Tag team: Artist Roger Woodiwiss compares graffiti to Chinese brush calligraphy

A detail from one of the works in the exhibition at The Vortex

Mounting graffiti on a gallery wall is not a novel concept, but artist Roger Woodiwiss breathes fresh life into the idea with an exhibition at Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston.

This year’s summer show, ‘I Was Here’ takes graffiti tags found on the walls of empty warehouses and derelict train stations and displays them with an eye to their beauty.

Blown up and exaggerated in colour, the artist compares the city-smart signatures, often used to mark out gang territory, to Chinese brush calligraphy and Islamic script.

“A lot of my work comes from things in the everyday environment,” explains Woodiwiss, who gathers his material on long walks through East London. “There’s no sociological concept behind what I do. I’m a painter and I love the fluidity and rhythm of these things. It’s art for art’s sake.”

Woodiwiss, who is currently artist in residence at Coventry University, has done a similar project with plastic bags; moving them into a gallery space simply by merit of their shape and form.

But his latest exhibition takes the question of what makes art, one step further.

Though the artist maintains he cares only for form and beauty, it is hard not to consider his work in light of the Banksy craze which has turned graffiti on its head.

Anonymous street paintings showing up alongside Manets and Hirsts in world-class auction houses; city councils locked in bitter disputes over who owns the illegal urban scrawls.

In March this year, Haringey residents demanded that a ‘stolen’ piece of graffiti worth £400,000, was returned to a shop wall, and the council stepped in to help.

Just three weeks after victory was won, Haringey street cleaners destroyed a new mural in the area, painted this time by shopkeepers. Outrage ensued. And so the question of graffiti as art trundles on.

For Woodiwss the answer is clear.

Would he spray-paint his tag reproductions in an urban environment?

“No, no, no good grief!” he exclaims. “I’m not a graffiti artist. I just notice and see possibilities. The closest I’ve ever come is making stencils of the tags that I see – they’re not conventionally pretty. But I think they can be beautiful.”

The Vortex Summer Show, I was Here, runs until 30 September at the Vortex Jazz Club in Gillett Street, Dalston. Entrance is free.