SPEAKING STREET ART

House and Leisure and four pioneering street art practitioners sat around Houtlander’s Pride Bench to deep dive into the complexities of street art in a new decade

- GARRETH VAN NIEKERK

Few topics inspire so much debate among city residents as street art, in particular graffiti, which is why we wanted to get a few of the country’s most prolific street artists and public art practitioners together to understand the finer points of the conversation. We gathered around Houtlander’s fantastic Pride Bench, created to raise funds for LGBTQ pride shelters, in the new offices of celebrated public art initiative #Artmyjozi (an arm of The Trinity Sessions) to understand what all the fuss is about.

Around this month’s ‘table’, House and Leisure’s Garreth van Niekerk was joined by rising star Dbongz (fresh from his recent trip to New York City where he was painting walls in Brooklyn as a guest of the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Foundation); Kalashnikovv Gallery’s former street artist-turned gallerist MJ Turpin; The Trinity Session’s Pauline Borton, who recently completed the installation of the biggest mural in South Africa; and superstar designer Karabo Poppy, a House and Leisure Next Level alumnus, who just sold out all of her recent Nike sneaker collab within 24 hours, among other inspiring things.

It’s a stellar group if ever there was one, and the conversation covered everything from the difference between street art and graffiti, the importance of breaking away from anonymity, and how to convince your family that becoming a street artist doesn’t mean you’re becoming a vandal. Read below for our highlights from this fascinating conversation.

Garreth: There’s still a lot of doubt about street art, particularly in the context of a developing city like Joburg, where so much is changing and so much is still needed.