It is hard to be offended by street art.
True, graffiti is illegal and in general is a source of public annoyance. But when the alternative is a blank brick wall, or a construction site hoarding, creative embellishment is welcome.
Most visitors to Glasgow city will have happened across one or more of Peter Drew's life-sized paintings of a man in a red and black jumper quoting lines from Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloque, his features replaced by pixellated symbols on a cube-shaped head. The project questions whether art can wrestle with complex emotions in the age of digital communication.
The former Glasgow School of Art (GSA) student was threatened with expulsion by the institution, over his Emoticon Hamlet project. Its stance that his actions were a threat to the school's reputation was ironic, especially as Mr Drew was writing a thesis for them at the time on the difficulties authorities have with street art.
Happily, since leaving GSA, Mr Drew has completed the four images that he had left undone as a result. Such art is inevitably transient. But in this case, to borrow a phrase, "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished".
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