form that impacts property values and potentially displaces communities. This specific concern raised are that street art has moved from a form of protest art that embedded a political message to one that is increasingly focussed on reshaping the aesthetics of the urban environment. For Brighenti (2016), this is part of an urban renewal that displaces the underclass and vulnerable. Though the author fails to acknowledge the way that many street artists aim to highlight the plight of the vulnerable and displaced, Brighenti (2016) reminds us of the way valorisation can alter economic relationships. This occurs, as street art is increasingly part of an elite art scene, echoing what Riggle (2010) argues that street art blurs the lines between the public and private institutions.

Riggle (2010) discusses how communities form around private and public institutions that deal with street art. Riggle’s (2010) position is that street art challenges both these institutions creating a blurred line between the public and private gallery. Street art captures an audience that is away from ‘elitist’ galleries, engaging people with art on the streets. These blurred lines create a space where the gallery walls are

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no longer confined and are now in the space of the communities, disturbing elite associations with galleries. Riggle (2010) argues that what constitutes street art revolves around an artist using the street as a resource and if removed from the street, the context of the artwork is lost.

These new outdoor galleries are what Vassallo (2009) calls her “…outdoor gallery” (Melissa Vassallo, personal communication, 24 Feb 2016), continually change and the artists on the street have control of their artworks in comparisons to a gallery space that are selective and controlling environment. Artists who use the street as a canvas have greater freedom, even in the case of commissions, for most artists approach such work engaging their style and imagery – something confirmed by my interviews.

These outdoor street art spaces are formed because of the desire for artists to complete works in sanctioned spaces. Young (2014) argues that specific spaces are determined by councils to facilitate artists coming together to create works in loosely controlled public places called legal walls.

Communities created

By understanding how conversations are created, the laws that surround the practice and how it can re-shape neighbourhoods, we now look at the creation of communities. Communities are formed for a number of reasons, including the safety of the artists and as a network allowing the artists to pursue conversations and collaborations. This is where the application of the biological concept of ‘stigmergy’ (which describes the way that termites work both collectively and individually). MacDowall (2015) argues that street artists mirror this concept in a similar pattern.

MacDowall (2015) posits that individual artists may focus on their own work but simultaneously seem to operate in a collective way. Within the context of street art, MacDowall (2015) discusses that this theory aids in understanding of both the production and consumption of this art form. Limitations are evident for such networks only provide a singular insight into street art collectives.

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‘Stigmergy’ can be seen as a metaphor for the way street artists work and interact. Though working individually, the artists work collectively by creating artworks within the community. That is, street artists individually create work in the urban landscape and the outcome of the artwork is collectively represented. This collective is an example of how these networks form within the street art subculture particularly for female artists. Here, networks are created as artists recognise each other’s work, leveraging off and building on the art they recognise. It is this process that appears to inspire MacDowall’s (2015) use of the term stigmergy – likening the interaction of artists in the same fashion that termites create their homes: working individually but collectively.

Baby Guerrilla is networked with both males and females, though she has not stated how these networks were created. Baby Guerrilla utilises these networks though she prefers working alone. These networks could be argued as what Bentley (2015) describes as collectives, “…as a mutually beneficial creative support for artists” (p. 43). This can be seen as what MacDowall (2015) states as ‘stigmery’, though still working individually, the collective is there, regardless if the artists personally know each other or not.

I am in communication with a few other street artists…and we all know what each other does and we are all kinda sort of unspoken (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini Graff reported that the networks are not for sharing ideas and collaboration, it is more about keeping up with what everyone else is doing – they have networks within networks. She agreed with Baby Guerrilla that they know each other’s work on the street however not by association. She also said there have been times where she has seen another person’s work and she has responded to the piece. Kaff-eine talked about how these relationships can go without meeting the artists.

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There are still some people I have not met and I like their work but we know of each other…so I have never really tried to be part of a subculture because I just do what I do (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

As Kaff-eine states ‘I still don’t paint in a crew’, is happier painting individually. Despite this, Kaff-eine also discussed collaborating with ELK (stencil artist) and the challenges, information and technique that you learn from other artists. This reinforces the importance of networks for all artists.

Applying the concept of ‘stigmergy’ to this research project creates an understanding of how these artists, though working individually, connect in a group. All produce works for an audience by negotiating the image in the urban landscape to create translations and meaning.

Case Study | Mini Graff

As Macdonald (2001) states, artists use the urban environment as a canvas to produce artworks that create conversations and dialogues. These conversations are created when a disruption occurs: that is when street art disrupts the everyday by challenging the audience. This can be seen through an example of Mini Graff’s work where she created an image of NSW Premier Mike Baird with the caption “Where are we going to Uncle Mike – going to close another art school?” (see – Figure 21). Mini-Graff uses this image to reflect on the NSW governments push to shut down the National Art School.14 Mini Graff is creating conversations within the arts communities about the effect of art schools closing down and the impact of these closures on the community

14 Taylor, A. (2017, July, 20). NSW government offers no guarantee for the future of the National Art School. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/nsw-government- offers-no-guarantee-for-the-future-of-the-national-art-school-20160719-gq9ffj.html Accessed 20 July 2017.

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Figure 21 - Mini Graff – Uncle Mike

Photograph provided by Mini Graff

Chapter Summary

This chapter expanded on the multiple cultural and social aspects that encompass the street art subculture. Through the conversations and dialogues artists create through their works, the audience identifies, interprets and translates meaning, creating an artist/audience interaction.

Such interactions can be applied to Young’s (2014) concept of street art creating ‘public cities’ and how this is re-shaping neighbourhoods. By acknowledging these aspects, we can assess how technology is impacting street art subculture by both allowing such conversations to continue as well as how communities are formed whilst creating networks for artists.

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Chapter 4 | INTERNET & SOCIAL MEDIA

“…social media has been a blessing for all types of artists it takes the power away from galleries and lets you speak directly with your audience”

Baby Guerrilla, 2017

The previous chapter discussed the social and cultural framework in which street art emerges. Fundamental to this are the many networks created: both in the conversations with the audience and the way street artists work together. The respondents highlighted the functions of social media influencing their practice, increasing engagement with the audience and the way they interact with other artists. Core in these discussions is the emergence of social media – a technology that has re-shaped the dissemination of artworks and the interactions with audiences.

The emergence of the internet and social media has created a new space for street art by altering a once site-specific art practice to being transported digitally across the world. Importantly, many of the trends discussed in this chapter are reflected in both the way that the female artists I interviewed operate, as well as within the broader street art movement. As such, I found little variation in the subject’s experiences.

Prior to the internet, street art was defined by its physical location in the urban landscape. Over the last decade, the virtual sphere has allowed street artists to use the internet, in particular social media, for promoting artworks, networking, connecting with audiences, and as a tool for archiving. Street art, an ephemeral medium, in addition with the use of the internet and social media is now an alternative to the physical space, creating virtual galleries online and changing the once temporal nature of the art works.

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As stated in Chapter 3, Street art is used as a method of creating conversations between the artist, the art work and the viewer (Biedarieva, 2016; Hansen & Danny, 2015). These conversations through the physical location of the artwork now exist through social media. This allows the audiences to share, ‘like’ and comment on images of artworks that are posted by the artist or other audience members, creating a new type of engagement and conversation in the virtual world. Previous conversations were rarely communicated directly to the artist, though Mini Graff’s use of an 1800 number showed it could be done (see Chapter 3). Today, the internet and social media allow direct conversations between the artist and the audience. Once site-specific works are now complimented by the internet via distributed networks, that constantly change and are accessible internationally. As Brown (2015) argues:

…the underlying reasons for street art’s inherent ephemerality and the role that the digital camera and the Internet play in its creation, preservation, popularization, and dissemination (p. 277).

Consequently, the internet and social media now enable street artists to create a space for interaction, networking and the preservation of artwork.

Social media

According to Keitzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre (2011), social media first appeared in 1997 with the site Sixdegrees.15 New sites quickly followed and now social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter have billions of users.16

Social media created – and continues to create – new ways of networking and communicating. The impact of social media as argued by Kietzmann et al. (2011) is,

15 A social media platform that allowed users to create and a profile and make friends with other users (Keitzmann et al., 2011). 16 Exact numbers are difficult to estimate but sites such Smart Digital provide estimates: Smart Insights. (2017). Global social media research summary 2017. Retrieved from http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media- marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/ Accessed 23 August 2017. 57

“…for better or for worse - Social media is very powerful” (p. 242). Kietzmann et al. (2011) have created a “honeycomb of seven functional building blocks for social media: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups” (p.243). While Keitzmann et al. (2011) specifically are considering social media for corporations, and the impact that this can have on businesses, these insights can be adapted to street art and street artists. The functional “building blocks” create understanding about how social media works though it is important to note that the power of social media can be both positive and negative.

In addition to these building blocks, Jenkins, Ford and Green (2013) discuss the concept of ‘spreadability’ in relation to social media. The concept of ‘spreadability’, “refers to the potential – both technical and cultural – for audiences to share content for their own purposes” (p. 3). This sharing of content by audiences and the artists continues to increase connections through various social media platforms.

By applying both the building blocks of social media and the concept of spreadability, to street art, we can begin to understand how networks, conversations, distributions and documentations emerge and are fostered. This process includes the creation of archives of artworks. Through taking photos and uploading them to social media, artists and the audience are changing our understanding of location and the physical canvas in which street artists perform their art. These actions are connecting people in new ways.

Documentation of artworks

Social media creates an archive for street artists where it once only existed through photography (Chamberlin, 2013, 2015; Cubrilo et al., 2009; Schacter, 2013). As noted above the stickiness of data is creating an archive for artworks, which challenges the ephemeral nature of street art.

I consider Instagram a visual diary (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

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Everything for me happens through Instagram (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

Mini-Graff also agreed with Kaff-eine that the internet is useful for archiving artworks and is great for networking, however, negative outcomes are also evident. Not all artists use social media and one person could come along and do one good piece and be shot to fame for a work that may be completed on their own garage door – thus changing the concept of sanctioned and un-sanctioned work. This takes away the risk traditionally associated with street art, as Mini Graff outlines below;

I risk going out all the time putting up these posters…social media anyone could be a street artist by posting up something on the back of their garage door and no-one needs to know they own the garage door…they could just call it street art… it has changed it a little bit (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini Graff also reflected on the negative side of social media and the internet, and the way that information can be misunderstood, misconceived and even falsified. This is echoed by Kaff-eine when discussing the crude comments she has received. Showing a certain resilience, she tends to dismiss anonymous abuse by stating, “…if it’s online it’s not real” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017). Despite this, abuse and trolling is something that can happen quite easily. As such, the internet and social media is both positive and negative: presenting many positive and challenging situations. Despite this, there was a general feeling that the positive aspects outweigh the negative.

Furthermore, it was repeatedly noted by the interviewees, that social media is imperative for the documentation of street art. As Mini Graff noted, artworks can now last forever – not in a physical sense but in a virtual world. Not all artists use the internet for this purpose, perhaps because there are positives and negatives for using this approach.

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Space

Chapter 1 discussed how graffiti has been described as a, “…range of physical marks…placed on surfaces through the built environment” (Crisp et al., 2014, p.84). Street art has also been described as ‘post graffiti’, and as “…a contemporary style of inscribing the city” (Dickens, 2008 p. 473). It is also seen as a “…new arm to the urban art movement” (Macdonald, 2016, p.190).

The emergence of social media means that the once physical marks on the urban landscape are now marking the virtual world through the internet. It is the use of social media that has redefined our understanding of ‘space’.

This has occurred in a number of ways. To begin with, space is ‘extended’ through the virtual world, allowing artworks to reach larger audiences. Brown (2015) discusses how the internet and associated social networks play a pivotal role “…in the documentation, preservation, dissemination, and popularization of street art” (p. 271). Artworks are no longer defined by a single location as the internet creates an alternative space for both artists and audiences. Social media such as Instagram,17 is particularly powerful in creating conversations between the audience and the artists and is a place for collaborations to form.

The physical location of an artwork is now being shared across the world through an image, changing our conception of the physical. The internet enables artworks that were one limited to physical location to be propelled across the world in a matter of seconds through the virtual world. This alternative space permits audiences to view artworks from other continents.

Virtual space

Goodchild and Janelle (2010) posit that space should not be limited to physical terms. They argue that the internet is changing the concept of space as we have

17 An online platform of social media - Humphrey, B. (2016). Instagram. http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/ps/i.do?&id=GALE|A478639458&v=2.1&u=uwsydney&it=r&p=AON E&sw=w&authCount=1 Accessed 15 September 2017.

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cross-world interactions. These cross-world interactions can be applied to the physical space of street art for the internet and social media have removed the anchor of physicality. These discussions echo the position of Warf and Arias (2009) who highlight the expanding nature of the internet and the shifting line between the virtual and real, arguing that the virtual space is as important as the physical. In the eight years since Warf and Arias (2009) mounted this argument, the virtual space is more important than ever. The crossover between the virtual and the real – as occurs in the way that artworks are posted on social media. This occurs with the liking and sharing of images that are posted on social media. Further, images in the virtual world are likely to be more permanent, juxtaposing the virtual and the real world. This juxtaposition, argues Brown (2015), focusses on the influences of digital technologies capacity to allow artworks to escape the boundaries of this physical location. This alternative space allows audiences to view art works in new ways, creating an alternative space to view street art. In this way, the virtual and the real are amalgamating and impacting on female artists and how they fit within the street art subculture.

As a result of these cross-world interactions, space is being reconceptualised as a shift is being created between the virtual world and the real world. The internet then, facilitates the merging of artist and audience in a space of ‘hyper-fertility’ (Drew 2012, p.42): that is, the creation of networks between the artists and the audience, echoing the arguments made in Chapter 3. This is captured by Warf and Arias (2009) in their description of ‘the spatial turn’. As the internet has changed the cross- world interactions to occur, space should not be defined by physical terms only. Rather, different dimensions of space have emerged because of technological change (Goodchild & Janelle, 2010).

Communication technology advances continue to gain pace, further enabling both the distribution of artworks and the connections that are created between street artists. The location is changing for both the artist, the audience and the artwork.

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Urban space as the virtual space

Applying these arguments, the dissemination of artworks through the internet is creating an alternative space for street art by redefining what is meant by ‘urban space’. Consequently, Young (2014) argues that the internet has re-contextualised street art. This is challenging the space and context of street art for artworks are viewed and accessed in an alternative way, making the urban space into a virtual space.

The artists I interviewed emphasised that they still spend the majority of their time working as individuals to create artworks using the urban landscape as a canvas (Wacławek, 2011). However, collaborations between artists do occur frequently. The nature of working alone, permits the artist to create works and more freely, to make decisions of the artworks placement and imagery (Young, 2014). The internet is challenging the individual nature of the movement for the artwork is moving between both the physical and virtual space. As Mini Graff notes:

I mean it helps the connectivity…the reason I do Instagram if I out something up there it’s just letting – I don’t have a lot of followers – then most of the people know my work - then it’s just letting them know that the work is up and to look out for it (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini Graff reiterates Young’s argument that the urban space is also becoming a virtual space.

Networks

While historically street artists tended to work independently (Wacławek, 2011), this practice is challenged by social media because it creates opportunities to create networks through various portals. Mini Graff highlighted this, noting the popularity of the internet has expanded. Street art was originally documented through photographs and then displayed on street art specific websites. One site, the Wooster collective18 – one of the first moderated spaces of the images of street art.

18 The Wooster Collective. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.woostercollective.com/ Accessed 23 February 2017. 62

Mini Graff noted that if you ‘made’ it on Wooster you had ‘made it’ as an artist (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Importantly for this research project, the internet is redefining how female artists situate themselves within the street art subculture. This is highlighted by the emergence over the last decade, of a number of high profile female artists (Parisi, 2015). The influence of the internet is assisting in the change of environment for female artists.

Female street artists use the Internet and social media to interact and network with fellow artists (Biedarieva, 2016). Using online vehicles to make contact and engage with other artists can minimise the risks involved when conducting artwork on the street, as the virtual communities can become physical networks of support. The establishment of such networks is occurring both locally and globally. On a global scale, Kaff-eine’s latest project in the Philippines19, Kaff-eine used social media to network with local Philippines-based artists, who in turn advised and guided her in the interactions with the local community, locally-based expectations and how to conduct her street art practices safely.

Baby Guerrilla also discussed how it can create agency for the artist because it moves beyond the creation of networks and allows the artist to talk directly to the audience:

I think social media has been a blessing for all types of artists it takes the power away from galleries and lets you speak directly with your audience (Baby Guerrilla, personal communication, 11 May 2017).

As Barbour (2013) states, artists use “…digital networks to promote and document their own work, collaborate with others and engage with the growing international street art communities online” (p. 87). It creates a sense of community for the artists, even though they like to work individually. It is this sense of community which creates agency for the artist and creates connections in the virtual and the physical

19 Cheeseagle. (n.d). Happyland. Retrieved from https://www.cheeseagle.com/currentartprojects/ Accessed 8 March 2016. 63

space. These connections are not defined by gender and consequently these networks benefit the entire street art and graffiti community (Macdonald, 2016). Increasing the networks through social media and allowing artists to communicate online, creating a safer working environment – see Chapter 5.

These connections, lead to dialogue, conversations, translations and interpretation of the artworks within the community (Biedarieva, 2016; Hansen & Danny, 2015). This different understanding of space is key to the understanding of the representation and sharing of street art through social media. That is, the artworks are no longer viewed within the space in which they are created (Brown, 2015; McAuliffe, 2012). The internet creates multiple networks where the artist can be a part of a community but still work individually. This can be described by Rainie and Wellman (2012, p.6) as “networked Individualism”. It can be argued that this is a cross pollination of the virtual and the physical world. These processes are used by female artists to obtain new networks. New networks are not only creating a safer environment for the artists to work in, but the distribution of the artworks across these portals challenges what used to be bound by location.

Networked Individualism

Rainie and Wellman (2012) argue that networked Individualism is a new operating system. They describe this as ways “…in which people connect, communicate and exchange information” (p.7). This concept can be applied to street artists for they prefer working individually though creating these networks allows for a safer environment, collaborations and to meet other artists – creating new social networks. As such, individual artist simultaneously collaborates as well as work autonomously. As Vexta notes:

I’m not networked so to say, the people I know in the scene are my friends. I guess this is what makes it a subculture (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017)

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This statement by Vexta implies that she may be against networks, though she states that the networks are considered friends. By applying the operating system of networked individualism we can see how artists can be networked – leaving the networks to exist within this space.

Rainie and Wellman (2012) argue that technology is creating an isolation of users, which can have both positive and negative impacts. The individual needs to be active within these networks or the networks will not exist. Though if the networks are strong, online communities can be transformed into fluid networks. These transformations expand and diversify online communities.

This concept of networked individualism can be applied to female street artists because working as individuals, they can create networks using the internet and social media (Macdonald, 2016). These networks are created between artists and the audience and are used to create a sense of community but also to collaborate, share and connect with people across the world (Young, 2014).

As noted, Mini Graff uses this idea of creating networks by using Instagram to inform her audiences of new artworks. Even though Mini Graff trusts that her audience will recognise her work, Instagram is used to show her works to her audience and let them know to look out for it on the street.

Networked Systems

The internet was created as “…an interconnected fabric of networked systems” (Greengard, 2015, p.7). These networked systems are created by what Greengard (2015) describes as the ‘Internet of things’. These are objects that are connected simultaneously to each other and the internet. Devices are required for these connections to work, like mobile devices that allow data and information to be moved around, and through the internet. This creates a space for the exchange of information, publically or privately, across single and multiple networks.

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Greengard (2015) looks at two types of connected objects, “physical-first and digital- first” (p.16). When applying this to street art the physical can be argued as being the physical artwork on the street and the digital first could be argued as the photo that is taken of the artwork that is uploaded to social media – for example Instagram. This emphasises Drew’s (2012) argument of how the internet is creating a ‘hyper-fertility’ between the physical and digital worlds.

Networks are then created through these portals and have two important outcomes: firstly, the artist now has agency, and the second, the artwork has ‘life’. The first outcome allows the artist to use social media to share their artworks online using multiple mechanisms: contacting their followers by creating ‘hashtags’ (or #) as well as connecting in with networks and collaborators.

Hashtags are used for expanding the exposure of the artwork through the photographs that connect to multiple networks, including networks that the artist has originally no direct connection with. The hashtag allows the photograph to be accessed by people using Instagram who search through the hashtag option. This shows the agency that is created by the street artist as the use hashtags allows more networks to be reached (York, 2015). This agency has allowed for artists to use digital networks for promoting and documenting work, reaching a larger audience (Barbour, 2013).

The second outcome refers to the artwork which now has a ‘life’ through social media. A photograph can be taken by anyone and placed onto social media. Once on social media, the photograph becomes subject to multiple networks and discussions through the imagery, hashtags that are created and the conversations that emerge. This is the symbolism of the artwork coming to ‘life’ and they take a life of their own through the space of social media. The artwork coming to ‘life’ would not occur in such a way in the physical space.

Analysing the physical-first and the digital-first can also be looked at as ‘the real’ and ‘the virtual (Goodchild & Janelle, 2010). By drawing on Greengard’s (2015) concept of the internet of things – the expansion of the internet and the information that is

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collected through this portal - creates the argument that the physical space is just as important as the virtual (Warf & Arias, 2009).

Networks Created

In addition to social media creating agency for the artist, it encourages a safe environment for all artists. Networks are created by internet users liking and sharing artworks. Artists also get to know other artists and they use these networks to connect with people from all over the world. An example can be seen through Kaffeine’s latest project in the Philippines ‘Happyland20’, who used social media to connect with artists overseas giving her local knowledge on where to conduct her work. This created a safer environment for her to complete artworks and minimise risk.

Like Kaff-eine, Buttons uses social media to connect with other artists, when painting in a different state or territory in Australia. Because different rules apply to different locations, Buttons uses networking through social media to connect with other artists to paint with.

Mini Graff also comments on the burdens of social media and its use for connecting with people overseas:

Social media…ahh I prefer conversations in real life like…social media is good for international context for places I am going to (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Social media has created an easier way for artists to connect.

20 Cheeseagle. (n.d). Happyland. Retrieved from https://www.cheeseagle.com/currentartprojects/ Accessed 8 March 2016. 67

Connections

According to the artists interviewed, social media is valuable, regardless of the use or frequency. Kaff-eine discusses how it is an anonymous way of connecting with people and a portal that she checks more frequently than emails.

…you know it’s a nice anonymous way to connect, you don’t have to give out your phone number and address…it was a nice way for people to connect with me (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

Baby Guerrilla does not use the internet or social media as a main tool for distribution of artworks, though she sees the potential and the impact that it can have for artists. The potential is seen through the sharing artworks, for the networks can see what is happening at that point in time.

With the click of the button you can see what friend and colleagues are creating overseas (Baby Guerrilla, personal communication, 11 May 2017).

Social media allows for the networked distribution of artworks and is an example of the ‘power’ that Kietzmann et al. (2011), which can challenge the power of galleries and institutions. The internet allows for the elimination of ‘the middle man’ and the power is placed back with the artists. As Baby Guerrilla states,

I think social media has been a blessing for all types of artists it takes the power away from galleries and lets you speak directly with your audience (Baby Guerrilla, personal communication, 11 May 2017).

The internet has created a space where conversations can now occur online but can bring negative interactions. People have the ability to hide behind the anonymity of their computer and can use this to troll artists, leaving negative messages or insults. While Kaff-eine mentions above that social media gives a level of anonymity to artists, it also protects the identity of the other person online. Kaff-eine talks about getting “a bit of grief online” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017)

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through the use of personal messenger.21 People can write anything in a message and send to the artist. However, she says the online responses are not ‘real’, and do not effect her personally or her work.

I think this is the thing about social media… if they feel strongly enough that they are going to come to me and say it, I will take it seriously, you know and I will engage it cause I love it I love an argument, but if its online it’s not real (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

Regardless whether artists use the internet or social media it is important to note that whilst these platforms create networks, archive artworks and used as a communication tool, negative implications including people trolling artists is evident.

Case Study | Buttons & Maid

An example of the formation of multiple networks through the process of networked individualism is highlighted by a 2015 collaboration of two street artists, Buttons and Maid. The two artists collaborated in creating one complete image of a woman, using each of their own unique styles to create one complete image (see Figure 22).

21 Messenger is an app on Facebook and Instagram that allows for a person to message each other privately. 69

Figure 22 - Buttons and Maid - Newtown Sydney

Photograph by the Author, 2016

The social media accounts of the artists Buttons and Maid were analysed and both used this artwork to promote themselves as well as each other. This was achieved using hashtags, likes, tagging and the sharing of each other’s photos. Each artist networks crossed over and interacted. These networks were created by applying Greengard’s (2015) idea about on the internet of things and the use of the connected things. The physical-first created the collaboration and the digit-first allowed for the crossing over of the networks.

Through the use of hashtags (York, 2015), both artists used the following hashtags to cross promote: #cheriebuttons and #ironlak (brand of spray paint) in addition to tagging each other @cheriebuttons and @liquidpastels. Reflective of the position of Rainie & Wellman’s (2012) networked individualism, each artist used their separate Instagram accounts to connect as well as take advantage of multiple other networks.

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This example demonstrates how the digital-first can be used in combination with the physical-first for network creation. The information can be distributed across the internet and social media across continents within seconds, challenging the physical space and creating agency for the artists. Agency is created through the artist’s promotion of the artwork. The physical location of the artworks was not disclosed in the social media post; however, it was the use of the internet that allowed the image to be broadcast across the world.

By understanding the concept of networked individualism, and how the internet is used to create networks, we gain insights into the way interactions amongst street artists is developing and expanding. The internet is being utilised by female street artists to be more involved in a subculture that historically has been male dominated. This allows the female to artists to build networks, create agency and promote their artworks. By seeing the artist as the creator of agency and the artworks ability to become alive we can see how these networks are formed and that though working individually each artist has multiple networks that they can collaborate and interact with.

Chapter Summary

Throughout this chapter I have highlighted the changing context of street art with the emergence of the virtual world. The virtual space is challenging the locations of artworks as well as opening opportunities to create and form networks online with both the audience and other artists. Though still working as an autonomous artist, there can be networks that can form through this space – allowing the artists to form networks whilst simultaneously working individually.

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Chapter 5 | GENDER ANALYSIS

“…it doesn’t matter if you a fucking guy or girl, who cares just do your art…”

Buttons, 2017

In the previous two chapters I discussed my first two frameworks: social and cultural analysis and the impact of the internet and social media. In this chapter, I turn to the third analytical framework: gender. As establish in Chapter 1, the subculture of street art does not create an environment that is always welcoming to female artists. The reasons for this are many, but of particular importance is the fact that the practice stems from the graffiti movement and its associated history of street gang culture and the marking of territories (Macdonald, 2001).

The history of the street art movement may be unique, but the exclusion of female artists represented in the Australian art industry is not. This was highlighted by The Countess Report (Richardson, 2016), that reported on the numbers of arts graduates and the number of artists that are represented in galleries across Australia from 2008. Such findings of gender exclusion are not unique and are reflected across the arts more broadly including publishing and literary awards22 and music. 23 In fact, gendered exclusion within the world of art has caused consternation for decades (Nemser, 1975).

While there are relatively few female street artists, it is difficult to define exact numbers. This is because many – both male and female – desire to remain anonymous.

22 Eltham, B. (2017, March, 10) Not a single female author in Australia worthy of ABR’s gender fellowship. Crickey. Retrieved from https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/03/10/not-a-single-female-author-in-australia-worthy-of- abrs-gender-fellowship/ Accessed 10 March 2017. 23 McCormack, A. (2016, March, 8) By the numbers: Women in the music industry. ABC – Tripple J Hack. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/girls-to-the-front/7223798 Accessed 10 March 2017. 72

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the background of the graffiti movement and links to gang culture results in displays of masculine qualities within the subculture. These socially constructed gender roles have continued into the street art subculture. This research focuses on the insights and experiences of female street artists to analyse how they identify, interact and interpret the street art subculture. It is this gendered perspective that is the focus of this chapter.

To achieve this, I turned to the mixed methods approach outlined in Chapter 2 to capture both the words and practices of the artists, which are the focus of this research. Finley (2012) argues that the arts based researcher can “…challenge the assumptions behind social constructions that are ingrained in everyday experience” (p. 6). These everyday experiences, which have been drawn upon through the interview process (Minichiello et al., 2008), outline the importance of the researcher using these experiences to analyse how street artists both feel and act within this subculture. The assumptions noted by Finlay are embedded in experience and researchers can move to collect and analyse data to understand why socially constructed gender roles persist or are challenged within the subculture.

By researching the perspective of female street artists, information on how these socially constructed gender roles affect the artists experience can be analysed. To complete this analysis, I will draw on a liberal feminism theory, which argues for equality for all human beings.

Gender roles and stereotyping

As previously mentioned, street art stems from the graffiti movement, and a masculine culture has transferred to the practice due to these ties. These transferred aspects of masculine culture need to be contextualised to develop an understanding of how the social constructed gender roles have created a marginalisation of female artists.

To ensure a detailed analysis of gender within street art, it is important to note that gender roles are socially constructed (Buiten, 2015). Males have dominated this

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subculture from its beginning. Socially constructed gender roles, which are affiliated with the constructed idea of masculinity, can be viewed in how this subculture evolved: dangerous, illegal, involving gangs, and hence violent.

These socially constructed gender roles exclude and marginalise women and femininity more generally (Buiten, 2015). Female stereotypes include being submissive, meek, maternal, avoiding physical contact, focusing on appearance or avoiding high risk activities such as graffiti. These stereotypes create a fictitious way of thinking about females generally, and female street artists more specifically.

Stereotyping, as Cunningham & Macrae (2011) argue, “remains an insidious societal problem” (p.599). Stereotypes are often triggered by category associated cues. That is, these cues are created by stored knowledge and beliefs that are embedded in everyone. This stored knowledge and beliefs are what we learn from life, religion, culture and family. Stereotypes about street art reinforce that males take more risks than females and are more suited to the dangerous nature of conducting street art practices. As such, women ‘should not’ be part of this subculture. This is just one example of how stereotypes can deter women from becoming street artists. By understanding how socially constructed gender roles and stereotypes are created we can then begin to unpack how this has affected female artists throughout history and how it is still evident today.

The feminist lens

The term feminism evolved in France during the late 19th Century (Paletschek, 2005) with the position of rights for women that were equal to man (Offen, 1988). This included the right to vote as well as the right to representation (Offen, 1988). Through the evolution of feminism, many gender rights movements have emerged various arms of feminism though it is liberal feminism that I have applied to this research. The concept of ‘liberal feminism’ refers to the desire to create an equal environment for all (Freedman, 2006). This equal environment for all remains challenging despite the fact that women have been fighting for equality for centuries in many different spheres.

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As noted at the beginning of this chapter, inequality is reflected in the arts which was highlighted in The Countess Report (Richardson, 2016). Richardson found there are more female artists than male artists, though male artists have a higher representation and viewings in galleries – no matter where the gallery is located (city based or regional) or if it is a public or private institution. This report analysed gender representations in the Australian contemporary arts in 2014 finding:

Commercial galleries showing 40% female artists and state museums showing 34% female artists in 2014 tell a different story – one where commerce, history and taste are more traditional and hierarchical (Richardson, 2016, p. n.p).

In my interviews, the artists participating in this research noted the gender imbalance within street art. Buttons, for example, stated that street art scene “it is so guy oriented” (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017). Likewise, Kaff-eine noted that, “…there are far more males than females” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017). Baby Guerrilla also noted this disparity but argued that gender exclusion exists in all aspects of life and is not specific to street art. Baby Guerrilla highlighted how female artists are not represented more generally, “[Street art] is pretty much a male domain, but I think the art scene is also pretty much a male domain as well”.24

This type of exclusion, which echoes the findings of The Countess Report, can be analysed and confronted by applying a liberal feminist lens. Liberal feminists contend that equality can be achieved through the creation of networks of support (Freedman, 2006). Freedman argues that the creation of networks are important in any male dominated industry where women integrate into mixed male-dominated institutions. Women must not only form networks of support, but be careful not too loose their separate, female dominated organisations (Freedman, 2006, p.60).

24 Buzacott-Speer, E. (2016, October, 4) Meet the women of Australia’s street art scene. ABC. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-05/meet-the-women-of-australias-street-art-scene/6984378 Accessed 5 October 2016.

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The importance of these networks that Freedman discusses is illustrated by how female artists create webs of support. While these networks of support are important for women, they are not meant to exclude, as the focus is about equality for all. Such networks can create spaces where artist’s experiences are shared, exclusion is confronted and more equal opportunities are created within the subculture.

Rise of female artists

Gender and the art world has always been a contested space. Writing in 1975, Cindy Nemser discussed this by noting the challenge that women have faced in terms of representation over decades within the world of art – something that Richardson (2016) echoes four decades later. Historically, male artists have had communities of support including guilds and academies that excluded women.

Women artists have never had any kind of fine arts community of their own. Each women alone in her own studio, excluded because of her sex from the male artist’s haunts, was forced to make her way in solitary struggle against a basically hostile masculine power structure (Nemser, 1975, p.18).

As Nemser states, women historically did not have these communities of support as they were not considered art professionals. Rather, as noted, they stereotypically were expected to attend to homely duties and only complete art practice in their spare time, resulting in women working alone in their studios (Nemser, 1975). Female artists began responding to this exclusion. In the 1960s, New York female artists created the organisation, ‘Women Artists in Revolution’ (WAR). Women would come together to break isolation and share thoughts, ideas and practices. This is an example of what Freedman (2006) describes as the abovementioned female support networks. By banding together to form these networks, women could support each other and were able to create communities and fight these challenges in solidarity rather than as individuals.

In 1969, Women Artists in Revolution, challenged the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) to have a female-only wing. The request was ignored and elicited a hostile

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response (Nemser, 1975). The established art world retained gender hierarchies and historical power structures despite the 1960s and ‘70s being a time of radical change. The challenge that women faced during this time can be seen in the background of graffiti and street art. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Lady Pink was the first identified female graffiti artist who began painting trains from 1979 (Siegel, 1993). Lady Pink responded to the socially constructed gender roles by asserting a type of masculinity through confrontation. On reflecting on her practice, Lady Pink discussed ‘courage’ and ‘violence’ against the males within the industry: having to defend her right as an artist and to use her work to challenge them.25

This research found that the anecdotal evidence is that the number of practising female street artists is increasing – despite this, they remain a relatively small percentage of the subculture. The opinions of the street art subculture differed between artists. In a previously recorded interview Baby Guerrilla, states that, “Female artists are feisty ... I also think they are frustrated with unequal representation and opportunities”.26 Likewise, Vexta also echoes this imbalance in our interview:

Any woman working not in a traditionally female role notices the differences. A lot of time you have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to get noticed (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017).

While both Vexta and Baby Guerrilla acknowledge that an inequality exists, neither of them employed the more confrontational tactics of Lady Pink, opting a subtler approach including the formation of networks (see Chapter 6). Despite the rise of the female street artist, the fight for equality within this subculture continues today. As such, despite their talent and the many gains made, they continue to face marginalisation simply because they are women. Kaff-eine looks at the inequality from an alternative angle, noting:

25 Brooklyn Museum. (n.d). Lady Pink. Retrieved from https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/lady-pink Accessed 25th April 2016 26Buzacott-Speer, E. (2016, October, 4) Meet the women of Australia’s street art scene. ABC. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-05/meet-the-women-of-australias-street-art-scene/6984378 Accessed 5 October 2016. 77

I've never really viewed myself as a female artist — I'm an artist — and that's how I've gone through most of my life…Even to look at the art, you can't tell which is by a male, which is made by a female.27

This statement by Kaff-eine – ‘I’m an artist’ – challenges the culture but not in the same confrontational nature as lady Pink. Rather, like the liberal feminist movement, Kaff-eine wants to be equal and have the same access as men rather than being defined by gender. This statement argues that talent should not be viewed through socially constructed gender roles. Kaff-eine wants to be on equal terms as other artists: be they male or female. Mini-Graff reflects the same argument about wanting to be recognised as an artist.

I am just an artist…I do bring feminism into the role for I can’t not help but do that…things like the equality poster with the builders’ labourer you know well green bans did this amazing thing and she was like the first builders labourers on job sites and I can’t not celebrate that you know because we still have a long way to go for equality in the workplace…and it is good for that to be a reminder (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

This is an interesting observation because it highlights that gender may not play a role in her identify, it does shape her practice, something that is captured in my interviews with the other artists. This is an example of how Mini-Graff’s work is about feminism and celebrating the female form, despite the argument that she is ‘just an artist’. The work is a direct response to current events and the gendered inequality that exists in our society today, not just the art world. Here her work is impacted by her gender and her gender politics as she creates works that not only respond to events, but create the conversations discussed in Chapter 3. Importantly, Mini-Graff is a non-commercial artist and provides no information on her work but she does direct you to her Instagram – which further encourages the types of conversations that characterise street art (see Chapter 3).

27 Buzacott-Speer, E. (2016, October, 4) Meet the women of Australia’s street art scene. ABC. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-05/meet-the-women-of-australias-street-art-scene/6984378 Accessed 5 October 2016. 78

Likewise, Buttons also wants to be known as ‘an artist’. Buttons feels that gender should not define you as an artist – only the artworks produce,

It doesn’t matter if you a fucking guy or girl, who cares? Just do your art (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

Interestingly, Buttons feels that there are an increasing number of female street artists but they choose to have a lower profile than their male counterparts. She says the need to have a high profile is a masculine trait:

I think a lot of the girls just aren’t apart of that scene (masculine)…, they are just not interested in being part of that and maybe it’s cause it is so guy oriented (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

‘I have to go above and beyond’

This gendered difference was capture by Macdonald (2001), who conducted ethnographic research on the graffiti subculture in the late 1990s in London and New York. The research focused on the masculine identity that is carried by male graffiti writers and how these masculine qualities defined the subculture. Macdonald (2001) noted that girls “…enter this subculture and gain an automatic and tainted set of traditional feminine qualities” (p. 130). While female graffiti writers were present, they were highly outnumbered by the male writers. These female writers, according to MacDonald (2001), felt the pressure to perform while at the same time fitting within gendered assigned roles. These ideas of feeling pressure to perform is evident today though it seems tempered by the pressure they feel as artists not necessarily female artists. This point was made by Kaff-eine when discussing the pressure, she feels when selected for a group show:

I am the only female chosen, ok I gotta make sure that I go above and beyond (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

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This again reflects the fact that gender may not be an issue of identity but is reflected in the practice. As the only female in a show, she feels the pressure to prove that her art is no different and should be judged on its merits.

These responses also highlight the desire by the artists to be treated equal in their art practice – which is reflected in the liberal feminism prism previously discussed. Though they want to complete their artworks without having to prove a point, work harder or be excluded because they are female – the history and nature of the subculture continues to mean they have to go ‘above and beyond’.

Reflecting Freedman’s (2006) position, the way forward may well be for female street artists to unite, creating communities of practice and support. Though in many ways, I agree with Freedman’s position, as argued in Chapter 4, the artists are networked individuals, that is working both individually and creating networks along the way. In many ways, this is captured in the way that the female street artists I interviewed see themselves. Rather than being female artists, they perceive themselves as simply artists – or as I discuss in the next section ‘autonomous artists’. This does not mean that gender is ignored in their arts practice, it is how they perceive themselves as artists.

Autonomous artist

Each of the five artists interviewed align with Parisi’s (2015) position that female artists want to be judged on the merit of their work as artists rather than being compared to their male counterparts. In other words, they want to be seen as autonomous artists rather than ‘female street artists’. If this does not occur, Parisi (2015) goes on to argue, female street artists will continue to be viewed as a ‘spectacle’ – an exception – separate from the broader artistic movement. This spectacle discussed by Parisi creates a tension that disadvantages the female artists as they are not considered equal. Buttons picked up this theme of “spectacle” without any prompting on my part during our interview. She noted how she is often approached when undertaking work with comments such as:

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ohhh chicks painting, pretty good for a chick (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

Buttons discusses the challenge that she faces as an artist using the street as a canvas for her artworks. Her responses show how the imbedded category of ‘female’ creates automated cues to shape stereotypes within the art form. Buttons emphasises that this is small proportion of the negative responses to her work. Buttons states that most people, both male and female, compliment her work on its merits and do not attribute gender to her work as a female artist. Similarly, Kaff-eine does not see gender as playing a role in either her identity or artwork. She sees herself as an autonomous artist devoid of gender articulation. Despite this, she recognises that gender is not something she can escape from:

I don’t present myself as female, my art doesn’t have any indicators because it is not a factor in what I paint. I paint what interests me and if people don’t know if am male or female that is better …structurally we all know that there is patriarchy, we all know there is inequality,…this is an undisputed fact and there is no reason why street art is any different (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

Kaff-eine notes that while gender inequality exists in many industries and practices, it is the lack of recognition that is seen throughout the art industry as Kaff-eine notes:

You know there are heaps of artists who get knocked back all the time from galleries, male and female…I understand that more males get in, you only have to walk through a gallery to see the representation (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

Despite this history, Kaff-eine also observes there is something in street art that encourages women to be autonomous artists and not defined by their gender. This is because, Kaff-eine argues, “out on the street it is hard to define who painted which work” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017) – so therefore the artists should be seen as autonomous.

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If there is one area where gender emerges in the consciousness of the artist, it is in concerns about safety and security.

Safety

Street art as a practice presents multiple challenges for the artists. From the working environment that is subject to changing and challenging weather conditions, to the safety of the artists conducting the work. Here safety can be understood as having multiple dimensions: from takings risks when conducting art in certain locations, to risks associated with the time of day that the works are undertaken. Artists’ awareness of risk and personal safety was raised in all the interviews with contradictory responses. Artists felt ‘safe’ while at the same time expressing risks associated with their gender. According to Mini Graff:

It’s hard work…it’s a difficult work environment…going out in the street at night as a female is as much…I don’t know I can only speak as being a female it can be quite a challenging experience…so I have tailored my practice so I can be as safe as possible (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini Graff tailored her practice due to the risk factor for female artists and how it can be a dangerous job, “a challenging experience” – to be out on the street at night (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini Graff also noted that sometimes taking risks is required in this art practice. This is because there is a level of challenge that the street holds for artists who use the wall as a canvas. She also added, however, that risks taken also change as your life circumstances change: people with children, for example, seem to take less risks compared to someone who does not have children.

I have got friends who have had families and they take less risks because they are responsible for children (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

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Kaff-eine discussed the statistics of women being in public spaces at night and she agrees risks do follow female artists.

That is the beautiful thing about street art you don’t know and I mean certainly being in public space at night down a dark laneway you know the stats show women are attacked far more often…you know…but when you look at the stats of violence against women it’s in the home by males that they know (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

However, though Kaff-eine discussed the risks women have to confront, she emphasised that she personally never felt unsafe conducting her practice in Australia:

I have never felt unsafe on the street…never not once in Australia (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

These contradictory messages seem to reflect the way that these artists continue to place themselves in a male-dominated industry characterised by masculine behaviour of risk taking. In many ways, it is unsurprising that they are uncertain how to place themselves within these contexts. This uncertainty is also reflected that many female street artists and their work is subsumed within the broader artistic community. This issue of documentation is what I discuss in the final section of this chapter.

Documentation

Street artworks frequently remain undocumented because of their ephemeral nature but the rise of social media and internet (see Chapter 4) has assisted in the documentation process. Due to the gender imbalance that is evident in the subculture, female artists, though documented, are a minority in comparison to their male counterparts. Mini Graff repeatedly noted that male artists seem to be recorded in history but female artists are not. This may be one of the reasons she has chosen

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the first female building worker to be the focus of her current work. As Mini Graff notes:

…it’s the male artists that get all the props (praise /recognition) and it is the female artists that don’t get recorded in history and they disappear…this happens in contemporary art as well…I had that show (Mini Graff’s latest exhibition) so that it can be archived, so it can be written about and people can see the work and there is some documentation of the work that I have completed in the city (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Mini Graff discusses here the importance of exhibiting her work to document practice and not for commodification purposes. This is also the power of the internet which turns ephemeral artworks into permanent data that cannot be erased. Due to the ephemeral nature of street art, works disappear off the street either from the weather, council workers, or other artists. Exhibiting works creates a cataloguing of the artworks, however this is changing due to the impact of the internet as discussed in Chapter 4. Despite this, Mini Graff witnessed male artists receiving opportunities to exhibit in ways that females do not.

This intersecting of the internet and street art practices is creating a space for the female artists to document work, allows for an equality of practice and documentation. Drawing on from Freedman’s (2006) liberal feminism, the internet has the potential to create an equal space for female artists to be archived and create a way of documenting work that has previously gone unnoticed.

Chapter Summary

This chapter applied a gender lens to investigate the challenges that female street artists face within the subculture. Female artists are creating a space for themselves within the masculine dominated practice and demand to be acknowledged as autonomous artists: that is, not defined by their gender but their practices. While this issue of the autonomous artist emerges in their identity, the issue of gender does play a role in altering their practice.

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Chapter 6 | KEY FINDINGS

“I love just being on the street at night…one of my favourite things to do…there is nothing better than a perfectly still night and there is no one around and you just walk around and you just feel like you own the city…I feel I have a relationship to the city like the city belongs to me and I am a part of it…that’s one thing I love…”

Mini-Graff, 2017

This research has been focussed on the experience of female street artists in a male documented practice and revealed how they identify, interact with and interpret the street art subculture. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, I have used three frameworks to interrogate how the culture and social aspects, the internet and social media and gender shape their experiences. In this chapter, I bring together a number of key findings about female street artists that cut across these frameworks. The subjects shared five qualities: • Aversion to advertising; • Desire for audience interactions; • Use of networks; • Attitudes to safety; and, • Gender does not inform identity but it does inform practice.

Advertising

By applying Silverman (2013) concept of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, one word that continually appeared in the interview was the connection of street art to advertising. Four of the artists mentioned advertising – and each one discussed it in a negative way. Specifically, they described advertising as a form of pollution. One way that this was framed was comparing the contradiction that advertising is accepted and while graffiti and street art are often categorised as vandalism. Both 85

work to present images in the urban landscape that aim to capture people’s attention.

In a number of different ways, the artists raised the following question: What moral norms make advertising acceptable but also outlaw street art? Further, the offensive nature of a great deal of advertising was also raised: be it sexist, promotion of alcohol or the general commercialisation of society, the artists challenged the way society seems to accept the visual pollution of advertising companies. As Baby Guerrilla noted and as mentioned in Chapter 3, her opposing authority and how everyone should have a voice in public space, not just the media moguls.

Buttons also described advertising as pollution and stated that she would rather see artistic talent than advertising for big companies: advertising is everywhere, she challenged me by asking why this was not included as vandalism? With Buttons statement below, she is talking about how the authorities view graffiti – as a malicious destruction of property. She likens their view on graffiti to the advertising that she sees in the everyday.

…ok you are now wrapping trains in advertising to me that’s graffiti, seeing a billboard that graffiti, I don’t want to see that, I would rather see a piece that someone has actually put the effort and made something creative, I would way rather see that all over trains, than seeing fucking ads for commonwealth bank like, that is graffiti…and they make fucking money on that (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

Furthermore, each artist identified advertising as a type of enclosure as it encroaches on public space. According to the artists, advertising pollutes our environment while street art opens up the urban landscape and makes it more liveable. Mini Graff had a somewhat different insight when noting that she has never seen commercial posters placed by females. Having appropriated the advertising of multiple corporations, it is interesting that Mini Graff had a focus on who was placing the posters up in a public space.

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Audience interaction

While audience interaction was a theme in the social and cultural frame, it crossed all three frameworks. Each of the artists acknowledged the audience and the interactions occurring. It is noted also ‘the public’ is seen as a general audience, it is this audience that differs between artists.

Baby Guerrilla, Buttons and Mini Graff do not make their artworks for a specific audience. Baby Guerrilla confirms audience interaction occurs, though it depends on different variables, like location, artwork and even the audience to some extent. Buttons creates her artworks and acknowledges that the audience wants a story behind the work, though she would prefer the audience to take away their own story or meaning.

Mini Graff noted that her artworks create conversation, that she feels “is often open ended…something that is open to interpretation” (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017). An opinion can be created by members of the audience, which leads to further interactions and adds meaning produced from viewing these artworks. These interactions with the artworks create conversations, as Mini Graff states:

I think inherently putting something on the street you can’t not engage without some kind of conversation, like that’s the great thing about the street anything that goes up you are entering a conversation (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Vexta commented that she “…never expected my audience to be as broad as it is” (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017), covering all ages of young and old. She commented on the audience interaction, by noting, “I try to leave space for people to bring their own meaning and narrative to my work” (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017).

Kaff-eine states that the first audience is her, though she is very specific when it comes to her work and the message she is intending for that audience. This

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statement is in reference to a wall that she created in Benalla, for the LGBTI communities living in rural areas – see Figure 23.

…hopefully that was giving back to the community who I intended to see it…but stands a statement for everybody else who understood the meaning behind it (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

Kaff-eine created this mural for this community and whilst her intended audience was for herself she was celebrating this community that she feels is often marginalised in rural areas.

Figure 23 - Kaff-eine – Benalla, VIC

Photograph from @Katie Kaff Eine Facebook account28

…at any one point in Benalla (VIC), I cared what the rainbow people in Benalla you know cared, I cared what they thought about my work (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

28 Katie Kaff Eine. (2017, April, 09) Benalla 2017 for Wall to Wall Festival (Facebook post) – Retrieved June, 20, 2017 from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1314788715273369&set=a.377836235635293.88855.100002267584 120&type=3&theater

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Each artist expressed the importance of the audience and the interactions to produce meaning and conversations through their artworks.

Networks

Networks exist in both the physical and virtual world, containing both artist networks and audience networks. In the physical world, the artists networks are, as Mini Graff states: “I am in communication with a few other street artists…and we all know what each other does and we are all sort of unspoken” (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

Vexta, on reflecting on networks, argues that: “I’m not networked so to say, the people I know in the scene are my friends” (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017). Though denying networks as such, what she is indicating is that she builds networks of support with the friends she makes rather than with artists per se. Kaff-eine also mentions networks, “…there are still some people I have not met and I like their work but we know of each other” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017). Baby Guerrilla states, “I know a good mix of both men and women. Most of the time I have worked alone though” (Baby Guerrilla, personal communication, 11 May 2017).

As such, networks do exist though it all depends on each individual artist and how they define networks. This does not stop the artists working as individuals, but creates a type of networked individualism that allows the artist to work both in a group and as an individual (see Chapter 4). Importantly, no artist raised the issue of ‘female only’ networks. Rather, these networks seem to cross gender, ethnic and cultural borders.

The virtual world of social media is also facilitating the development of these networks. Though Baby Guerrilla and Mini Graff are not on social media as much as Buttons, Vexta and Kaff-eine they all see it as a useful tool. As Buttons states,

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…good thing about social media, is I can see what my friends are doing and I want to do more… and that really inspires me… I think social media is like one reason why you see people’s work (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017).

The networks created are enhanced by the use of social media and the ability to view people’s art practices, regardless if they are local or international. This echoes the findings of Macdonald (2016) that the internet is creating exposure and aiding in the development of more female artists within both the graffiti and street art subcultures. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Mini Graff uses social media, specifically Instagram, to let her audience know that there is new work up on the street. Creating exposure for her audience to go and find her works on the street. Likewise, Kaff- eine, uses social media to anonymously connect with people creating networks.

As argued through Chapter 4, the internet’s ability to encourage networks, and the way they are viewed by the artists varies. The networks are enhanced through the use of the internet and, in particular, through social media, all the artists even if they do not access it all the time, are creating networks. People view artworks and comment and share and like these images. All of this enables an artwork to be projected across the world, regardless if they use it frequently or infrequently. By placing the artwork on social media, the artwork comes to ‘life’ and the artwork is no longer limited by its physical location. This network is created with the audience – and the audience includes other artists.

In the graffiti culture, writers work in crews, however in the street art subculture this differs. This seems to be different for the female artists interviewed, whilst they enjoy collaborating they are happy working individually. Kaff-eine mentions this “…I still don’t paint in a crew” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017). The artists have their networks, whether they are friends within the subculture, or through the internet, regardless, they exist and the internet is assisting in this space.

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Safety: The city is ‘ours’

Though risks and safety play a role in the subculture, it is not something that prevents their practice. Macdonald (2016) argues that whilst risk and danger is still evident in street art, the internet and social media have made the focus on the artwork rather than the physical or legal risks that graffiti writers encounter.

It can be argued that the internet has created a safer place for the artists. As noted in Chapter 4, the internet is allowing artists to contact people to gain advice on where to go and paint. Buttons does state that she does not go out at night on her own, though she frequently contacts people via social media to achieve this. Addressing the risks that are there so she can avoid this.

Much like Mini Graff who has altered her practice due to the changes in the law for graffiti and street artists, she states: “I feel I have a relationship to the city like the city belongs to me and I am a part of it” (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017). This relationship with the city makes her feel safe, a public city that has public walls to create artworks. Kaff-eine also agrees with Mini Graff, when she discussed how she has never felt unsafe in Australia whilst conducting street art practices.

Buttons talked about the risks that are involved for females, regardless if they are street artists: “girls do have a safety risk like…I never go out by myself at night” (Buttons, personal communication, 15 May 2017). Buttons stressed the importance of confidence and said if you are confident you can achieve anything. This goes against the stereotype of female gender roles for being submissive. If these particular artists felt unsafe they would create an environment that was safe.

Gender

In summary, the artists were not defined by their gender but it can be seen through parts of their practices: Buttons who celebrates the female form through her work; Mini Graff’s stated, “I do bring feminism into the role for I cannot help but do that” (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017), this is evident in her equality

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poster series as discussed in Chapter 3; and, Vexta who paints from a perspective as a woman. As Vexta stated:

I am interested in painting real, powerful and strong women because it resonates with me and I think presenting images like this counters the usual submissive, over sexualised or under sexualised public presentation of women in public spaces. I have also painted people who are very gender neutral, feminine men etc. I find beauty in the slightly left of centre of the norm (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017).

Baby Guerrilla creates her artworks on the street because she likes the idea of the gallery spaces being defined by her and for people to experience artworks that are not confined to the gallery spaces – traditional spaces that are subject to gendered exclusion (see Chapter 5). Baby Guerrilla prefers to remain anonymous, though she is female, she wants to be judged on her merit as an artist not her gender.29

However, Kaff-eine is very different to the other artists: “my art doesn’t have any indicators because it is not a factor in what I paint, I paint what interests me and if people don’t know if am male or female that is better…cause it is of no consequence” (Kaff-eine, personal communication, 13 May 2017).

All artists recognised that there was a gender imbalance but this is not a deterrent from conducting street art practices. They spoke about the gender inequality that exists in any male dominated field and the challenges that can occur – challenges that exist across the art world in its many forms (see Chapter 5). However, they see change is happening – on the street at least.

In this chapter I have identified five key findings that crossed the three frameworks that have shaped this research.

29 Puvanenthran, B (2015, January, 10). Radical roots of street art movement still alive for Melbourne’s Baby Guerrilla. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/radical- roots-of-street-art-movement-still-alive-for-melbournes-baby-guerrilla-20150109-12kuti.html Accessed 5 October 2016. 92

Chapter 7 | CONCLUSION

“Being an artist can be challenging because it exists outside of what is consider normal but that is also what makes it fucking awesome”

Vexta, 2017

The research presented in this exegesis aimed to present the perspectives of female artists who conduct street art practices. The key findings identified, as outlined in the previous chapter, provide interesting outcomes for this research. This chapter concludes with the key findings by answering the questions of the ways in which female artists identify, interact and interpret the street art subculture.

Identify

1. Why do female artists select this medium for their art form – and how do they identify with the genre or category of art practice?

…one hand you are giving this visual gift to somebody Kaff-eine, 2017

The artists both had accidental and intentional reasons for selecting street art as an art practice. Either way, street art produced challenges that is, producing artworks in the urban environment and the difficulty of working with the weather or creating large scale works and the equipment needed to do this, including ladders and cherry pickers. Vexta stated “I don’t really feel like I selected it (street art), I think it selected me” (Vexta, personal communication, 29 July 2017). All the artists interviewed use multiple art practices and street art is a medium they enjoy using. The artists identify with street art through the medium and their artistic merits as artists who use street art practices. By using the street as a canvas, as Kaff-eine states, this medium allows for artists to produce artworks in the urban environment, to give a ‘visual gift’ to the public. 93

Interact

2. Does gender play a role in the artists’ participation in the street art subculture and does this effect their self- identification?

I describe myself as an artist with a background in Street Art, that I am self- taught and learnt to paint, create and reach my audience on the street, that to me is what defines a street artist Vexta, 2017

Gender does play a role in the artist’s participation of street art. The artists do not define themselves by their gender within the subculture, as discussed in the key findings, gender was identified through the production of artworks. The artists all self- identified as artists who conduct street art practices, they complete their art form for they enjoy the media of street of art. It can be argued that masculine gender roles are evident in the street art subculture, though, it is important to note that this does not define the culture. The artists will paint with another artist if they like their work, not because they are male or female.

Interpret

3. Through the street art medium, what dialogues are created between the female artist and the audience?

I think inherently putting something on the street you can’t not engage without some kind of conversation Mini Graff, 2017

Dialogues are formed between the artist and the audience through street art and conversations are created by the artist’s work that are interpreted and translated by the audience. The artist creates the artwork in the urban landscape and the audience interacts with the artwork. These interactions create dialogues that can be seen as a 94

‘disruption of thought’. These disruptions of thought can either be a small disruption, a simple dialogue of ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ for the artwork or a large disruption where the audience constructs meaning through the imagery. The introduction of the internet and social media have created additional dialogues. Once conversations were limited to the physical world, have now crossed into the virtual world. These dialogues digitally carried, allow interactions between the artwork and the audience to occur in a social media space. Using the internet and social media, artists can now create conversation directly with the audience all around the globe not just specific to a neighbourhood where the work is located.

Final Summary

Through the research process, the questions have been addressed and insight provided. As noted, the research is based on a small representation of the female artist experience in the analysis of the subculture of street art. The investigation began with the questions of the ways in which street artists identify, interact and interpret the subculture of street art. This research documents these artists and their interaction with the subculture. The artists self- identified as ‘artists’ who conduct street art practices irrespective of gender. The artists interaction with the subculture is completed by placing works on the street and the artist interpret the subculture as an alternative art form that defies the gallery walls. These unexpected street artworks are intended as disruptions of thought created for the audience. As Mini Graff states, “street art, that’s the essence and the beautiful thing about street art, you turn a corner and you see something unexpected and it’s for you” (Mini Graff, personal communication, 14 April 2017).

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APPENDICES

Appendix A – Interview Questions

Framework of street art

Research Question Interview Question Notes Why do female artists select this • Tell me about your artistic practices: What medium do you use and can medium– and how do they identify you describe the process you follow, for developing content? with the genre? • Can you describe your art training and education … was it formal or informal? • Why did you select street art as your preferred medium? • How do you define yourself as an artist/ how do you define the artwork that you produce? What does this mean to you? • How has your practice evolved? Both technically and the direction of the imagery? Small scale, big scale, illustration, design… • Who are your influences or what are you influenced by? In terms of artists, environment, politics… • Which cities have you completed work in? • How do you select locations to produce your work? Through the street art medium, • What conversations and dialogues do you think are started by the what dialogues are created audience viewing your artworks? between the female artist and the • Who do you think is your main audience? Has this surprised you? audience? Does gender play a role in the • What pulled you towards the street art subculture? artists’ participation in the street art • How did you become networked with other artists in the street art subculture and does this affect subculture? their self- identification? • Are your networks predominantly male or female? • How their artist name is reflective of the practice and self-identity? • Are you consciously or unconscious being gender neutral in your choice alias?

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Internet & social media

Research Question Interview Question Notes Why do female artists select this • Do you use the internet or social media platforms to help promote your medium – and how do they identify practice? with the genre? • Do you find it useful? Why or why not? • Does the use of social media by other artists’ impact how you associate with social media? Through the street art medium, • Street artists tend to work individually, though collaborations occur – do what dialogues are created you rely on networks as an artist? between the female artist and the • The Internet can project artworks virtually across the world and create audience? conversations between artists, fans and so on. Does the Internet or social media play a role in your networks? • How do you think social media has shaped the distribution of your artworks? • Do you use social media to interact with audiences? Does gender play a role in the • When using social media, do you distribute all your work or only artists’ participation in the street art selected images? subculture and does this affect • How do you make this choice? their self-identification?

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Gender

Research Question Interview Question Notes Why do female artists select this • Why do you think there is an imbalance of male and female artists medium– and how do they identify within street art? with the genre? • A masculine culture surrounds the subculture of street art: this is a result of street art being extension of the graffiti culture. Do you agree? Why/Why not? • How do you feel about being part of this culture? Through the street art medium, • Turning to your relationship with other artists, in the dialogues you what dialogues are created mentioned are they mainly with female or male artists? between the female artist and the • Do you think gender plays a role in these dialogues? audience? • Do you feel there is a separate relationship between female and male artists? Does gender play a role in the • As an artist do you think you are defined by your gender? Why? artists’ participation in the street art • As a female artist have you experienced any discrimination – directly or subculture and does this affect indirectly – regarding your art practice? their self- identification? • Have you sought gallery representation? • Do you think it is harder or difficult for female artists to have their work acknowledged? • Has your gender influenced your work? • If yes - In what ways – location, subject, imagery?

EXTRA QUESTIONS

Tell me three things you love about being an artist?

Do you have a favourite artwork or project you have worked on?

What is your definition of street art?

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