In and around Shoreditch, which lies at the north-east corner of central London, where the City is slowly expanding its monstrous corporate glass buildings, funded by speculative property investment, there are hundreds of warehouses, no bigger than four to five stories high. Set against the high return, unstable, steely post-modernity of the city, these warehouses offer a reminder of a more sold industrial past, based on real industries meeting real needs. And yet their terminal decline reminds us of the shifting global patterns in economic enslavement, production and consumption.

We are constantly being told by economists and politicians that Britain is now becoming a post-industrial service economy, based on education, IT And knowledge. Mirroring this discourse, the decline is being arrested, as the warehouses are renovated, to be used to accommodate the new service workers, and in the case of Shoreditch, to provide studios for designers and art students.

Of particular note in this transformative process, is Village Underground, a charitable organisation, which has had the innovative idea of plonking four underground tube carriages on top of an old warehouse. The warehouse sits three stones throw from and beneath the surveillance of the towering foot soldier of mammon, Broadgate Tower. The idea behind using carriages was to create affordable design space. The carriages are being used by designers, record labels, photographers and script writers whilst the warehouse is used for conferences, launches, parties and other events.

The walls of the warehouse and the carriages are frequently given makeovers with various murals, graffiti and images. This ‘vandalism’ or ‘street art’ is present all over Shoreditch and neighbouring Brick Lane, and occasionally appears in the more up-market areas of the City. It is apparent from the signatures on the artwork and by the themes presented, that there are several designers and artists using the north east of the City in this canvas like way.

There is a great diversity of work on offer, ranging from the incredibly creative templates and spray paint methods used by Banksy, to the guy or lass who paints massive single letters on shop shutters, to Cartrain’s political black and white pop-art. The work on offer presents many mysteries. I once saw on the wall a very small bronze coloured plastic circle, with the imprint of a dog shit and a man's foot about to step into it. Who? Why? Who cares?

The Obey Giant company and campaign, has made a significant contribution to this scene by mounting enormous posters on to walls, usually significantly above the eye-line, so that the images, often of peoples’ faces, look down at you. This campaign of posters is described as its architects as an experiment in phenomenology. The posters, on the face of it, are not advertising anything in particular. I remember first having my attention draw to their series of mounted posters of the faces of beautiful Middle-Eastern looking women, wrapped in headscarves, surrounded by psychedelic imagery, and often holding guns or other forms of weaponry. When I saw these faces, presented in a psychedelic background, often with images of guns, I wondered whether it was women's oppression, Islamic revolution, a fashion house, or was it one of those attempts at capturing your attention with an icon, which would precede some new wave of advertising that would associate that icon with a brand. According to the website, ‘The Obey Campaign is supposed to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer's perception and attention to detail’.

Being on street display, the work can be destroyed at any minute, so it is fragile and mortal, which makes you appreciate its beauty much like you might that of a flower. The work is also random and unpredictable both in content and location, which means that each day throws up a new and unique configuration of work within the streets, which you can only experience by travelling through the city.

Whilst the artwork is spread all over the place, the real ants nest is in Blackall Street, a lane rarely frequented by vehicles or people running behind the back of two rows of terraced warehouses. Walking up and down Blackall Street, one cannot but be amazed at the concentration and variety of work on offer, and start imagining what it must be like there at two o’clock at night. Do all the designers come out, with their torches, and headlamps, spraycans, and prepared stencils and posters, and get to work? Do they bring thermos flasks, and chat to each other, much like a couple of bricklayers might?

The jury is out on whether it is acceptable to use the streets as a canvas for peoples’ art. The local authorities and City naturally see the work as graffiti and in need of removal. But maybe there’s a difference between what they ‘have to say’ and what they feel and do. In reality, the work remains in place for as long as it takes, for the rain to dissolve it, for another artist to displace it, or for some envious art collector to rip it off the wall. There seems to be some kind of code of operation, used by the artists. Most artists use walls, which are in a bad state, i.e. could be improved by a bit of art, crumbling buildings, and builder’s boards and fences. Occasionally you might see a small stencil in the City. Obey Giant, a phenomenologist poster campaign group, asks people using its materials to ‘use common sense and consideration when applying stickers or other propaganda materials’ commenting ‘there are extreme individuals who wish to label all street artist as vandals and push for harsher and harsher penalties and prosecution’.