Street Art

The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in one  of my favourite Galleries to visit and fully deserving of its Best Family Friendly Museum in Britain Award in the Guardian Family Friendly Awards 2010. The Herbert is a light, open contemporary building which shows current temporary exhibitions combined with an excellent collection of post 1900 British Art.

Currently it is the first venue to host a brand new touring exhibition from the Victoria and Albert Museum - Street Art: Contemporary Prints from the V&A. Street art is a diverse, constantly evolving art form, one that moves across the derelict buildings, bus shelters and hoardings of cities around the world. Its roots lie in history, echoing cave paintings and stencilled slogans and images in political campaigning.

The exhibition showcases the work of some of the biggest artists in the street art community such as Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Sickboy, Pure Evil and D*Face. One fascinating aspect of the exhibition is the sense of morality on show through images satirising consumerism and politics, contemplating morality, and questioning rampant individualism.

The Herbert is also particularly good at supplementing the core theme of its main exhibition with other displays and events designed for further exploration of its theme. On this occasion it has commissioned six emerging artists on the UK street scene to decorate its white walls. This  part of the exhibition, Fresh Paint, contains brand new work from Pahnl, SPQR, Lucy McLauchlan, Ben Slow, AsOne and Newso.

While each of these pieces have real strengths I was particularly taken with the faces and branches on the painted cardboard and wood construction which McLauchlan had fitted into a corner of the exhibition as an organic offshoot. McLauchlan combines art deco, psychedelic and childlike motifs to make pieces that are delicate and tender yet engaging and provocative. She hails from Birmingham and I later realised that I had already glimpsed one of her murals returning last Tuesday from seeing Spamalot at the Alex in Birmingham.

To explore another aspect of the street art scene, the Herbert is also showcasing new aerosol art from another Birmingham based graffiti artist, Mohammed Ali. Ali calls his art, AerosolArabic, a unique fusion of urban graffiti art with traditional Arabic Islamic calligraphy and has been working with graffiti in the West Midlands for over fifteen years.

It was after his new-found passion and rediscovery of his faith in Islam, that he began to fuse his graffiti-art with the grace and eloquence of sacred and Islamic script and patterns. He describes his work as, 'taking the best of both worlds.' and bringing back to the forefront principles that are gradually fading away from our modern societies.

He was drawn to the graffiti world from early 80's inspired by the subway art movement, and like many kids living in the UK was involved with the street-painting scene. After studying Multimedia Design at university, he went onto working in the computer-games industry as a designer but soon enough he became disillusioned with using his creative skills for commercial benefit and began creating art for 'mankind's sake'. Graffiti was often a self-glorification of one's identity, the 'tag' being the focus. Mohammed began exploring simple messages which at their heart were words which pointed other than to the 'self'; words with a deeper message that were speaking to the public, and relevant to the wider society.

His art is a unique fusion and celebration of street-art with Arabic Islamic script and patterns. This exhibition includes work on spray painted canvas, video projections and brand new aerosol art along the themes of Freedom, Justice and Equality. Ali has also been pioneering a unique amalgamation of different mediums and artforms - weaving together spoken-word with spraypainted words - and delivering them at auditoriums and public spaces across the UK. At the Herbert, he performed in collaboration with renowned UK spoken-word artists, David J, Indigo Williams and ZK The Poet.

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Mohammed Ali - Breaking Down The Walls.