Street Craft

In the past decade, street art has transformed from a practice carried out by anonymous creators, seen by some as vandalism, into a commercial enterprise and a respectable part of the international art market. One of the richest movements in street art has been the development of an alternative, crafts-based, three-dimensional movement, broadly identified as Street Craft. This new generation of artists is creating uncommissioned, site-specific works employing a range of art and craft techniques, including weaving, crocheting, sculpting, painting, gardening, light installation, and more.

Street Craft brings together twenty-eight different artists from different countries whose work has redefined what street art can be. By diversifying materials and techniques, Street Craft artists are pushing beyond the two-dimensionality of graffiti and mural-painting, many of them using craft techniques to bring inventive beauty to bland urban surroundings. Tasha Lewis’s blue butterfly swarms decorate derelict corners of Indianapolis and New York, and Mademoiselle Maurice’s origami and lace graffiti beautifies the streets of Paris and Hong Kong. Other artists create sophisticated urban interventions bearing their personal tags, such as the artist SpiderTag, who intertwines sturdy rope and nails to construct abstract graffiti in Madrid, and GorillaLighting, who haunts Berlin’s industrial estates with impermanent projections.

Each artist’s profile includes project descriptions, artist statements, and a selection of photographs of their work: a document of the vibrant panorama of Street Craft, which, like the art form itself, engages with its audience in new and exciting ways.

Riikka Kuittinen is the curator and writer behind the touring exhibition Street Art: Contemporary Prints that originated at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She is a contributor to Photomonitor and the editor of the Tosca Photography Fund catalogues.