“Heavens Spot”, KEOS ·
The Art Gallery of Western Australia ·

Subversive and unpolished; graffiti is both criminalised as public vandalism and revered as self-assertion — often for society’s most disenfranchised. Debate wheels around whether or not it’s art.

In “Heavens Spot”, curator Isobel Wise is making the case that it is.

The exhibition takes over the top floor of the Art Gallery of Western Australia with the stylised monogram and graphic motifs of Perth graffiti artist KEOS. As is traditional with graffiti artists their true identity is not revealed.

Fat, jagged lettering and cartoon figures blare in spray and paint spatter; pops of orange, drips and fade. A bored mouse, a sunflower with a spray can. Playful, loud layering. Stars, hearts, dots. Flecks of paint. Words repeated in scribble form: “KEOS ONE”. “DEATH”. “I didn’t know love until I met you, meat patty.”

Serrated edges and half-formed words conjure a sense of haste. These are images meant to be grasped at a glance — from a train window as it rushes into a tunnel, on the walls of an underpass or splashed up on a traffic sign.

The term “heaven spot” refers to a hard-to-reach and highly visible location for graffiti; a triumph of civil disobedience and cunning dissent that is therefore greatly valued in the counterculture of the scene. The irony of this term being used for a sanctioned series adorning the apex floor of the state’s premier art gallery is not lost, as the geometry of a spotless city skyline fills the gallery windows.

There’s ego in this artform. KEOS in black and white, sprayed in crooked, spindly lines. Daubed fat and bright. Stratified, over and over.

On a screen near the entrance to the space, time-lapse footage shows the artist at work. KEOS wields a fire extinguisher to craft their tag. Rolling past their creation on a pair of skates, they bisect the outsize letters with a strikethrough in white paint, dribbles streaking down from the spray line.

They’re having fun, improvising, honing their craft.

A series of photographs pinned to one wall show a lonely rail track, grain silos, a stationary train at dusk; a hooded figure standing in wait against a darkening sky. They evoke the rush of this artform, a sense of its excitement, the thrill of creating art in unusual places, of using the streets as a canvas under cover of night, of striking, ambiguous messages scrawled across the architecture of a city. It’s an un-curated response to the world, hastily thrown up, waiting to be discovered.

In a light-filled, sanitised gallery space, glass case displays of chain link fencing, barbed wire, used aerosols and a paint spattered fire extinguisher feel removed. A free form, seditious thing packaged and boxed for review.

Graffiti is an expression of identity within a time and space. It’s accessible to those outside the world of galleries; and becomes part of the everyday forms and shapes that colour our world. Some argue that moving it inside compromises its integrity and intent. Others, that being an artist in the 21st century means creating continually, no matter where.

By presenting graffiti within a gallery space, Isobel Wise is doubtless exposing an audience who might never otherwise have stopped to consider these works; and making a statement about their value as art. 

At one level, her case – that graffiti is, indeed, art – is a strong one, argued in the vibrancy of the works that explode from the walls, and the exhilaration captured in photographs.

But is the rebellion and illicitness where graffiti’s magic lies?

Seek an answer from the artist in their own words, presented in the exhibition video looping on a screen in the space; their voice masked to protect their identity.

They describe the thrill, the adrenaline, the connection in “creating havoc” through graffiti.

“It makes me feel alive,” they say.

“You don’t get that feeling painting in a gallery.”

Perhaps you need to come and decide for yourself.

“Heavens Spot” continues at the Art Gallery of Western Australia until 23 October 2022.