Where have all the stories gone in rock? I’ve yet to meet anyone worth knowing who buys into the vacuous bullshittery NME art outlook. Being a talentless crack addict doesn’t make you an artist it makes you a prick. What’s missing? For me it's integrity, the sacrifice I always associated with art and music; the mysticism, the romance. The digital age has come at a price. 

Sheffield student art project, ‘Toilet Tour’, looks to the past for inspiration, to an artist and a story. The contemporary style of arguably the 20th century’s’ most controversial and influential photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The project is one of three taking place in Sheffield to raise awareness of Mapplethorpe’s work, currently on display at Graves art gallery.

Mapplethorpe is most notably responsible for his iconic cover image of Patti Smith's seminal 1975 Lp, Horses. Famed for the graphic sexual imagery in his work, particularly that of his documentation of the New York S&M scene. Mapplethorpe strived to show the unexpected, to reinvent the norm, to be original, a value that seems all but lost in today’s society.

The Toilet tour will be in various pubs and clubs in Steel City over the following week. The touring canvas in question? A blank toilet cubicle, open to the public to draw, write and transform using graffiti so we can leave our mark, create our own portrait.  Words being the focal point, the medium to convey the thoughts and feelings of our choosing.

A fresh feel for contemporary portraiture that will reflect both disparate and unified identities that exist within our city. Like Mapplethorpe’s art, this is the resistance, the freedom to express ourselves regardless of worrying if it fits in ‘the box’.

The event partly inspired by New York graffiti movements of the 80s, will be documented by video and portraiture, hoping to capture a portrait of Sheffield. An exhibition of the final work and other projects will be displayed in March. Mapplethorpe is survived through his body of work, a selection of which can be viewed at Graves gallery until 27 March.