the worst graffiti artist in London

[devi]

There's someone who goes through Gloucester Road tube station regularly and gets their kicks from writing in blue biro on the posters in the lift. That's fairly normal, posters get defaced all the time. But the blue biro person is unusual. They specialise in stating the blindingly obvious. Blue Biro Person writes speech bubbles on the posters, saying exactly what you would expect the person in the picture to be saying.

On an ad for some Toy Story thing, BBP has added a speech bubble over Woody's head, saying "Howdy pardner! Schu gotta name?" ("Schu"??) A picture of a waiter serving a table in a Chinese restaurant now shows him saying "You like won ton?" And a cartoon of a person with sparkly white teeth, for a local dentist, is adorned with "Look, I've got a lovely smile."

I'm not sure why this bugs the hell out of me, but it does. If I ever catch BBP at it, I'll be tempted to grab them by the lapels and demand, "Why do you do this? WHY? What's the point? It's not funny. It's not clever. It's not subversive - it just agrees completely with what's happening in the poster. Even giving someone in a poster chewing-gum genitals is more subversive than that. For goodness' sake, it's not even a tag. Why?!"

Maybe BBP is making some sort of subtle point that I am too thick to get.

Comments

[ravenblack.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's an attempt to draw more attention to the fact that the content of the posters is so insipid.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Maybe he's just bored.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

If he's not subversive, then why is it driving you mad that your expectations are being subverted? Maybe he's not subverting posters, maybe he's subverting graffiti?

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

I like this hypothesis.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I was about to make a similar remark.

It's post-humourous commentary, highlighting the innate superficiality of the comments we like to think of as humourous.

Personally, it annoys me because of the blue biro. We live in a world with a fantastic variety of sexy graphical tools... there's no excuse !

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

Of course, he might just be one of the low-visibility crazy people who make up 50% of London's population.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

BBP is a wannabe ad designer? Or a trainee subversive, who hasn’t got any subversive messages to give out yet, but is practicing the mechanical craft of defacing adverts?

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Evidently the time has come to put into action the plan you once explained to me for going to one of the bridges in the City and painting in enormous letters:

"THE MATRIX HAS YOU"

Though not, perhaps, in blue biro.

[Actually, this has already been done to some extent. In the 1980's, someone painted on the die of successive bridges over the M4 coming into London the words "GOOD MORNING LEMMINGS"]

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

De-detournement? That's right at the point where idiocy and genius are functionally indistinguishable.

Finsbury Park had a biro rant about the evil of Blair & the Queen, and how we need more black leaders...on a Graham Coxon poster. Never did work that one out.

[kasku.livejournal.com]

I think it's a most-modern irony thing... : /

[nicbone.livejournal.com]

One of my favourite bits of graffiti ever was very literal. On an enormous billboard picture of John Prescott, someone had written 'JOHN'S CHIN' on John's chin, in black marker pen.

[argyraspid.livejournal.com]

It's quite simple.

Anyone who has read Naomi Klein's 'No Logo' would know that the effects of advertising can be subverted by doctoring the posters. Therefore, the ad. executives run round after the posters are printed up and graffiti them with messages that reinforce the advertising, thereby undercutting would-be advertising spoilers.*


* I take no personal responsibility for the veracity of this preposterous suggestion.