Tame Pussy

By Elizabeth Barsham

Three small boys are discussing the colours in a large stencilled and sprayed painting, taking turns photographing each other in front of it. They have been out with the spray cans themselves and one still has a paper mask hanging round his neck. We are surrounded by huge, spray-painted images by graffiti artists Aedan Howlett, Hiiragi, Jacob Leary, Jamin, Phibs and Tom O'Hearn, but we are not in an alley between grimy concrete walls. We are in the super-respectable tastefully restored Barn at Rosny where the artists have spent the last week creating six mural-sized paintings for StArt, the Clarence City Council's annual Festival of Street Art.

Outside in the sunshine there is a free barbecue, face painting and live music; visitors make badges, stencil designs on calico shopping bags and try their hand at spray-painting and reverse graffiti (drawing into the grime on detatched car doors).

A group of Yarn Bombers help children make big, colourful pompoms, hanging the results from the bare branches of a winter tree. With Council support the guerilla knitters were able to afford far more, and more colourful, wools than usual, and handrails and bollards along the street sport eye-catching stripes.

Designs by three digital artists have been printed up billboard size and mounted on the walls of the shopping centre. School children's drawings and paintings compete with commercial displays in shop windows. On Monday it will all be gone; the only artwork to distract shoppers and commuters will be the usual advertising signs.