Just days after Manchester soldier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered in Woolwich, London graffiti artist Paul Smith (pictured) started working on a memorial. Not the traditional kind, with a name carved in marble or etched in bronze, but one increasingly resonant with the streets where the 25-year-old serviceman’s life was so publicly cut short.

Photograph by Ed Dempsi

It features his now familiar ‘Crying Queen’ and has counterparts around London and in Bristol. In some ways it represents the ‘coming of age’ of UK graffiti – painted with tacit permission under the watchful gaze of police officers and curious bystanders.

When Smith, known to the cognoscenti by the soubriquet ‘Don’, arrived to create his tribute he spoke to local tradesmen and residents about suitable locations. Then he spotted the white wall of an Indian restaurant whose owner witnessed the murder. “I saw everything” he told Don, still agitated by the memory, “by all means do it, do it!”

Don is one of a worldwide brigade of creatives who use the urban landscape to post messages, create icons and adorn everyday objects with art. In cities like London many have almost been embraced by the establishment and in 2008 Greater Manchester Police asked if Don’s ‘Crying Queen’ homage to slaughtered colleagues Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes could be used at their funeral.

So has ‘street art’ become establishment? Lost its impact? Become just another media channel?
Not according to Afghan artist Malina Suliman who had to flee to another country because of it. The West may have accepted graffiti as a legitimate – and for people like Banksy, even collectible – art form, practiced by men and women, but in patriarchal societies even the walls of public spaces are male preserves. ­­ Read more of this and Glyn Strong’s other contributions to  UK PROGRESSIVE – Independent Critical Insight HERE.