Slough in pictures Part 2

About graffiti in Slough: there’s not a lot of it really. And unlike in London - this form of subversive “urban art” is not taken very seriously in Slough. In London you will find plenty of elaborate, colourful pieces adorning structures like bare walls in railway stations and otherwise dull municipal outbuildings. And in London you will find more grotesque and prolific forms of “tagging” on walls, fences and etchings on bus windows.

London “writers” seem to take their work very seriously.

Slough, however, is a different story. In Slough - any tagging and graffiti that does exist appears to be more opportunistic than premeditated; more crass than style; more randomly applied than with sense-of-purpose. And a couple of orders of magnitude less glamorous - exhibiting little by the way of romanticism or emotion.

Just outside the Queensmere shopping centre, right here in the heart of Slough, is a tall chimney-like structure. A concrete legacy of 1960s architecture. If such a structure existed in the suburbs of London - it would be a prime canvas for practitioners in the most exotic of hip-hop-inspired, spray-scan art forms - as thousands of people walk past it every day. Being in Slough however, it remains largely devoid of graffiti. The only tags that exist are of “Bert” and “Bob”. The fading seems to indicate that these were written many years ago. Even the “Bob” tag is obscured by the a pile of wooden loading pallettes stacked up against the wall.

A “stray” shopping trolley has parked itself alongside.

Perhaps “Bert” and “Bob” were the last and best of Slough’s finest urban artists.

Posted by jag at September 14, 2004 09:42 PM