Joint exhibition brings street art and architecture together.

(From Lloyds List)

Byline: Neville Smith

THAT we have become a visually-oriented, graphically-literate society should be obvious to any observant visitor to the Lloyd's List office.

Those prepared to stroll the byways of West Hoxton will be assailed on all sides by the codes and ciphers of modern graphic art, which illegally adorn Old Street's walls, hoardings and lamp posts.

Despite being mostly unintelligible except to initiates, this work, including the graffiti art of Banksy and a cabal of imitators, has some claim to be near the cutting edge of urban communication.

London is also fortunate to be a city which endorses the visual language of architecture, notwithstanding a protracted and painful education. Indeed, the capital is undergoing a period of renewal more far-reaching than that of the 1980s and perhaps as significant as the reconstruction that followed the second world war.

Not all this cultural and architectural activity is centred in the Square Mile, but visitors now have the chance to judge the impact of both in a double exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery.