This is just one more example of failure of what we laughingly call DEMOCRACY. Democracy is like a wheelbarrow, you know. It doesn’t work unless you get behind it and apply some effort. Fail to do this and you forfeit your bitching and whining rights.

In case of The Bogside Artists context was given. We were born into it. The site we chose to paint our murals, The Bogside, was a familiar part of our habitat. It was a daily fact of our existence, where we had lived and played, our history. It was drenched in blood. This by itself would, paradoxically and despite blunderbuss abuse of our critics, make our work very reflective of where modern art is headed at moment. For, it has long been an embarrassing fact to many curators that gallery itself provides a false context for viewing of art. The gallery in effect becomes a mediator between viewer for whom work was made and artist himself. This leads to a reification of work and a corresponding alienation of work, artist and his public. Art galleries therefore look wistfully at community art and work of muralists like ourselves. They establish 'Outreach Programs' in hope of redressing balance. Performance artists, let us not forget, came into being explicitly to fill this gap.

With public art modus operandi of careerist artist whose will is to challenge viewer on presupposition that viewer is actually blind and stupid, would nakedly contradict context in which mural artist seeks to live. The muralist's first remit is to communicate; else he would not have chosen a public site in first place. He is willingly addressing public context, public mind, public belief, public perceptions in all their variety and contradictions. He is not appealing to dilettante or culture vulture. He is a rebel, painting with passion because he knows that true art is poetry and poetry is not proper arena for careerism, which rightfully belongs to market place and its chicanery. He is appealing, first and foremost, to man in street, on assumption that man in street is not completely blind and no crazier than artists who address him. This is context in which muralist places himself. It can be thin ice to walk upon, as experiences of The Bogside Artists will readily testify; because it involves whole social context. There are political currents to avoid and tribal rapids to negotiate. We seek to honor context we have been given; not to abuse it in name of an infantile delusion of license masquerading as 'freedom' which alone characterizes much of what passes for so-called 'contemporary art'.