Urban signage

Doing murals is more than a hobby for Memo, it’s a part-time job. During the course of a year, he’s able to do a good number of contracts, but according to him the tolerance towards graffiti, whether they’re pretty or not, is diminishing. “For the last two years I’ve been constantly watched while I’m doing murals and it also takes a lot of time to obtain a permit before I can actually start working,” mentioned Memo.

And yet the reason why building owners decide to have a graffiti done on their wall is to embellish them. Marc Patel reminds that before there was a mural on the outside of his bar there was a lot of tags and it looked dirty. He’s also very confident that he won’t see any new tags on his property. “Usually kids respect good looking graffiti, so I’m pretty sure they won’t do any new tags on my bar.”

Vice-President of the Public Security Commission for the City of Montreal Marcel Tremblay agrees with this idea. “We actually need more murals because people who do tags respect that and they won’t tag over them.” However, Mr. Tremblay doesn’t think legal walls could help decrease the number of unwanted graffiti. “When the walls are full they go somewhere else and often in places where it’s very hard for us to clean afterwards, he said. We can’t forget that these people want their drawings to be seen.”

In the eyes of the authorities, the artists and the general public, a major difference lies between a mural and a basic graffiti. In order to eradicate the graffiti problem this message simply has to reach the youth.

(Photo: Jacques Pharand)