How to deal with barely readable signatures

[Sherry_Shen]

Hi everyone!

I am new here~ Glad to join the community.

I’m wondering — I came across pieces of street art that only have barely readable signatures, or I can’t find any information about them online. What’s the best way to identify the artist or learn more about them?

[Chalkster]

Hi @Sherry_Shen welcome to the SAC family

I found it pretty tough to start with myself, but there are a few hints that I got from the experienced people in our community…

• Google reverse image search (also as SAC uploads feature high in these results it’s a good way to see if a piece is already listed when you don’t know the artist)
• Instagram - have a best guess at what you see in the tag and see if you can find a matching artist profile.
• Build a network - when you do find the artist consider reaching out to them (insta, facebook, website) to get some backstory or history of the piece, once you have chatted to some of your local artists you can tap into their network to find some of the harder to identify artists.
• Do what you have done, and ask others on the SAC forum

If it helps I think the artist for your second image is Perplswet (tag and style seem to match)

Perplswet Instagram

Without the full picture of the first one it’s a bit trickier to help, but in my experience graff writers are much harder to track than street artists…… maybe one of our more experienced voices can save the day

[Andrew_Haysom]

Hey Sherry,
I agree with everything that Chalkster has said, and doing what you’ve done here, asking others is the other main thing I do.

Agree with Chalkster about Perplswet too.

One other word of caution I’d add about graffiti. Often there is a bit of secrecy in the graffiti world. In Melbourne we tend to not post a lot of graffiti unless it is in well-known and well-trafficked locations. I’ve had a couple of conversations with graffiti writers who often express nervousness about posting the exact location of their work.

The Adelaide scene may be different, I’m not sure, but if unsure perhaps reach out to the artist (if known) and ask if they mind it being posted (making sure that they understand that the location is part of the post).

[Sherry_Shen]

@Chalkster

Perplswet Instagram

Thanks, Chalkster, that’s helpful!

I thought it was Pepiplswet, so I found nothing…

The first one is

[Sherry_Shen]

Thanks for letting me know.

I think these graffiti are a little bit hidden, there are in a car parking, so they are public, but not a big traffic area.

I will seed message on Insta to get their permission before post them on SAC.

[Streetartwerpenaar]

Hi Sherry,

I fully agree with Chalkster and Andrew and will use this info as a topic in our hunter guides.

Being a hunter comes with some ‘responsibilities’ and research is very important. So keep away from adding all your findings at once under ‘unknown - Adelaide’ and try to find out about the artists first. You’ll find out the fun in resolving those mysteries and building a relationship with artists this way.

BONUS TIP: the very first thing I do, is scan through hashtags in Instagram, so for example #streetartadelaide and see if you recognize your mystery wall there.

[Chalkster]

Might be worth asking on this (somewhat old) reddit thread to see if anyone knows the artist….

Soundwave Graff Mural

[Andrew_Haysom]

I found that thread too and worked out that Soundwave is actually the name of the Transformer character depicted rather than (as I first thought) the artist. I did think of asking there too but the thread is closed for new comments.

[Andrew_Haysom]

Sherry,

One other thing that I should have mentioned before that makes identifying graffiti even harder is that often graffiti writers will include their “crew” names as well as their own names, and they will often put the names of other artists in their works too as “call-outs” to their friends/fellow writers.