One of the mural artists, Avenii Johnson – an former student of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) and The New England Institute of Art in Massachusetts – is already quite comfortable with can-in-hand, having spray-painted during his time as an undergrad. However, for the NAGB Mixed Media Summer Camp 2016, the intention was less on social-commentary and saving spaces and more on youth-involvement and giving an aesthetic injection to the gallery grounds. Though things like the graffiti associated with street art have now become a part of the contemporary artistic canon – with widely recognized names like Banksy and Shepard Fairey coming also into the art-world proper – they still manage to retain something of their integrity to the streets. It is, more often than not, an immediate, honest form of expression, made as much for the indulgence of its creator as it is for the passerby to behold. The NAGB has done its part to play into this rich and varied tradition with its fresh new array of murals that were executed as part of the 2016 Mixed Media Summer Camp. It all serves its function: for access and viewing by the masses, to communicate, by chance, by people (and by as many as possible).

Public art becomes the cave paintings from tens of thousands of years ago in Indonesia, most of which is speculated to have been produced by women based on the hand-size to the frescoes of ancient Egypt and Greece to Jacques Louis-David’s celebrated ‘first modernist painting’ of the ‘Death of Marat’ to the cheeky, self-proclaimed ‘anti-establishment’ scribbles from a spray-paint can by a misfit teen. If we think of public art as quite literally that – art in the public realm or for public engagement and consumption – things become much more inclusive. But it is so much more than that and the history extends to thousands of years before.

The first image that springs to mind might be giant steel and bronze constructions sitting atop manicured park grass or concrete courtyards, or a sprawling, twitching mass of near-unintelligible graffiti, hastily scribbled on the side of a building, before the dreaded authorities come to halt all illicit activity, of course. Public art – and its multitude of offshoots: street art, public sculpture, murals, mosaics – has a colourful history with many facets.

Urban scrawl 2014