Photography: Daniel Ginns looks to find the beauty in painted-over graffiti

Date
18 September 2013

Artist Daniel Ginns is fresh out of a degree in illustration at Camberwell, but as it turns out he’s a dab hand with a camera too. His series Rothko Walls records the walls in and around London which used to boast graffiti, and now display only the “free-floating geometric shapes” which remain after it has been badly concealed by a halfhearted paint-job. The new layer of paint is often “only a slightly different shade of colour from that of the original wall,” he explains, “creating imagery that could be considered reminiscent of the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko.”

We saw a similar idea captured a couple of years back by artist Chris Seddon’s book Correctionism, which just goes to show how far-reaching and aesthetically reminiscent of revered painters the phenomenon really is. There’s something heart-warmingly defiant in the idea that, by trying to remove one form of self expression, painters country-wide are actually creating another, which other artists are then capturing themselves; it just goes to show that you don’t need to erect billboards bearing masterpieces around a city to see art everywhere.

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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Daniel Ginns: Rothko Walls

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About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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