Dedication

From the chew-them-up, spit-them-out experiences in New York downtown galleries in the 1980s to recent blockbuster surveys such as 2010’s Art in the Streets at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, graffiti and street art have a complicated history with galleries and museums. From rebellious outsider forms that bypassed institutional support, urban art’s popularity, ubiquity and influence have made for an interesting, if challenging, proposition for display. As urban art has gained more widespread attention, this relationship has followed similar trajectories here in Aotearoa, with disparate and independent excursions accompanied by the crowd-pleasing Rise at Canterbury Museum in 2013 and Paradox at Tauranga Art Gallery in 2016. Additionally, local graffiti and street artists have increasingly embraced more expansive approaches, shifting between street, studio and gallery, retaining the influence of their roots while embracing new techniques and environments.

The Dowse Art Museum’s The Most Dedicated: An Aotearoa Graffiti adds to this lineage, celebrating the performances and evolution of urban art through the tighter focus of the country’s most renowned graffiti crew and its disparate members. Grounded in the crew’s graffiti roots, while also exploring their subsequent creative pathways, the show considers both the significant influence and current range of urban art, both glancing back and looking forward.