The Telegraph’s Anny Shaw throws a spotlight on Matt Small who’s just won a Street Art Award (whatever that may be):

Last week, in the same week that Mark Leckey was announced winner of the Turner Prize, Matt Small won the urban category in the first ever Street Art Awards.

Coincidental timing, maybe, but in an art world where the boundaries between street art and contemporary art are fading (graffiti term for blending) into one another, a noteworthy coincidence nonetheless.

Small, a street artist to many, actually considers himself a painter first and foremost. “I don’t do street art,” Small says. “My subject matter happens to be about the street and about people who exist on the street. In this sense I’m a painter who brings the street indoors.”

Small’s work consists of portraits of ordinary people (usually young people who he feels are represented in a bad light by the media) painted on scrap metal he finds in the street.

You don’t need to go far to find other artists who have used the street as the subject of their art. The burgeoning city and its mechanised parts fascinated surrealists. Cubists portrayed café scenes in collages made from the very newspapers, ticket stubs and other castoffs you might find left there.

Does Street Art Deserve a Place in Art History? (Telegraph Blogs)