22 November 2008
Taggers on back foot in the city
1 June 2007
By Veronica Johnston: Te Waha Nui Online
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A poster advertising agency has stumbled upon a new solution to urban tagging.
The agency, 0800 Phantom, places large street posters promoting music, arts, and street culture on shop walls and public spaces around Auckland.
“Street posters are vital to portray the artistic, social and cultural life of a community,” says Christchurch Arts Festival director Guy Boyce.
The posters also cover and prevent tags by taking away the empty white spaces that taggers crave.
But Auckland graffiti artist Johnny Wartman says the posters are no more attractive than tags.
“It’s still not really solving the problem — it’s just moving it somewhere else,” he says.
An Auckland dairy owner, who did not want to be named, is delighted that the new posters displayed recently outside his dairy have stopped tagging. He says Auckland City Council had to come and paint over fresh tags on his shop front once or twice a week.
“Removal just doesn’t stop it,” he said earlier this year. “The taggers just keep coming back.”
More council funding required
Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett is calling for more money to be spent on stamping out graffiti in the city. He suggests the $5 million the council is spending on its billboard bylaws should go towards removing graffiti instead.
“These [billboards] are few in number compared with the huge amount of graffiti that daubs the city. Where is the zeal and campaign on this?”
Council graffiti prevention officer Rob Shields is leading the campaign against tagging. He says painting over tagging within 48 hours of it being reported is the best option.
The council has removed graffiti from more than 95,000 sites since 2000.
Manukau City Council spends $1.5 million per year to clean up after taggers’ deforming art and property.
‘Legal walls’
Melbourne University criminologist Mark Halsey recently concluded that rapid paint removal programmes do not reduce tagging.
In 2002, he interviewed 44 graffiti artists who had done “a bit of tagging” in Australia. The artists responded that they returned to the same area to spite authorities.
Halsey promotes the use of “legal walls” within school grounds and communities instead. “Legal walls” are designated walls or areas for exclusive use by graffiti artists.
“There is a high probability that legal walls and other initiatives will help reduce the amount of illegal writing,” he says.
There tends to be a “mutual respect from the taggers not to deform graffiti art,” according to the Christchurch City Council.
Wartman says “legal walls” deter tagging because they provide the creative space for graffiti artists to practice and improve their art.
The Eden Albert Community Board recently paid graffiti artist Daniel Tippett $35,000 to brighten up a legal wall outside Kingsland station.
The community board wanted a mural to stop vandals tagging a white station wall. But after seeing teens tagging another white space among the steps, they decided to have that space painted too.
Legal walls may be the answer but they are also expensive.
New methods of prevention
But then so is Tony Bicknell’s new anti-tagging invention that uses sprinklers and security lights to deter taggers. The sensors trigger walls of water that wash paint away within seconds.
Napier business owner Neville Rapley has installed Bicknell’s system and says he hasn’t had any taggers since.
But Wartman says Bicknell’s wall flooding system will not work on every wall. He says it is better to hide your property walls and fences behind plants, shrubs or hedges.
Bicknell’s new system costs $300 per metre including installation.
Phantom manager Jamey Holloway says A3 size posters can cost up to $100 per hundred to produce.
Hiding your walls behind a poster or tree may be the cheapest and most effective tagging solution after all.
