Graffiti Art. Is it art or is it vandalism? Cities have different views of this and in Melbourne the consideration for heritage protection of the murals in the city has created somewhat of a heated debate. Two of the cities organizations, the Heritage Victoria and the National Trust of Australia are both in support of protecting the graffiti, but some of the Government’s council members, and a few curators of galleries downtown are against this protection. This has been a debate for the last ten years. When graffiti was becoming recognized as an art form in and of itself, the National Trust started to become involved and that was when the protection of the art was first introduced.
Many cities of the world have recognized it as public art. The United States city of Chicago has been funding the Hubbard Street Mural Project since the 1970′s. And not only that, but corporations located downtown in Loop, regularly commission artists for works on the sides of their buildings. Differing from Melbourne, luxury hotel walls and the walls of many of the building throughout the city, a covered in murals. The business owners have found that murals, graffiti art, tend to protect their buildings from the random forms of tagging and vandalism, as there is something about defiling a mural that keeps those people from doing that. Bansky,the well known British graffiti artist is in support of the protection, stating that it gives regular people a voice in which to express themselves.
One of the curators of a gallery who against the protection is an artist as well, Andrew Mac. Mac’s reasoning is that it is the nature of graffiti and murals to fade with time, that it is one of the characteristics of this form of art. Other gallery curators may be against the protection because they cannot sell it, and some of the work is worth money now. Banksy regularly has people chipping the walls where his work is, off the sides of the buildings and selling the pieces to art collectors. Actress Angelina Jolie reportedly paid more than two hundred thousand pounds for a Banksy work that had been chipped from a wall. The debate continues today, and neither side has come up with any answers, so for now, the murals are remaining on the walls in Melbourne, and are well worth taking walking tours in this outdoor, urban gallery.