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Graffiti etc. For years now, people have applauded contemporary graffiti as an art form. Yet putting graffiti on canvas and into a gallery is a controversial matter: some argue that graffiti would lose its public character, others argue that it would lose its radical edge. For better or worse, the Journal de la rue, a magazine designed to help street kids find support, has plunged headfirst into the controversy. Publisher Raymond Viger, angry over the Bourque administration's draconian anti-graffiti laws, created a program wherein young graffiti artists can learn to transfer their work from brick facades to canvas ones.
The result: le Groupe etc., a group of seven graffiti artists that has already produced a collective work of nine individual canvases which, when strung together, form a single work. "This has worked out better than we had ever hoped," says Viger. Now all he needs is a gallery. Philip Preville
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