There are plenty of fresh new pieces of street art around Melbourne. Hosier Lane is always a great place to look for fresh new work. I didn’t get to see Tuvs Day’s 72m living room piece because it had already been painted over. That was quick. I met Tuv when he was doing volunteer work for the Melbourne Stencil Festival last year. He sent me this photo of the huge piece.
Tuvs Day piece in Hosier Lane
I did see a large collaborative piece by Paton, Jason, Deb, Amek, HaHa, Bradd, CK, Monkey, GMO, Madre and Russia. With this many artists there is such a mix of styles and techniques in this collaboration. And there is a series of Obey posters by Shepard Fairey in City Lights (the series light boxes in Hosier Lane) mixing Soviet style posters with contemporary political themes.
Hosier Lane collaboration
The recently removed Banksy’s rat has been remembered in a number of ways on the walls of Hosier Lane. There are some fresh pink and blue stencil copies in the same place that the old original parachuting black rat had been sprayed. There were also a couple of more creative responses to the buffing of Banksy.
Tribute to Banksy's rat in Hosier Lane
Away from Hosier Lane I saw a great spray painted van in Collingwood near the former Per Square Metre gallery and studio. I should put a collection of photographs of trucks, cars and vans with street art style decorations – not that I’ve seen that many. And bit of guerrilla gardening going on around Flanagan Lane – this is one of the best examples that I have yet seen.
Guerilla garden
I had my eyes tested before going to the Banksy film – Exit Through the Gift Shop – everyone should have their eyes tested every two years. Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film about why there isn’t a documentary film about Banksy – so this review of the film isn’t about the film. I remember one of my housemates coming into the house just after Hardcore Logo had started – seeing Joey Ramone talk about the Canadian punk rock band it took my housemate a long time to realize that this was just a movie. Orson Wells’s film, F for Fake lives up to Well’s promise to tell the truth about fakes for the next 60 minutes and then runs for over an hour. My eyes still feel a bit strange and I do need glasses for reading.
Black Mark 
July 14th, 2010 at 10:20 PM
Hi Mark
Nice post… Thought you might be interested in this, if you haven’t seen it: I wrote about the buffing of Banksy etc on Hyperallergic:
http://hyperallergic.com/6076/banksy-rat-melbourne/
cheers,
alison
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:18 PM
woow i realy love this one!
i have seen similar art on http://www.Letsget.it
thnx for this nice post
greets Jet..
August 27th, 2010 at 3:45 PM
[…] these plantings look very healthy! They’ve been in place a while now – check out Melbourne Art & Culture Critic for a sweet pic of the boom box, or walk by in your lunch […]
February 14th, 2011 at 12:59 PM
i installed these little gardens, as part of a project focusing on greening cities. As a student of Landscape architecture i was creating large strategies that wouldn’t get build. Unhappy with this as an outcome i went about on a small scale trying to change peoples understanding of where plants can grow in an urban environment.
October 19th, 2011 at 5:09 PM
[…] of the other little guerrilla gardens that I have seen in the city are dead or dying. (See my post Street Art Notes July 2010 for my original report on the two garden installations) Gardens require maintenance (tell me about […]
July 16th, 2012 at 9:55 PM
[…] Lane, local street artists reproduced it and added other work commenting on it. (See my blog post: Street Art Notes July) Do all of these tributes to Banksy really contribute anything to Melbourne’s street art? Even […]