Artist in from the street

Mike Swaney (left) and Ra McRae want people to see a different side to the work a graffiti artist can do. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Art or graffiti? That question has troubled many an observer of what started as an unofficial, illegal and potentially dangerous form of "street art" as they have watched graffiti slide slowly off the street and into the mainstream, even into art galleries.

Canadian Mike Swaney, who has his first exhibition, Teenage Art, in New Zealand with artist and friend Ra Macrae, believes he may have an answer to that question, albeit a personal one.

Macrae and Swaney, who has an art school education from Canada, still occasionally engage in graffiti and it's definitely what they are about. But these days, they mostly make a living from doing illustrative work, graphic design and paintings and drawings.

"Graffiti will definitely go down as a movement in art history," explains Swaney, who has exhibited in New York, Milan and Barcelona and who belongs to a Vancouver-based collective called Human Five which has done everything from design T-shirts to snowboard decks to put on art shows and publish magazines.

"It's been in galleries since the 70s and I think having it there is fine - especially if graffiti artists can make some money doing what they love. But I think it can also be quite easily tainted when it is moved out of its natural environment."

For this reason, neither he nor Macrae describes the works they are showing at Disrupt Gallery as graffiti.

It is their art and it includes paintings, drawings, collage and what verges on installation-style work with found objects. "It's sort of a technicality," Swaney admits, "but because it's in a gallery, I wouldn't consider it graffiti."

But both artists notice an interesting overlap between the work they hang on the wall and the work they have displayed on the cityscape in the past.

"Graffiti definitely influences what I do with my painting," Swaney says. "There is such a good contrast. Graffiti is on such a large scale, where you're using your body to draw a line, whereas with painting, you're thinking in a much smaller frame. But techniques you learn with a spray can influence what you do with a brush.

"I have done a lot of collage work with my art and I've brought that into graffiti, where I'll take some wallpaper glue and put wallpaper on a wall then paint over it."

For Macrae it has been more of a progression. "I think there are a whole lot of graffiti artists all over the world who have only ever done this," says Macrae, who has been involved in graffiti for the past eight years or so and has taken part in five group shows.

"Now they are growing up and trying to do something with it. As you get older you feel pressure to do something that people can understand outside of that world."

He has found his work, while still graphic, has become more personal. "Which is something I haven't really done so much before. It's inspired by more than just graffiti and it has become more meaningful and personal.

"It will include things from my childhood and from popular culture. I would like people to see a different side."

Exhibition

*What: Teenage Art

*Where and when: Disrupt Gallery, upstairs, 145 K Rd, until March 2