Further below:

2. Broadly-legal on displaying graffiti
3. Stupid laws?
4. Stealing my stuff

 

1. general ~ Copyright, Legal, About Us, Privacy

This web site reproduces paintings photographed on the streets of Newcastle, NSW, Australia, known as street art, wall art, or aerosol art.

Newcastle City Council progressively designates areas of "legal graffiti" under a commitment to youth to "continue to encourage socially responsible aerosol/graffiti art including the provision of legal mural space."

Graffiti Junction believes few of our photographed images are commissioned public art, yet still assumes the same artistic and moral rights in all works depicted on this web site.

Members of the street community would know who tagged which art.

However, the editor of Graffiti Junction cannot easily know this, and it might be better if he doesn’t.

I welcome feedback, both on artist’s attribution, which we are only too willing to add for legitimate works only, or possible infringements by our web site. Email gjman at graffitijunction dot com.

Copyright

Artistic and moral rights of artists might conflict with Graffiti Junction’s publishing rights. Two key issues affect our display of images: whether Graffiti Junction makes money from an artist’s work, and if the artist already publishes or commercialises works inadvertently displayed on this web site.

These, and the myriad complex copyright laws, are discussed at length on the copyright page

About Graffiti-Junction

Images displayed on Graffiti Junction are a record of 21st-century life around town.

This web site consumes inordinate time and dollars, returning negative income. Graffiti-Junction is a labour of love, depicting the changing face of a delightful little provincial city whose enlightened council stares down the sensationalised anti-graffiti crusade of the state government.

Our primary focus is wall art – aka aerosol art, street art, tagging, graffiti, whatever. Pictures of vandalism are in no way intending to glorify it, nor elevate by association here to the level of true art.   More about us and our mission

Privacy

Like anything nowadays, you must at least have a policy on it.  Privacy is a real issue both for visitors to Graffiti Junction (or any website) and those whose faces, names or numbers appear impromptu in our images. There’s also the controversial matter of the protection of artists whose work we reproduce.  Oops, no policy right now.

Graffiti Laws

Australia is sometimes described as an expansive ancient continent run by a small-minded anal society. The populace (reputedly intoxicated permanently by beer and sport) feign nonchalance as each tiny freedom is chiselled away by obsessive lawmakers. This, though cynically pessimistic, is not entirely untrue.

Newcastle’s State Government publishes an excellent and comprehensive anti-graffiti web site that "aims to raise awareness about the harmful effects of graffiti vandalism and provide practical advice to fight against it." An odd mission – attempting to ‘raise awareness’ – aren’t the kids spraying enough? And as ever, property damage seems far more important than kids’ problems.

The site is applauded for trying to separate in the public mind the vital difference between art and vandalism – art never being the strong point, the distinction most unclear, for your average Aussie for whom Blue Poles remains to this day a wicked extravagance against the public purse.

Graffiti NSW parent site LawLink underscores Australians’ propensity to legislate ad nauseam rather than attack the roots of social ills.

This extract from a government brochure is not amusing.

 

2. broad Brush of Graffiti Laws

Are we complicit by displaying graffiti

You will not find glorification of criminal behaviour on Graffiti Junction. You will find questioning of what defines ‘criminal’ in the world of graffiti, and of bizarre penalties and laws and outrageous statements by politicians.

Graffiti Junction is concerned only with artistic merit, the social conditions that make great graffito, and its perceived effect on a locale.

Our images are intended as a completely neutral recording, and presented, take note, in the spirit of enjoyment, while learning all we can about a social phenomenon with often spiritual dimensions. Allowing, also, for the very human appreciation of beauty in creative activities of questionable legality.

There is middle ground in all social interaction, from criminal to saint. Everything is relative and endlessly subject to changing societal norms. For example, images of what anatomical interest once decorated European and British Christian churches?

Finally, rarely seen but always sought, our ‘recording’ keeps watch for often subtle, imperceptible, yet grand instances of historic moment or true genius marking the nobler elements of this ancient human pursuit.

Criminalisation of kids

We strongly question the degree of criminalisation wrought on kids by over-reaching draconian laws and almost hysterically-conceived penalties.

Street artists are neither gangs nor vandals.

They might be cultural outcasts artistically expressing themselves – or highly-talented, civic-minded professional artists.

Two prominent groups shape the world of graffiti in the tiny public mind, with much overlapping and migration muddying the scene: street artists and train vandals. The latter seem bent on excitement and peer approval to the far greater extent of taking unreasonable risks. Train graffitiists appear to be middle ground between street artists and a criminal destructive assault on public property, especially railway trains, the ‘vandalism’ of which triggers salivary flow in news editors nationwide.

On city streets GJ does not consider illegal artwork – especially of obvious and implicit merit – to be a crime against society, let alone civilization! Barely technically, perhaps, against property, despite the optimistic premise of caricatured legislation drafted by apparently lesser mortals than the arbitrarily defined transgressor.

While the NSW State Government prefers to portray all graffitiists literally as hardened criminals – making no distinction between street art and train vandalism – fortunately for our street artists, and our kids, the Newcastle City Council acknowledges in its Commitment To Youth …

5.6.Cultural Diversity

The youth culture is made up of sub cultures which can at times be in conflict with each other, and can promote a negative reaction from other sections of the community.

This may be due to the dress code or behaviour attributed to a group which can result in a feeling of apprehension from other people. The negative perception of young people by other sections of the community can lead to a feeling of both exclusion and a belief that issues which are significant to that group are not viewed as a priority by the community generally.

While some sections of the community view all graffiti as vandalism, a distinction should be made between tagging in public places and graffiti art works in designated places. Tagging is the "signature" scrawl which can deface buildings and structures and is distinct from the works done in designated places which have enabled graffiti artists to develop their skills.

 

Artists, not gangsta

The kids over whom this net is miscast are at worst mischievous or thoughtless, doing occasional mindless vandalism, spraying indiscriminately down several city blocks. This is not art, nor are they artists – or criminals.

Graffiti Junction has in mind gifted artists, some perhaps socially-disconnected – even politically over-dedicated- to whom everything defining their self is transferred earnestly to The Wall.

These are the people heavy-handed state laws are hounding into criminality; laws directly damaging social tolerance and understanding in their uncompromising, over-stressed, indiscriminate branding.

While property developers erect residential and industrial eyesores that insidiously – with barely a word of protest – erode our environmental well-being by defiling the cityscape, artistic kids are pursued on the level of murderers and rapists (judging by the penalties!) for beautifying the ugliest corners those architectural atrocities.

Graffiti Junction is neither promoting or protecting "illegal" artists, nor are we interested in entrapment. We are proud to be a neutral but sympathetic agent trying to maximise education and understanding of awe-inspiring creativity by a castigated minority.

Tagged …

And yes, my fence is regularly tagged by some itinerant territorial nuisance – but I prefer his interesting nonsense to the Nazi store owner grilling my kid like he’s a drug dealer. Junior only wants to spray paint his bike. And your seventeen year old – an independent working adult member of the community – who needs a can of spray paint to touch up her car, now must endure the humiliation of producing proof of age .. and take considerable care not to act suspiciously.

Me? I’m more irritated by government fiddling that makes buying spray paint from the local hardware store an exercise in incredulous frustration. It’s just a can of frikkin paint!

Just how many niggling ‘laws’ does it take to wreck a free society? We seem intent on finding out.

 

3. graffiti Legal Issues

The law is an ass

We can and do question the law – and of course we have not only the right but an obligation to, because laws are born of social consensus which changes with the seasons and is easily manipulated by powerful interests. Entire nations have erred and gone to war due with consent of a weak-minded citizenry – their misconceptions parading as national beliefs.

Graffiti Junction is never impressed by sudden emergencies demanding fixative legislation that we have happily enjoyed the centuries without. There is too much hasty law making in Australia, and too little scrutiny of the individuals who benefit, and total invisibility of lobbyists creating such demand.

Why are graffiti artists being depicted as train-smashing thugs. There ARE train-smashing thugs. There are rapists and murders and thieves. And there are street artists. GJ cannot grasp the draconian legislation and penalties against what are essentially naughty kids with spray cans.

NOT the vicious gangs of Sydney’s notorious out of control suburban wastelands, who employ spray cans with no more thought than knives or guns in pursuit of their mindless tribal quest.

NOT the layer of lost youth who never have and never will understand their place in life, the Universe, and everything. Youth who are little more than cunning, destructive, and selfish creatures – social imbeciles of little self worth and even less self awareness.

NOT even the misled and mistaken artists swept into a fantasy world as heroes in their own lunchtime, who engage in pseudo-artistic terrorism, treading the twilight world between subculture and urban anarchy.

When is a law stupid

When the cure is worse than the disease. When the wrong people are swept up in a net designed to catch other species, who happen to occasionally use a spray can. When our children are humiliated. When the simple act of buying an everyday object becomes more trouble than its worth.

When something that was perfectly legal and normal yesterday, is suddenly, magically, a crime.

Lawmaking is difficult and complex, and while those involved might have minds like steel traps, downstream things get rather haphazard. A brochure at graffiti.nsw.gov.au aimed at shopkeepers contained a "staff training aid" reproduced below. It probably seemed eminent common sense to the author, framing it in the bureaucratic thrust of his departmental brief.

Despite the mindless complacence Australians have toward rules and regulations (bred in a century of easy times and good living), this advice should be strongly opposed – not for the helpful spirit in which it’s intended, but for the inadvertent and dangerous path it can take a free society.

The ‘long bow’ being drawn here pertains to language. Lessons of history are readily lost – all too readily when not even taught at school. Inspiring GJMan’s sad little rant is the instant association – and loud clanging alarm bells – when the sample below is taken with just a tiny grain of salt.

What am I suggesting? Welcome to the concept of Thoughtcrime

And the all-too-frequent calls from our leaders to be alert, not alarmed – to suspect strangers, to "dob in" a neighbour.

When a society ‘rolls over’ and accepts that mindset, it’s time to dust off the passport.

How to:

1. Criminalize youth  
2. Make a bureaucratic career of inanity   
3. Create a black market and generate collateral crimes (theft of product)   
4. Dilute the fight against corporal and capital crime   
5. Erode quality of life by legislating intolerant suspicion to every corner of innocent daily life  
6. Humiliate young people
7. Waste shopkeepers’ time
8. Increase cost of doing business

Every product in the world has malicious potential. So, what’s next?

In May 2006 this legislative gemadded another layer of institutionalised stupidity to our daily drudge, as yet another legislator sought more ways to justify his job:

  In order to do this, the Act and its accompanying regulation require retailers who sell spray paint cans to keep those cans either:

• In a locked cabinet
• In or behind a counter in such a way that customers cannot gain access to the cans without the assistance of shop staff
• On a shelf of height 2.1 meters or more or
• In any other manner prescribed by the regulations.

Consequent upon this fabulous improvement to our daily life – in the hope that vandalistic idiots will cease being idiots, and everyone else has to suffer more from effects of laws than from ‘the crime’ – when I recently visited my local hardware store to buy a can of spray paint I was confronted with a bizarre, if not surreal, implementation of choice #3 above.

The store owner chose to raise the shelving such that the lowest was 2.1 meters above the shop floor and I couldn’t read the frikkin’ labels, or even determine the colours. After the assistant hunted for a ladder tall enough to access the upper shelves, she called down from her precariously wavering and distant perch, 12 feet above the floor, the descriptions on each can in an absurdly futile pantomime … till I gave up and left the shop in disgust.

Cure seems invariably worse than transgression. Do they not have more important laws to pass?

 

(4.) finally

 

Legalese

Webmasters often fill this space by copying from a web site that seems to have employed an obviously devious Rottweiler to draught suitably venomous threats – then changing all references to their own site.

Since the copyright issues leave me rather exhausted, not bothering to even copy, let me even more lazily just say: "you can use anything you want for any educational or sharing purpose — EXCEPT selling my images to gain you money – and the BIG ONE – or claiming them as your images.

I have all originals. The images on Graffiti Junction are watermarked, and the visible copyright watermark must not be cropped in reproductions.

If you need some other arrangement, email gjman at graffitijunction dot com (not .au!!)

Of course you can deep link to pics on our pages, but the large retrievable images are hotlink-protected.

Generic Disclaimer

If as a result of viewing this web site your house is transported to Mars, I suggest further viewing be done with greater care. I take no responsibility for the world’s woes.

Otherwise, enjoy.