More Than A Word
Newline Graffiti & Young People
17 April – 23 May 2010

This exhibition will be the first of its kind in the North East exhibiting the work of young people alongside professional artists.

More Than A Word explores the identity, individualism, thoughts and feelings of young people from across North and South Tyneside, using street art and a fusion of traditional sign writing techniques. 
 
More Than A Word, is the collective work of young people ages 5-19years old, who over the course of 2 months worked with professional Graffiti company Newline to produce this thoughtful, expressive, dynamic and relevant exhibition.

This exhibition aims to challenge stereo typical perceptions of graffiti, why it is produced and for what purpose. It aims to explore how scrawls, tags and ultimately graffiti is More Than A Word. That is form of self expression can often be for a number of reasons; sometimes just for the thrill, for the artistic endeavor, for adventure, for cathartic reasons but ultimately it’s a personal reason - a human touch on created landscape / medium. And sometimes, it’s for no reason at all, just to mark, inject, enhance man-made landscapes through form, colour and passion.

This vibrant and engaging exhibition is accompanied by a film depicting the processes involved in reaching the final exhibition. Produced by Andrew Hagan of Mainstream Films, this documentary style film captures the action as well as the more gentle thoughts and conversations between young people, their peers and artists about self expression and identity.

Here is a little sample video:

Untitled from New Line Graffiti on Vimeo.