posted on 26 Jun 2016

Spray It Loud by Jill Posener

Travel back to the febrile political environment of the early Thatcher years. Protest against the emerging neo-liberal consensus was being played out in some improbable places and unlikely ways. One of the key weapons of urban protest was the paint spray can and you used this to take your messages onto the street. Graffiti was everywhere but it wasn't just about 'tagging' your identity or advertising yourself - it was most often about saying something provocative or challenging the establishment.

Jill Posener's book, published in 1982, collects together some of the examples of this urban guerilla activity captured by photographers across the country. It's easy to see the sort of causes that flourished in this graffiti culture - women's rights, animal rights, anti-war, anti-nuclear and social justice campaigns of all kinds. The messages are angry and often witty but they all have one thing in common - they cut through the mealy-mouthed rhetoric of the formal political debates and go straight to the point.

Frequently the activists got their opinion across by taking commercial advertising posters and 'adapting' them to carry their own message. These were most often the wittiest of the slogans and their power came from being able to turn their smug and complacent sexism on their head. In many ways these early examples of social graffiti were the forerunners of what the now very famous Banksy continues to do through his very much more sophisticated approach to irony and satire.

Posener's book, published by RKP, has sadly been out of print for some time now but there are copies available on the second hand market and you wont have to pay much more than £10. That's not much for a little bit of our social and political history.

Terry Potter

June 2016