Beyond The Streets

The ArtScience Museum charts 40 years of street art.

- Rebecca L

“Destructive vandalism” is just one of the many labels for street art, whose current state is worlds apart from its beginnings. Simple, stylised initials and signatures known as “tags” have paved the way for new techniques that show off each artist’s visual identity. At the same time, the movement has stayed true to its roots, with artists delivering subtle political messages or leaving simple signatures by defacing surfaces with punchy colours and tools.

‘Art from the Streets’ – ArtScience Museum’s latest show in collaboration with street art expert and guest curator Magda Danysz – celebrates 40 years of street art. The exhibition examines the movement’s countercultural beginnings in the late 70s in Philadelphia, starting with graffiti tags that were birthed of prehistoric cave paintings and inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii, to its recent manifestations that weave stencilling, chiseling, cutting and pasting.

Over 200 large-scale mural paintings, installations, videos, prints, archival material, drawings and sketches feature in the five-month exhibition, itself divided into six parts. Alongside are site-specific works by ten artists that address a variety of local and global issues. Yogyakarta based artist Eko Nugroho, Argentinian-Spanish artist Felipe Pantone, French street artists YZ and Zevs and Singapore’s Speak Cryptic and Sheryo & Yok are among them.