and unique signatures or ‘tags’. Creating large, colourful designs with spray cans started in New York in the 1970s, before spreading across the world. Despite being linked to vandalism, some examples have moved into galleries. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of the most famous graffiti artists of the 1980s. Today, international artist Anon has his work on display here in Birmingham at the Radioactive exhibition.

Graffiti originated from the cave paintings of our ancestors and was the first visual medium used by us to communicate our feelings, our thoughts, to make sense of the world around us. The term originates from the Greek graphein, which means ‘to write’, and refers to words or drawings sprayed on a wall. Rival urban gangs often use it to ‘mark’ their territory with cryptic codes