Nost or Not

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This appears to be a “nost” tag. Nost is a tagging maniac who can be found repeated all over the city of Melbourne. I believe that nost stands for an important aspect of street art, which is replication. I feel like nost sort of aims to prove that you don’t need skill or intention to regain the rights to the walls of the city, all you need is a name you are willing to leave on the walls. On the lower left corner you can see a pair of lips and under the lips reads “toxic”. I think it’s either a humorous reference towards the Britney Spears hit single, or it is inferring that Nost himself didn’t actually tag this wall. I like graffiti because it takes the egotism out of art. For example, unless nost stood at this tag all day and night just to tell people “I painted this”, anyone else could claim to be nost. I find this interesting when considering commercialized artists such as Banksy because people actually purchase walls Banksy has painted… but anyone could simply copy an image of his stencil and paint it onto a wall.