Monaco, dormitory town of the discreetly super-rich, isn’t the most obvious place to find a major exhibition of street art, the subject on which many recent commenters on theartsdesk are impassioned. The pavements of this city within a principality on the scale of village, clinging to a precipitous Mediterranean hillside above a gleaming marina, betray barely a trace of chewing gum or dog excrement, let alone graffiti. 

Street art – or graffiti to give the old-money name by which many still know it – gets people going. Worthless or priceless? Criminal or cultural? Earlier this week theartsdesk carried a review of the Channel 4 documentary Graffiti Wars about the street rivalry between Banksy and Robbo. Rarely has a television review prompted so many readers to write in and comment on the site. But whichever way you slice it, it’s a vagabond art form whose practitioners are used to dodging the law and shrouding their ID behind a nom de guerre. This new set of photographs captures something of the danger and the clandestine thrill associated with street art and graffiti.

Street art – or graffiti to give the old-money name by which many still know it – gets people going. Worthless or priceless? Criminal or cultural? Earlier this week theartsdesk carried a review of the Channel 4 documentary Graffiti Wars about the street rivalry between Banksy and Robbo. Rarely has a television review prompted so many readers to write in and comment on the site. But whichever way you slice it, it’s a vagabond art form whose practitioners are used to dodging the law and shrouding their ID behind a nom de guerre. This new set of photographs captures something of the danger and the clandestine thrill associated with street art and graffiti.

Before Banksy's work became the object of desire for champagne-sipping, canapé-snaffling hedge fund managers at auction houses' private views, there was something of the curled lip about street art. Indeed, for years it wasn't known as street art but graffiti - the painted defacement of walls. London in the Noughties saw the evolution of that view: there could be a legitimate artistic value of this sort of work. However, not all graffiti qualified - much was still mindless vandalism.

Original Cultures is an artistic collective with bases in the UK, Italy and Japan, dedicated to audiovisual collaborations inspired by street art, graffiti, hip hop and electronic music. It is staging its first London event over the course of a week from 27 February to 5 March this year, in which artists Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras, Hiraki Sawa, Om Unit, Tatsuki and Tayone will be joining to create new works in a series of public events and workshops in and around the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London.

A 15ft aardvark constructed from raw timber with a light-up robotic face and gigantic hands is climbing up one of the support pillars of the Westway, next to the body of a full-sized helicopter the front of which has been shaped into a grinning skull. Life-size rearing horse torsos made of white marble-like resin, with real horse skulls instead of heads, are mounted on the wheels of Victorian perambulators, while a man rides a clanking, hissing, fire-spitting motorised beast with stamping front legs and huge rear wheels around through the crowd as children caper about and their parents drink rum punch to the sound of militant 1970s funk. It's a bit livelier than White Cube, that's for sure.

Graffiti is the only form of artistic self-expression that can get you both arrested and exhibited. Its most celebrated exponent, Banksy, is the subject of tabloid news speculation. The faces and names of most graffiti artists are even more of a closed book. Until Crack & Shine, that is. Gaining exclusive access to these creative renegades as they work, the photographer Will Robson-Scott shines a light into occluded corners of nighttime London where graffiti art finds its stealthy way onto brick walls and tube carriages.