Stalking the catalogue: Crap graffiti

"Graffiti can be a diverse form of expression and thought-provoking art; whether painted on the side of a train or on a canvas hanging in a gallery. Or, as you will experience in the pages to come, it can be crude, drunken daubing, nonsensical statements or hilarious outpourings of uncontained rage."
 
Crap graffiti edited by Adam Elliott and Richard Frazer

When is graffiti art and when is it just plain 'ol graffiti? I grew up in the 80s and Beat Street (the film) I liked for the music but, more, for the graffiti. Ever since then, I stop to admire it - on trains, buses, walls, toilet mirrors, fences, school books. Everywhere. And executed in a number of different ways - etched in glass (let's not talk about the inappropriate one I saw on a downstairs window), black vivid tagged on a bus stop seat, spraypaint on a freight train rolling past, pencil on a school book, pen on a desk. Everything. Some of it is barely legible. A lot of it is full of references to genitalia (like toddlers who've suddenly discovered they have them and need to keep showing everybody). And then, sometimes, they're so witty you wish you could meet the people behind them. This book, according to the title, is going to be all of the former. Maybe I win?

Confession: I sometimes see the visual cacophany that is Twitter as a form of online graffiti. We use it to express ourselves in a myriad of ways - witty banter, social chit chat, indulge the nonsensical, share ALL THE RAGE, and yes, even crude and drunken tweets. See? Online graffiti.