‘Beyond The Streets’- is graff culture pro-society or anti-establishment?

6 min readMar 13, 2023

So if you have not heard about this show yet- why not?

‘Beyond The Streets’ is curated by graffiti historian Roger Gastman with
the London show co-curated by Raoul Shah. Following successful exhibitions in Los Angeles & New York, ‘Beyond the Streets London’ brings together more than 150 artists spanning six decades and multiple cities. This is at the Saatchi Gallery until May 9th 2023. It is a vision of Roger Gastman who has worked on graffiti magazines; books and documentaries (he co-produced the Oscar-nominated Banksy documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop”) and curated graffiti art shows. One of these creative pioneers is Michael Holman who I spoke to, more to follow!

“When we came to London we wanted to
respect the city, respect the scene.” Roger Gastman

Raoul Shah is CEO and Founder of the agency ‘Exposure’ combining PR, product placement and brand collaborations. Raoul spoke on the opening day of the exhibition — ‘We’ve made it very relevant to the UK and european street art movements and some of the influences we’ve seen go from the
UK to the US, as well as having some of the greatest artists and global
artists in the world.’

Raoul Shah is co-curator of Beyond The Streets London.

‘A lot of the energy that created hip hop had a pirate rebel energy’ Fab 5 Freddy

One of the many artists exhibiting is none other than Fab 5 Freddy -a
visual artist , film maker and hip hop pioneer. Freddy gives valuable insight to a powerful set of images of black pirates in the show; ‘a lot of the energy that created hip hop had a pirate rebel energy. At least a third of the original pirates were black but you wouldn’t know that from seeing all the pirate movies.’

Kenny Scharf did a ‘live art’ session on the opening day. Kenny Scharf’s art career developed when he moved from L.A. to New York in the late ’70s to attend the School of Visual Arts and became room mates with Keith Haring.

Michael Holma-filmmaker, artist, writer, and musician at the Saatchi Gallery in London

Michael Holman is a filmmaker, artist, writer, and musician, based in
New York City. A pioneer in the Downtown New York Art Scene and Uptown Hip Hop Scene, Holman founded the band Gray — an industrial atmospheric, noise group — with painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as created and produced the first Hip Hop television show, Graffiti Rock in 1984.

It was a special moment walking in to the gallery and seeing the clip of
you on the TV show ‘Graffiti Rock’ (1984).
What was it like preparing for this show both in New York and London?

I was only involved with the London Beyond The Streets exhibition,
not New York’s (Brooklyn) exhibition. It was great meeting and planning
with Roger Gastman for the London show. But he clearly knew what he
wanted and needed. As for my work, Roger and I discussed what films and
videos of mine would be ideal for the exhibition, but the main issue was
“how long should the video run?” I figured I’d grab a handful of video
and film excerpts from my most iconic works (that capture early Hip Hop
and Graffiti Culture in NYC) and put them in a medley that would last
about 7 minutes, long enough to get the idea and move on to the rest of
the exhibition.

The show celebrates the broadest global impact and success of street
art, which has influenced pop culture, music, fine art, album
covers, ads and graphic design. Do you think street art has moved
away as ‘a DIY and anti-establishment’ form to something more
corporate?

Just because “Street Art” has become more mainstream and above
ground, I don’t think that automatically means it has gone “corporate.”
In a way, most Street Art is rather “pro-society” rather than
anti-establishment. Pro-society because it seems to want to make the
world a better place. If Street Art becomes more visible than it has
become more powerful and impacting, hopefully for the good. But the
success of anything that started as “underground” always appears to be
selling out, but I don’t think that’s fair or true.

How much of the London Street art history were you already familar
with and what stood out most in this show?

I was aware of a lot of London graffiti and Street Art, or course,
but this show helped me put it all in context and on a timeline.

In ‘Beyond the Streets’ there is an emphasis on music and how the
careers of music artists were very much in harmony with the approach of
street art. Do you see a similar influence on bands
today?

I’m sure some bands today have the same connection to contemporary
Street Art, but I’m not up on who they all might be.

Michael you founded the band Gray — can you give a background on how this started and the influences you had in creating it?

At the historic Canal Zone Party, April 29th, 1979, (I threw with
Brit ex-pat artist Stan Peskett and Fab 5 Freddy) I met Jean-Michel
Basquiat and we instantly hit it off, so much so that we decided to
start a band right there on the spot. Things were that instantaneous
back in those days. We agreed that we didn’t want to start a band like
all the rest of the post-punk, Nu Wave bands in NYC. Rather, we wanted
to be more experimental, more sound sculptural, inspired by John Cage
and Karl Stockhausen. We made noise sound beautiful, alien, ignorant,
non-human, superhuman. We listened to the noise and sounds that were all around us and worked to find ways to form those noises and sounds into something meaningful and beautiful. We played our instruments as if we
were from another planet and had no idea how they should be played, but
we would purposefully play them wrong. It was our style to be
“ignorant.”

What’s the next creative project you are working on? (only the ones
you are allowed to talk about!)

Myself and my Gray bandmate, Nick Taylor (original member from 1979)
are just completing our 2nd album. We think it is going to blow people
away!!!