For Valentine’s Day I’m posting love messages seen on the streets of Melbourne; the romantic gestures, the love poems written across the city wall. It is not that all of these images have been created for Valentine’s Day this year; there are love and flowers in the streets of Melbourne all year, if you look.
There is a marvellous love story about the Sacred Heart of Centre Place that was told by Melbourne walking tour guides (See Demet Divaroren’s Blog for the legend). My photo is from 2009; the box is barely visible now – covered in multiple layers of paint. I don’t believe the legend, maybe I’m too cynical and I’ve looked carefully at the construction of the box, the lock can’t unlock anything.
There are plenty of painted flowers growing on the walls of Melbourne’s lanes. Stencil flowers on the bluestone paving stones of Hosier Lane. There is a free hand aerosol flower on the lane in my street. So many different flowers I don’t think that they are all by the same artist.
Painting on the walls of Union Lane in Prahran in 2012.
Makatron – Heart skull – Hosier:Rutledge
These are all pretty and simple but some street artists take hearts to a whole new level. Makatron’s demonic skull heart was in Hosier Lane in 2012 (it has since been painted over many many times) reminding the romantics that there are two aspects to the heart. In 2013, as part of All Your Walls, F1 painted a giant tree holding a huge heart in Rutledge Lane and Civil painted a traditional heart with an arrow entwined in foliage in Hosier Lane.
Give me a sign of your love written in the street for all to see. Public proclamations of love; people used to carve their signs of love into trees – street art is a massive improvement on that. (See my 2011 post “Messages of Love” or 2012 Bitten By the Travel Bug posted “What Melbourne’s Street Art says about Love”.)
Occupy the Love
Black Mark 