Gill Saunders is Senior Curator, Word & Image Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Her publications include Apocalyptic Wallpaper (Wexner Center, Columbus, Ohio, 1997), Prints Now: Directions and Definitions (V&A, 2006; with Rosie Miles) and In Black and White: Prints from Africa and the Diaspora (V&A, 2013; with Zoe Whitley). Her recent exhibitions include “Surface Noise” (Jerwood Gallery, London, 2011), “Recording Britain” (V&A, 2012), and a V&A show of prints by Street Artists, which toured Libya in 2012. [May 2014]
Fig. 6. Ben Eine, Scary (2008), screenprint, 30 x 80 cm. The Victoria and Albert Museum, no. E.319-2010, ©Eine.
Graffiti, street art, and their printed progeny, now ubiquitous, may appear to have sprung fully formed from the spray cans and stencils wielded by a new breed of artist, operating outside the system and eschewing the traditions. But like any other art form, street art has a rich vocabulary of sources and precedents. Read More