Adelaide residents feature as Glasgow School of Art student’s street graffiti project gets national attention
Adelaide artist Peter Drew has adorned the streets of his adopted city, Glasgow, with images of friends, family and people in his life from his hometown.
An image in Glasgow from Peter Drew's 'Home'
The project, Home, converts woodchip hoardings and abandoned shopfronts into guerrilla urban art.
“The projects I like the most are the ones that aren’t commissioned, when artists go out into the street and do things,” said Peter.
“That's what’s most interesting in street art and graffiti - it’s really powerful because it allows all people to see that public space belongs to all of us and we all have ownership of it.
“We can all share in those works and it belongs to everyone – it’s community property.”
The project echoes Adelaide’s Forgotten Outlaws, which used archive photos of criminals from the 1920s around the streets of Adelaide. Drew’s work has been noticed and featured in Scotland’s national news programming.
Drew says Adelaide and Glasgow are similar cities.
“Although Adelaide is further along in civic authorities recognising that there are opportunities for artists and that there's not much they have to do, except relinquish control a bit,” he says.
“They are less stringent of what they clean off of the streets. It's ultimately up to the community of artists to make it work - there's so many ways you can make urban art work in a city.
"I have a lot of respect for the really experienced graffiti artists that have been painting here for a long time, you can see how skilled they are.”