Adding Insult to Injury

It is said that there is no honour among thieves and it appears that the same applies to graffiti artists.

Now let me be quite clear where I stand on this. I do not approve of any kind of graffiti regardless of its artistic merits because with very few exceptions, it is painted or drawn on others' property without their permission and creates a very negative image of the area surrounding the graffiti.

With that said, there are some good examples of artwork of which I would approve in the right circumstances and without doubt the famous graffiti perpetrator known as Banksy produces some fantastic material, not only in terms of artistic quality but also social comment. Another famous graffiti perpetrator, who uses the tag 'Tox' was jailed earlier this year for his nationwide damage to railway bridges, embankments, stations etc over a number of years. He simply adorns 'Tox' plus the year and you would have to be a real arty farty sort to be able to extract any artistic merit from his damage.

Therefore, it was subject to much debate in June this year (the conclusions from which I have no knowledge) when this Banksy piece appeared in Camden; was it a tribute to the newly-jailed serial criminal or merely mocking his demise?

I will explore that argument no further, as the point of my blip refers to the fact that, the owners of the property being so delighted that their property now featured a Banksy image, they decided to protect it with Perspex and subsequently some entirely talentless individual has adorned the Perspex sheet with his or her own graffiti sample, which is unlikely to achieve world renown.

Ironic, don't you think? Happy weekend all.