Street Messages

Book excerpt: There is plenty of creativity within the international graffiti and street art scene. Writing text messages in public spaces has been a unique art form and a means of communication between humans for thousands of years. Many street artists work only with text, written messages or poems, and not necessarily only with colourful murals, styles, tags and logos. Street Messages is the first publication that delivers a deep insight into this literary form of expression in the world of global street art. We are confronted with a vast amount of written information in the form of advertising and street or shop signs every single day of our lives. Reading and decoding this information has become a daily routine. Apart from the texts that are trying to sell us something or direct us somewhere, the streets are full of artistic and poetic forms of expression – messages written by graffiti and street artists. Street Messages offers a historic background to written messages in public spaces and introduces more than 80 artists from across the world who work exclusively or partly with text. The vast body of information and numerous exclusive quotes and words of wisdom makes Street Messages the first book to shed some light on this as yet undocumented form of street art culture. Features artwork by Banksy, Dolk, Ben Eine, Faith 47, Flint..., Kid Acne, Know Hope, Mobstr, Skki and many others.