Sunday, August 28, 2005

About Manchester Marks

MCR Marks is not a site about graffiti. Okay, it is mostly about graffiti, but I like to think it's a bit more than that. It's about the ways people change their city. And specifically, but not exclusively, this city. Manchester, England.

It's about bits of our environment that the council didn't plan, that weren't signed off in board meetings, which aren't there to sell you anything. Interesting bits of the city that you can miss so easily, and which disappear without warning. Stickers. Paintings. Interesting litter. Spaces where advertising is supposed to be, but temporarily it isn't.
Bathroom tiles arranged in the shape of a space invader buy a guy up a stepladder at three in the morning.

It's partly a protest. It's legal for a company to cover a bus stop in manipulative images designed to sell you trainers, but illegal for an individual to put a small sticker on the advert saying, well, anything. "This advert's crap" for example.

And it's partly a reaction to eight years spent living in Manchester, watching street art dissappear.

But that's not to say that this blog is full of works of art. It's got some random acts of vandalism in it too, and a broken parking sign, and other aspects of our surroundings which were never meant to happen.

If anyone would like to submit their own photos, please email me. Ryan dot brightwell at gmail.

I'd like to make this into a great big searchable database of photos one day. So you can search by street, by date, view photos of things that were probably all made by the same person, etc., etc. If you've got any ideas on how I can do that, I'd like to know.

Thanks to the people who make this blog possible, and this city more interesting, by painting or sticking interesting stuff about the place.

3 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

hello there.

i was wondering if you know anything about an artist who puts tiny tiles with text in them into the streets of manchester. I have been told this graffiti is renowned in manchester but i cant get any information about it on the internet. have you got any photos for example or do you know what the tiles say? Im studying fine art at glasgow school of art and its for a project on political expression.

Florrie James

3:59 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

it florrie again who just wrote about tinytiles on pavements. im very interested. can you email me on florriebs2@gmail.com if you know anything about it. thankyou for your help.

florrie

4:02 AM  
Blogger Feidias said...

Hey MCRmarks, where've you gone? We misses you.

m

4:49 AM  

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