Moniker Art Fair 2017 Recap, London
Now in its 8th Edition, Moniker Art Fair , the world’s biggest urban art fair, opened its doors on a newly expanded space in London’s Old Truman Brewery. For 2017, Moniker offered a unique programme giving visitors a chance to map the evolution of street art in the heart of London’s East End, since its beginnings in post-depression 1930s America. Here is our recap from the venue. Moniker 2017’s theme ‘Transient Tales’ showcased not only the origins of street art but additionally highlights the importance and impact of migration and travel on the arts. Among the 100 artists exhibiting at the fair will be those paying homage to the hobo culture that emerged nearly 90 years ago, where grifters taking trains across the country would leave symbols – called tags or monikers – on the walls of freight cars and settlements to denote ‘police presence’, ‘safety’ or ‘food’. A collection of the tags has already appeared as part of the Barbican’s Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective whic
