The mainstream artworld has had a love/hate relationship with graffiti. On the plus side, talented artists such as Banksy have made graffiti an aesthetic pleasure, applying stencils to create challenging artworks with a subtle meaning attached. This kind of graffiti was likely to become trendy with both the masses and the likes of The Daily Telegraph pressroom : visually pleasing and intellectually satisfying. This sort of graffiti is now even acquired as graffiti prints, and hung in suburban households and office meeting rooms.

Nevertheless, what of the everyday sort - the gangbanger, the tagger, the street urchin - this kind of graffiti is often seen as antisocial, a crime perpetrated by the talentless. But is graffiti only art? To many individuals, it’s not only art, but a way to mark a neighbourhood, or perhaps two fingers up at society : anti-establishment, anti-social, even anti-art.

Graffiti has forever been an undercover pursuit, although the effects are very much public. The intended market is frequently unknown. Is it for a competing gang? A message to a single person? To the public? Perhaps it’s simply uncalled-for and out of nothing else to do.

Whatever the reasons, there seems to be a enduring need to spray on walls. Some towns have acknowledged that graffiti isn’t a fad, so they’ve designated zones where graffiti is permitted - usually unoccupied areas, but now and then busier zones like temporary boarding surrounding inner city buildings under construction.