Art – But Is It Street?

 

In May 2008 clusters of visitors could be seen outside the gates of Cross Bones graveyard in Redcross Way, Southwark, London SE1. Some were consulting their Tate Modern ‘street-art’ trail guides, searching for information about the extraordinary living shrine, festooned with ribbons, flowers, totemic objects and other folk-art offerings, that had reclaimed the industrial iron gates to what looks, at first glance, to be a works site. The problem was, the Cross Bones Memorial Gates were just one of many examples of genuine local street art that didn’t feature in the Tate guide.

 

I’d previously written to Tate Modern, suggesting that they might like to buy the gates, as a flagship exhibit and exemplar of their Tate In The Community project. The suggestion was framed playfully, as a friendly provocation, yet with a serious intent – as a possible means of ensuring that these Memorial Gates would be protected and preserved from any future plans to develop the site, which is owned by Transport For London.  I received a courteous reply explaining that, since the gates were not the work of an individual – let alone recognised – artist, Tate Modern could not consider acquiring them for its collection.

 

Is this a problem? Well, for Tate Modern and establishments in general, yes. Due to an essentially technical detail, such collective art-works are considered uncollectible by London’s most prestigious modern art gallery. Here is a unique, textured, LIVING art-work, deeply rooted in the local community and the history of this site, the manifestation of a deep creative response to it, constantly changing as new artists contribute.

 

For here, on the other side of these gates, was the ancient graveyard for Bankside prostitutes, or ‘Winchester Geese’, licensed by Bishops but denied Christian burial. The ‘Single Women’s’ (aka ‘Magdalene’) burial ground. By the 19^th century it was ‘Cross Bones’, the all-purpose pauper’s graveyard. The ribbons on the shrine bear the names of just a hundred of the 15,000 dead who are supposedly interred here.

 

This is a deeply connective art-work, a collective act of remembrance and honouring. And you get the strong sense that the people who’ve left messages and tokens here, paying their respects to the outcast dead, that many of those people are themselves marginalised and vulnerable. Here at the gates, there a dynamic sense of provocation and a welcoming inclusion – of the kind the art establishment can only talk and dream about.

 

The posters that appeared at the end of May on the wall of the Cross Bones graveyard were not part of the Tate Modern street-art trail either. They carried a potent street-art edge, a crude collage depicting three geese in flight above an expressionist Southwark Cathedral with superimposed gothic graveyard – and below, an underground train cutting a swathe through masses of skulls and bones.

 

Your reporter can confidentially reveal that these posters were the work of an eminently collectible artist Jimmy Cauty, co-founder member of KLF and the K-foundation, who pushed the envelope of art , burning a million quid and funding a Bad Art Prize to rival the Turner. Cauty, whose ‘Armchair Destructivist’ work effortlessly exposes all the intellectual posturing of the galleriterati.  I came across the artist in the act of fly-posting his work to the Cross Bones wall on the Friday afternoon. By the following Monday they were gone, the wall scrubbed clean – we assume by diligent Southwark Council workers.

 

Paradoxically, the Tate’s Street Art map led visitors through the back-streets of  Bankside and Borough streets without referring to the such visible signs of local street-life and street-art. Instead, the gallery had commissioned five artists from Madrid to exhibit their work at various points along the trail. To this critic’s undeniably jaundiced eye, the work was dated, derivative, embarrassing self-conscious and, despite the promise of being ‘site-specific’, entirely devoid of a sense of place.

 

It’s not the artists fault. Presumably, at some point in their careers they were fresh and raw and dangerous – and relevant. Perhaps they still are – in Madrid, at least. And you can’t blame Tate Modern. They’re doing their best to keep up with the latest trends and movements. Having had the crown jewels of new Brit Art, the great Damien’s and Tracy’s, snatched by Saatchi and now displayed in his modern art gallery just up river, they’re now desperately seeking the new New Masters. All galleries are, by definition, part of a curator and critic-led culture. And Tate Modern would genuinely like to be part of its community – or rather, let’s be honest, would like its community to be part of it. The publicity for the Walking Tour promises ‘The works all aim to engage the local community and visitors to Tate in aspects of the urban environment that are often overlooked or ignored.’

 

The problem – if problem there is – goes to the very heart of corporate art looking to colonise street-culture. The Street Art exhibition and associated street trail were “brought to you by Nissan Qashqai”. 

 

Cars. We know that how the multinationals, and specifically car manufacturers,  have assimilated the language, imagery, the sound-tracks of deviant, transgressive sub cultures – Venus In Furs, the Velvet Underground’s ‘60s sado-masochist anthem becomes the sound-track to a car ad. Car ads. The kiss of death for Massive Attack. Groove Armada just about kept their cred – but only because we all of us could: ‘see you, baby, shakin’ that ass!’

 

But then rock music has always been an instinctively primitive, popular culture. You cannot curate the real rock’n’roll animal. Whereas the roots, the very genesis of Fine Art was in the patronage of Popes and Princes, commissioning work by selected representatives of individual genius. The purpose was not to support, or even to reflect, popular culture. On the contrary, these paintings were exhibited as a conscious display of wealth, prestige and status.

 

This dominance of the art world by a cultural elites and establishments has persisted to the present day. The Medicis of old have been superseded by corporate sponsors – the chosen artists now adorn the premises of global institutions – although the tensions between the artists’ often subversive agenda and the patron’s desire to assimilate and render it safe became ever more pronounced during the 20^th century.

 

From the Dadaists through to the YBA’s, the establishment has struggled to adopt art which often directly contradict its own agendas. The tendency reached its apotheosis at the end of the 20^th century, when the marketing and ad-man Charles Saatchi, having masterminded Margaret Thatcher’s election victories, cleverly collected and promoted iconoclastic artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin, simultaneously enhancing both the artists and his gallery’s reputation.

 

No contemporary artist better embodies, and exploits, these inherent contradictions than the enigmatic Bristolian joker going by the name of BANKSY. His playful yet politically edgy, stencilled graffiti murals, have enlivened walls all over London. It can of course be argued that BANKSY is not an authentic representative of street-culture. Unlike the original hip-hop collectives in New York he drew on an established tradition, and gave it an individual spin. Paradoxically, this instantly recognisable outsider identity was achieved using mass-production techniques. In this respect, BANKSY is a direct heir of Andy Warhol who similarly associated his personal brand with a cultivated anonymity. BANKSY’s credibility is  inevitably compromised by the appearance of his work in coffee-table books and galleries. Yet his cheeky, opportunistic approach makes him difficult to sanitise or appropriate.

 

Appropriately enough, BANKSY and his crew were active all over the Bankside area in the 1990s. One of his most largest and original murals covered an entire wall in Clink Street. Entitled ‘Cheque-book vandalism’, it depicted a mob of bowler-hatted umbrella-wielding City gents in the act of invading the locality. It offered a topical, incisive commentary on a ‘Regeneration’ agenda that was already pushing out the former artists and musicians (Coldcut and Ninja Tunes had studios here) to make way for chain-restaurants and the kind of corporate hospitality offered by Vinopolis just across the road.  Perhaps its very pointed relevance is precisely why Southwark Council had it painted over.

 

That defaced BANKSY mural would be worth a great deal now – both in terms of its saleable value and as a visitor attraction in its own right. Yet this masterpiece – together with the smaller, poignant image on the adjacent wall: of a little girl releasing a heart-shaped balloon – has been ruthlessly expunged. In their place, the entrance to Clink Street is now disfigured by a truly hideous example of corporate art at its worst. The image depicts a mechanised cod-cubist face, the lower half comprising a stovetop coffee-percolator and the upper some sort of blender full of grapes – suggestive of nothing more than brains being pulped. (Perhaps it’s more pertinent that the commissioner realised!)

 

This goes much deeper than artistic taste or aesthetics. Southwark’s original  Roman settlers were adept at assimilating native cultures, incorporating the indigenous deities into their pagan pantheon – it is often cited as one of the strengths of their Empire. The redevelopment of Bankside has, with a few honourable exceptions, simply imposed its corporate values with little understanding of or regard for the complexities of a distinctive culture that evolved here over two thousand years.

 

The entire area is undergoing a process of might be termed ‘Disneyfication’, the imposition of a sanitized, generalised history, obliterating all the subtle specifics that make it so distinctive. The Vinopolis Wine Museum may be located in caverns used at one time as wine-cellars, but it was plonked in a middle of an area famous – Chaucer mentions it at least twice – for the strength of its beer. The replica of the Golden Hind is undeniably popular with children, yet it effectively obscures the ghostly legend of St Mary Overie dock. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these visitor attractions, except that they could exist in any theme park in the world.  And a couple of out of work actresses in décolletage do not do justice to the extraordinary story of the Winchester Geese.

 

Which brings us back to Cross Bones Graveyard. Since it was  partially excavated in the 1990s, prior to work on the Jubilee, the extraordinary history of the site has seized the imagination of many locals. The creation of the shrine at the Memorial Gates, and proposals for a Memorial Goose Garden at the south of the site, have been achieved by the spontaneous, voluntary efforts of local people – with Southwark Council and especially the site owners, Transport For London, struggling to grasp the implications of what has happened here. Cross Bones is a place of remembrance, honouring the poor and the weak and the marginalised. As such it speaks more powerfully – to residents and visitors alike – than all the commissioned imitations, fakes and overblown gestures that threaten to overwhelm Bankside.

 

Perhaps the BANKSY masterpiece is not irretrievably lost. If ancient Renaissance frescos can be restored after centuries of over-painting, it is surely not beyond the wit and skill of contemporary restorers to remove the layer of grey paint that obscures Cheque Book Vandalism. It may even be that BANKSY’s original is perfectly preserved on the reverse side: the layer could then be removed, reversed and displayed as a mirror image.

 

TRUE REVERSE GRAFFITI!

 

And if not? If what is arguably one of the great works of the early 21^st century has already been wantonly damaged beyond repair – there is still time, still a chance to make amends. BANKSY, the individual artist and his own corporate viral brand is still very much with us. An attempted commission, an act of restoration – from Local Authority to vandalised artist. First a representative of people of Southwark – makes public apology to BANKSY for crimes committed against his work by a worker¹ acting under the orders of Southwark Council. So, on behalf of the people of Southwark…

 

Sorry, BANKSY, and please can we have another one?

 

In fact, although we can’t offer you an upfront commission fee, p’raps could you come and do us a giant CROSS BONES GRAVEYARD mural? Well, not a mural, because we’d like you to do the proposed masterpiece on the floor – a “floral” – on the concrete shell that encases the remains of up to 15,000 prostitutes and paupers – not forgetting the abnormally high percentage of child burials.

 

The thing is – with your floral guarding the approach to the Cross Bones Memorial Garden, we’ll have an actual, extent valuable art work to defend. So that, in order to develop the site, those Cheque Book Vandals not only have to remove all those unidentified human remains, but even to get at them they have to destroy another modern masterpiece! Except that, this time, they won’t – not if we have anything to do with it! Because by the next time the Devilopers are ready to break the ground to create three more anonymous tower-blocked monuments to Mammon, we’ll make sure the eyes of the 24-hour CCTVed World are watching.

 

¹ I came across the worker in question, when he was in the act of painting over Cheque Book Vandalism.  I did attempt to intervene, asking if he realised that he destroying was a valuable art-work. He said he was “just carrying out Southwark Council orders”.