Wheat paste (also known as flour paste, or simply paste) is a gel or liquid adhesive made from wheat flour or starch and water. It has been used since antiquity for various arts and crafts such as book binding, découpage, collage, papier-mâché, and adhering paper posters and notices to walls. Closely resembling wallpaper paste, a crude wheat flour paste can be made by mixing roughly equal portions of flour and water and heating until the mixture thickens. Activists and various subculture proponents often use this adhesive to flypost propaganda and artwork. It has also commonly been used by commercial bill posters since the nineteenth century. In particular, it was widely used by nineteenth and twentieth century circus bill posters, who developed a substantial culture around paste manufacture and postering campaigns.[1] In the field of alcohol and nightclub advertising, in the 1890s, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's posters were so popular that instructions were published on how to peel down the pasted posters without damage.[2 When hanging unauthorized billboards or signage, to reduce the danger of being apprehended, wheatpasters frequently work in teams or affinity groups. In the US and Canada this process is typically called "wheatpasting" or "poster bombing," even when using commercial wallpaper paste instead of traditional wheat paste. In Britain the term for the verb "wheatpasting" is "flyposting." A few currently active street artists that use wheat paste are JR, Swoon and Morley. Learn more about their work below.
JR began his career as a teenage graffiti artist who was by his own admission not interested in changing the world, but in making his mark on public space and society. His graffiti often targeted precarious places like rooftops and subway trains, and he enjoyed the adventure of going to and painting in these spaces. After finding a camera in the Paris Metro, JR and his friends began to document the act of his graffiti painting. At 17, he began applying photocopies of these photographs to outdoor walls.[9] JR later travelled throughout Europe to meet the people whose mode of artistic expression involved the use of outdoor walls.[10] Then, he began wondering about the vertical limits, the walls and the façades that structure cities.[6] After observing the people he met and listening to their message, JR pasted their portraits up in the streets and basements and on the roof tops of Paris. Between 2004 and 2006, JR created Portraits of a Generation, portraits of young people from the housing projects around Paris that he exhibited in huge format. This illegal project became official when the City of Paris put JR’s photos up on buildings.[11] At the beginning of his projects, JR wanted to bring art into the street: "In the street, we reach people who never go to museums.
Swoon started her street art in 1999. At the time she was attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and studying painting. However she began to feel suffocated by the sense that her life was already laid out for her. She believed that she would simply paint a few pictures that would end up on a wall in a gallery or someone’s home. Wheat pasting became a way for her to discover and understand her impact in the world. She describes that as a young women she did not have a sense of her ability to make a change. By putting up a small wheat paste, she was able to transform a wall and it would be there when she walked past it the next day. It was a tiny literal change. The majority of Swoon’s street art are portraits. She believes that we store things in our body and that a portrait can become an x-ray of those experiences. She wants her portraits to capture something essential in the subject. She tries to document something she loves about the subject and has seen in him or her. It is a way to connect with the subject. By putting the portraits on the streets she is allowing for others to witness this connection and make their own. Originally she believed her series of portraits would be a two-month project but she has continued to make them for over ten years.
Morley (born 1982) is a street artist based in Los Angeles, California. He specializes in wheatpaste prints that feature bold text and an image of the artist drawing the words with a Sharpie marker. Morley has indicated that he studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York.[1] In 2011 his work caught the eye of former Banksy manager Steve Lazarides, whose Outsiders division began selling screen prints of his work shortly after.[2] His work has been featured in the books: "It's A Stickup: Posters from the World's Greatest Street Artists", "Stay Up! Los Angeles Street Art", "Happy Graffiti: Street Art with Heart", "New Street Art", and "The Popular History of Graffiti: From the Ancient World to the Present", "New Street Art". In 2014, his first book "If You're Reading This, There's Still Time" was published by Cameron + Company books. In it, Morley is described by The Huffington Post as “the antithesis of street artists. Where traditional taggers obscure their name in scrawled script only readable to their own, Morley prints big messages with his large, bold lettering. Where most find it cool to be cryptic, Morley shares his wit in complete sentences. Where many street artists prefer anonymity or an empowered alter-ego, Morley includes a plain drawing of his unglamorous self writing each ironic aphorism. His humor veers from self-deprecating to sly, his insight ranges from soul searching to silly.”