Tram Stop 21, outside the Brunswick Mechanics Institute, has a photograph of light graffiti by local artist Robyn Cerretti. Cerretti spells out “forever” using a sparkler against a dark urban setting. It is an ironic comment on Arthur Stace’s famous chalk graffiti “eternity” as ‘forever’ is a synonym for ‘eternity’. But a lit sparkler does not last forever, nor does Stace’s chalk on pavement. A word does not equate to the existence of a thing and so the ontological argument for the existence of God (or eternity), formulated by St. Anselm, leaves reality in the perfect, super-fast spaceship.
Arthur Stace is also the subject of a film by Julien Temple, The Eternity Man (2008) based on the stage opera by Australian composer Jonathan Mills and poet Dorothy Porter. Arthur Stace was an illiterate Sydney ex-alcoholic with an obsessive compulsive disorder and a one-word evangelical mission tag that made him an Australian legend. Stace lead a very dull life and both the film and opera have to work hard to make it interesting for even a short time.
The calligraphic appeal of Stace’s Copperplate letters made his work visually unique at time when graffiti was more concerned with the message and not the media. In the 1970s, ‘80s and early ‘90s graffiti in Melbourne was limited to aphoristic slogans (rather like the art of Jenny Holtzer) written in simple fonts using house paint and a brush. It was more a form of literature than visual art. I found an old notebook of mine with a short list of graffiti slogans from the ‘80s and early ‘90s:
“Bite the wax tadpole”
“Real punks can’t spell capocino”
“Stilettos are a push over – wear bovvers”
“Nuclear families have fallout”
“There is only one thing worse than the desire to command – the will to obey.”
“1991 the year of LOVE (on the dole)”
Rennie Ellis exhibition “No Standing Only Dancing” at the NGV has nine photographs of Australian graffiti in the 1970s and 80s, at the very far end of the exhibition. Ellis photographs are social realism and his photographs of graffiti simply document them. It is mostly political slogans like “Smash the Housing Commission” along with photographs of two modified billboard advertisements and the photograph that gave its title to the whole exhibition “No Standing Only Dancing”. Ellis has an extensive collection of photographs of graffiti from this time and published three paperback books of photographs of graffiti: Australian Graffiti (1971), Australian Graffiti Revisited (1979) and The All New Australian Graffiti (1985).
I presume than in 20 or 30 years the NGV will have an exhibition of some photographer’s images of Melbourne’s current street art and that future artists will celebrate its images, when it is safely history.
Black Mark 
February 2nd, 2009 at 9:09 AM
Excellent post, Mark. Your comments on Stace are great (and I had a similar experience to your, watching The Eternity Man which – though short – sometimes seemed to last an eternity itself!).
Yeah, it’s funny how ‘graffiti’ and ‘street art’ become so much more respectable when they are safely historical…
February 20th, 2009 at 1:19 AM
Melbourne had awesome graffiti art in the 90’s too (the Cranbourne/Pakenham line was a regular journey that always impressed) but me, being young & nieve, took it totally for granted & didn’t get ANY photos!
I still took it for granted until all the walls on rail-lines anywhere CLOSE to the city were painted grey in prep for the Commonwealth Games…. I could’ve cried!
That woke/slapped me out of a stupor & I’ve been getting photos of Melbourne’s art ever since and sharing the best of them in slideshows on youtube.
This exhibition has prob moved on. ..Spewing I missed it!
August 10th, 2015 at 4:16 PM
[…] Later, after graffiti became illegal, there was protest graffiti and tagging in Melbourne. This was painted with a brush and can of paint or written in ink and sometimes documented by Rennie Ellis in three paperback books of photographs of graffiti: Australian Graffiti (1971), Australian Graffiti Revisited (1979) and The All New Australian Graffiti (1985). In 1971 as part of Anti-Vietnam War protests the word “PEACE!” was painted in large white letters on the pillars of the north portico the Shrine. Tagging and slogan writers had no limits, there was graffiti on Vault in the City Square and even more when it was moved to Batman Park. For more on this phase see my earlier post Remembering Australian Graffiti History. […]