I have been reporting on Melbourne’s street art and graffiti in this blog for over a decade. What has changed? And what did I get completely wrong? The largest and most obvious change is that the walls have got larger until they were the size of grain silos.
It has been a decade of adjusting tensions between local city councils and the people who create art on their streets. There are now a lot more legal walls, in 2009 they were not as common as there are now. Businesses were far ahead of local councils in this regard because they didn’t have to negotiate with people with an ideological commitment to be against graffiti they just looked at their triple bottom line.
In 2009 as graffiti and street art grew in popularity anti-graffiti legislation was a draconian punitive response; instead of fines, jail terms. Consequently many graffiti and street art events, like the Croft Alley Project, had a specific political agenda.
Melbourne still doesn’t have a street art centre and specialist street art galleries have not survived. I was completely wrong about this, While some people imagined a centre at Docklands, many people objected to having any institution, even a festival like the Melbourne Stencil Festival in 2009. In other cities street art centres have been created without the dire consequences that the nay sayer predicted.
Various artists, Collingwood 
Debs, Rankins Lane 2009 
Unknown, Collingwood, 2009 
God Has a Plan to Kill Me (Melbourne) 
Happy – Graffiti Colour My World in Brunswick 
Phibs in Hosier Lane 
MaxCat, Brunswick, 2009 
Court Jester wall, Breeze St. Brunswick 
HaHa’s portrait of Mario Condello 
Junky Projects in Fitzroy 
Ever Fresh off Brunswick St. 
“Wall” in Fitzroy 
Office Cafe 
A1one – Gertrude St. Fitzroy 
Aeroskills, Brunswick 
Ling’s Fish and Chips
Street art was always welcome by art galleries and a mainstream art career was always a clear path a decade ago as it is now. I don’t know why I thought that a parallel gallery system might emerge.
A decade ago there was more of a need to place street art within a historic context (or was that just me?) to prove that it was connected with art history and a continuing tradition of graffiti. As it turned out this was irrelevant.
Although no-one is talking about doing street art with living moss anymore much has stayed the same. Many of the same artists are still putting work up in the street. In 2009 I saw my one of the first Junky Projects on a side street in Fitzroy.
Black Mark 
What are your thoughts?