"Stencil VS Sticker".. Art.

Stencil is a form of graffiti that uses paper or cardboard, in order to produce an image or text that can be created over and over again in a fast and easy way. The cardboard is cut out, and the image created is sprayed across or rolled over in order to be transferred to a surface. This particular style of graffiti has reportedly being around for at least 30 years, although no one can pinpoint its exact origins. An Australian photographer named Rennie Ellis put out a book in 1985 titled “The All New Australian Graffiti” in which he documented some of the earliest examples of stencil art to appear in Sydney and Melbourne. Early in the book, Ellis noted that US photographer Charles Gatewood had sent him pictures of stencil graffiti appearing all around New York City and looked very similar to those of Sydney and Melbourne. In Europe, two French artists by the names of Blek le Rat and Jef Aerosol started to mess around with this new form of graffiti in the early 80’s spreading their art around Paris and Tours respectively and it was not until many years later that the most well known contemporary graffiti artists, Banksy from Bristol, brought stencil and street art forward to a much wider audience. Both Blek le Rat and Jef Aerosol belong to the very first street art pioneers of the 80’s leaving their mark in many other cities such as London, Brussels, Lisbon, Amsterdam and Chicago just to name a few. Blek le Rat studied architecture and was one of Banksy’s main influences. Both of their work can be seen in many group and solo shows as well as art festivals, and Jef Aerosol even published a book about street art titled “Vite Fait, Bien Fait”. Banksy’s art on the other hand was not very welcomed due to its graphic depiction of cops, children and elderly people, especially during the first few years when his stencil pieces began popping up all around London and Bristol. Nevertheless as his fame grew and the attention over his work began to rise, it led to a rather unexpected turn of events,  since on 21 February 2007, Sotheby's auction house in London auctioned three of his works, reaching the highest ever price for a work of that kind which was over £102,000 for his “Bombing Middle England” piece. That was the smack on the side of the head of conventional art forms that would change the street art culture for good.

Sticker Bombing is a rather new form of street art through which an image or message is displayed by using a sticker. Most of the times stickers of this kind either promote some kind of political agenda or message, or they may be included in some kind of art campaign which is promoted through sticker bombing. The main reason behind the use of stickers is that compared to graffiti they pose less danger for the person who is carrying them since they can be placed much faster reducing the chances of getting caught in the act. Name tags and United States Postal Service mailing labels are  among the most popular stickers nowadays. BNE from New York, D* Face from London and of course Shepard Fairey, are a few of the street artists that made sticker bombing popular around the world. BNE started out as a typical graffiti artist in the 90’s but then switched to stickers, bombing the BNE tag all around New York city posting enormous amounts of stickers reaching up to 10 thousand per year. In May 2006 the mayor of San Francisco offered 2,500 dollars as a reward for anyone that had to offer any information concerning BNE’s identity, who was eventually charged for vandalism after the city’s police department started noticing BNE stickers all around town from parking meters to traffic signs. D*Face also used stickers among other mediums in his numerous sold out exhibitions in London, and he was heavily influenced by  Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant campaign, probably the most well known street art campaign up to date. Its worth noting that the format in which this specific campaign started was actually a sticker, reading the infamous quote “Obey Giant has a Posse”. Other well known streets artists or collectives include Robots Will Kill, Under Water Pirates and 14Bolt.


Written by Alexis Seitanidis.