This thesis provides an understanding of the nature of the practice of inscribing graffiti on the eastern side of the reredos in Beverley Minster in the medieval and early modern periods. It focuses on the types of graffiti that were inscribed when the upper platform of the reredos supported the shrine of Saint John of Beverley from c.1330 to 1540. This study shows that in order to interpret the meaning and significance of the graffiti for the individuals who inscribed them, it needs to be placed in a context where writing on walls was accepted and acceptable to both the clergy and the laity. The different categories of graffiti on the eastern side of the reredos are described and examined in detail. A wide range of evidence are employed to provide a holistic interpretation of the rationale behind their inscription. Comparisons with the graffiti surviving in the nave at Beverley Minster; in parish churches situated within the Humber region; and in ecclesiastical buildings from other counties across England are drawn upon to facilitate a synthesis of the graffiti on the eastern side of the reredos. Literary evidence, numismatics and objects recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) are sources of evidence drawn upon throughout to supplement the lack of contextual information, and to place the practice of inscribing graffiti into a wider religious, social and cultural context. Among the types of graffiti studied are textual inscriptions, crosses, religious symbols, ships, merchants' marks and figures. The different types of graffiti are contextualised in thematic discussions based upon two aspects of religious culture, which show how graffiti can be simultaneously devotional and superstitious. In the process, this study enhances our knowledge of the ways in which individuals interacted with the fabric of church buildings on a physical level.

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The aim of this thesis is to examine and analyse the images of graffiti contained within the portfolio of ‘Pudu Jail’s Graffiti (PJG)’, documented work from the abandoned prison facility in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, between 2002 and 2003. The objective has been to discover whether the ‘Pudu Jail’s Graffiti’, has a distinct visual narrative(s) compared with other prison graffiti research, concluding that its qualities lies in the complexity of visual cultures brought within the space of the prison cells. The prison graffiti retrieved from this portfolio has been analysed through a process of qualitative review; in order to find its thematic alignments based on comparative categorical contexts. This research will assess the concepts of the proposed themes of the PJG (there are ten themes such as Names, Time, Food, Religious gates, God(s), etc.) noting that the graffiti’s visual and textual narrative context was based on the local, vernacular culture, and social influences, which remained as part of the inmates’ or the cells’ previous occupants memories and the cultural embodiment that they had reflected onto the cell walls. It will look into the PJG’s significance and function, which contained a mixture of memories, events, places, professions of love, religious commitments and various tell-tale signs of messages that seemed to have been made exclusively for the inmates themselves. These personalised marks would throw light on the relationship between the inmates and the prison cells’ embodiment of their narratives. Thus, this research represents a continued effort to obtain an updated description of prison graffiti by finding an alternative approach within prison graffiti research. Combining both elements of the research, namely the meaning of the images and the acknowledgment of the space in which they reside, may lend greater argument to prison graffiti research and reveal the deeper connections that graffiti may have towards its cultural surroundings.

Jaques Ranciére (2009b) argues that if there is a political question in contemporary art, ‘…it will be grasped through the analysis of the metamorphoses of the political ‘third’, the politics founded on the play of exchanges and displacements between the art world and that of non art’ (2009b:51). Looking at graffiti and street art in Barcelona as ‘textures’, which stimulate the mind, body and senses. I have investigated what public space means for its inhabitants through the material nature of the surfaces by which it is contained and by applying media devices. This has led me to develop an ethnography of encounters, perceptions and sensibilities linked to political practices and different modes of participation in the everyday life of the city. Following Jacques Ranciére’s (2004) conception of ‘political aesthetics’, I argue that the aesthetic of graffiti and street art can be embodied according to different sensible orders in the city. The public space is key in this process and I see it as an interface between graffiti artists, the general public and the institutions of the city. Graffiti activate the urban landscape through visual and tactile transformations of space through surfaces. These interactions, as De Certeau (1985) claims about everyday practices, may articulate narratives, which became the main source of information for this thesis. Thinking about the graffiti works in Barcelona in terms of Bakhtin’s (1981) idea of ‘the chronotope’, I have recounted the stories, which make the transformation of public space indicative of the everyday life of the city applying practices of collaboration, dialogue and intervention. These practices connected me to different surfaces of the city so as to explore how their material qualities are permeated with social relations and artistically inscribed with historical and political meanings. Here, graffiti and the city formed a compound of images in which I have studied the ‘visuality’ of graffiti in Barcelona. This, as Hal Foster (1988) argues, encloses at the same time social facts and physical operations (body and psyche) and moves, as I will show throughout this thesis, between dominant and resistance cultures. In short, I have materialized these ideas and images in the graffiti texture of Barcelona, seeing it as a mutable surface, which mediates between different ways of seeing and living in this city.