Locked Up in Pentridge D Division

I went on the “Locked Up in Pentridge D Division” on Saturday. The tour is led by former Prison Officer Dennis Bear, with former bank robber and former prisoner Doug Morgan providing colourful anecdotes and humour. Doug Morgan and his identical twin brother Pete were known as “the After Dark Bandit” in the 1970s because the police hadn’t worked out there were two of them. Both men were familiar with D Division when it was a working prison. Dennis Bear gave a short history of Pentridge and executions there, but mainly, the guides concentrated on what they knew best: the day-to-day operation of the prison in the 70s and 80s.

Doug Morgan , Katrin Strohl, Dennis Bear

The 90-minute tour takes you into D Division, where there are condemned observation cells, more cells, still more cells, and an exercise yard. D Division is a three-storey granite (bluestone) building, a prison within a prison. It was used for remand, assessment, and high-risk prisoners. The architecture is a stripped-down neo-classical without the decorative elements. The building’s cross-design floor plan is like a cathedral with cells instead of pews. Seeing and feeling the physicality of the small cells, the heavy cell doors, the iron stairs and walkways, the solid stone of the buildings and the small concrete exercise yard.

At the end of the tour, there was plenty of time to take photographs and talk further with the guides. I didn’t get any more photographs of prison art or even prison graffiti as D Division has been repainted, except for the exercise yards, which are in a partially demolished state. The building hasn’t been properly preserved, and it is set up principally for wine storage now, but the tour’s main attraction is the authenticity of its guides.

This was the second tour of Pentridge I’ve been on. The first was just after the prison was decommissioned and included several buildings that have since been demolished, including the notorious Jika Jika/K Division. There are several Pentridge tours: the Lantern Ghost tour of D Division, the National Trust tours of B Division, and the D Division Bluestone College of Knowledge tour. And it is best to check where your tour is leaving from, unlike what I did.

Incredibly, there were tours of Pentridge when it was a working prison in the 1900s, with a Melbourne guidebook promising “a courteous warder will show him the cells, the exercise yards, the solitary confinement rooms, the kitchens, workshops, and school-room; in short, the whole multifarious details of life in such a place be unfolded to him, and he will spend an afternoon full of interest, though somewhat marred to reminiscence by the haunting memory of an occasional face of revolting criminal type.” (Quoted in Denton Prout and Fred Feely 50 Years Hard – the story of Pentridge Gaol from 1850 to 1900)

I’m not a fan of carceral tourism. I prefer to go to an art gallery, but as a near neighbour to Pentridge for decades and because I’m currently writing a book about prison art, I felt I should go on one of the tours. Also, full disclosure: the Bluestone College of Knowledge generously offered me a free ticket in return for a promise to write about the tour. The Bluestone College of Knowledge is run by Katrin Strohl and Dr Atalanti Dionysus.

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Whitewashing Pentridge Prison History

I want to see Ronald Bull’s mural for myself, and I’m sure others do too. To physically look up at it, not just look at a photo of it, to be able to appreciate its size and the stone prison walls it’s painted on. Now that Pentridge is no longer a prison and is being developed as a housing estate, I don’t see why I can’t.

I enquired about the heritage-listed Ronald Bull mural in F Division to Pentridge Village, but there was no response. This is because Bull is not mentioned in the “Former HM Prison Pentridge Heritage Interpretation Masterplan” by Sue Hodges Productions. The masterplan makes almost no reference to Indigenous people, with a single reference to “Aboriginal troopers”. 

Ronald Bull is a significant Indigenous artist, and his mural in F Division is his most important work. The mural is on the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register and protected under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 and the Heritage Act 1995 because it is on the Victorian Heritage Register as part of Pentridge Prison. The Office of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria liaised with the developers and their heritage consultants, Sue Hodges Productions. (Correction, not Sue Hodges Productions, who consulted with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation – multiple heritage consultants have been working on the site.) Box-ticking exercise over, consultations ignored (I assume this is how the Indigenous voice to parliament will be treated; please correct me if I’m wrong about this).

Decorations motifs by the Shayher Group in consultation with the National Trust of Victoria

Writing out Indigenous people from the Heritage, whitewashing history with the erasure of Indigenous people. The developers have been allowed to exploit the history for their profit. The interior bluestone walls were all cut by prison labour. Not to forget that prison labour is disproportionately Indigenous.

The historical interpretation of the site is inadequate. More than one room with photographs, texts and a few objects is required. Decorative motifs of the panopticon are one of the most grotesque pieces of carceral torture ever invented; solitary confinement combined with continuous observation. If the old bluestone walls, gates, and towers are selling points, then some sensitive historical interpretation is needed.

Sue Hodges Productions was approached to comment on the absence of Bull’s mural and the Indigenous people from their masterplan but hadn’t responded at the time of publication. They are still welcome to comment, just fill in the comment box. Their comments can be seen in full below.

For more about Bull and his mural see my post, the life and art of Ronald Bull.

Schoolhouse Studios Coburg

Tom Civil has painted many murals around Melbourne, but this was the first time he had a party thrown for one. On Saturday, 2nd April, there was a band, a DJ and a couple of hundred people at the new Civil mural in Coburg. It was like a scene in one of his paintings with people and bicycles, only it wasn’t set in a garden but in a car park.

Schoolhouse Studios occupies the old Coles supermarket near the Coburg Station is now artists’ studios. A not-for-profit creative space located in the ugly heart of Coburg, a desolate area of car parks and utilitarian concrete blocks supermarkets. Carparks, empty tarmac or full of cars don’t make any aesthetic difference to the wasteland. It is an intersection between the inner and outer suburban north, where walkable meets automotive sewer at Bell Street.

Inside, the vast space of the former supermarket has been partitioned into small frames of little houses with clear corrugated roofs. There is also a performance space and an exhibition space. Outside, the south wall has been painted by Melbourne street art veteran Civil.

I walked past on Wednesday 9th March when Civil was about to start. The whole wall had been painted emerald green. He had only made a couple of chalk marks, trying to come to grips with how his plan will work on the actual wall. Realising that the south-facing wall is always in shadow, the colours look different in the shade but will last longer.

It took ten days working with an assistant and a scissor lift to paint the wall. First, a few trees started to appear, then, along with the outlines on the trees, some of Civil’s “stick folk”. Finally, tufts of grass and dots of rocks were added to fill out the design.

From March 22 – 31, another eight days of work for three people to paint the car park tarmac. Another local street art veteran, Michael Fikaris, helped paint the car park section.

Now the car park has become a park. And it blooms, not just with the mural but also with seats and planter boxes by Urban Commons. (For more about parklets and urban design, see my previous post.) 

Amani Haydar

In the exhibition space at the front of Schoolhouse Studios was a series of paintings and a tapestry by Sydney-based writer Amani Haydar. Her paintings of women depict images from domestic to symbolic. And her use of patterns in the background and in representing clothes is effective.

Since it opened at the start of the year, I have seen a couple of other exhibitions at Schoolhouse Studios, including “It’s in our Nature,” a group exhibition by the Lucy Goosey Feminist Art Collective about environmental and feminist issues. And I’m glad that there is another art gallery close to my home; it is the kind of exhibition space the neighbourhood needs.

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Coburg graffiti and street art

Street-level art criticism and being aware of what is happening in my neighbourhood. Coburg graffiti and street art continue to work their way northwards piece by piece and to use the piers along the new elevated railway. And I’m still walking (and riding my bike) around these streets, lanes and paths, photographing it.

There is a good collection of graffiti pieces around Batman Station. (When will that station get a name change from that of a genocidal killer?) Playing with letterforms like a signwriting class on acid; Digs playing with different styles in the one piece.

Further back from the railway, walls that would have sported advertising a century ago are now decorated with street art. Commissioned murals legal walls, along with random stencils and tags.

However, as usual, my eye is drawn to the smaller stuff. Many fun stickers, including some espousing anti-fascism, are always good to see. Slap-up stickers may be a small platform, but it does show that you are not alone in holding those views. I spotted a tag (and some stickers) by Psalm, reminding me that he has been painting it across Melbourne since the 1990s or maybe longer.

Then there is the aerosol activity of the local WWW crew (aka World’s Worst Writers, also known as the UBM crew of Dsel, Mudl, Smelly, Achy, Luna and Calypso). How bad are they? Enquiring minds will want to know and will be disappointed that they aren’t worse. The worst is as hard to find as the best. People with talent spend years working at being the best in their field while most of us, like the WWW crew, will settle for ordinary and unexceptional most of the time. There are many shout-outs (lots of names around the pieces) on their pieces, reminding me of the social aspect of graffiti writing.

Near Coburg Station, a series of large paste-ups appeared on the piers of the elevated railway with either single words (space, air, time) on them or arty photos. They didn’t last the long Labour Day weekend before most of them were torn down.

A yarn bomber on a fence along the train line proclaims: “I love Coburg”.

P.S. Achy commented that the WWW crew only consists of Achy and Calypso and not the UBM crew. I wish to clarify with this photo I how I accessed the information and made that association.

Halloween in Australia

The common denial that Halloween is not Australian is incorrect. Although there clearly was a time in the late 20th century when Halloween festivities didn’t happen for a couple of decades in some parts of Australia. However, the reality is that Halloween has been celebrated in Australia since the colonial era.

In 1858 the Mount Alexander Mail advertised a “Select Scottish Ball on the Anniversary of Halloween” at the Red Hill Hotel, Forest Creek (p.8). Colonial Australian newspapers also reported on Queen Victoria celebrating Halloween at Balmoral. Few people now remember Robert Burn poem “Halloween”, but it was often quoted in Australian newspapers in October and on Burn’s birthday in January. For about a decade in the 1860s a ballet based on Burn’s poem touring Australia. And echoing Burns in a manner that not even William McGonagall could muster, a poem titled, “An Australian Halloween” by an ‘Ossian MacPhearson’ was published in the Hamilton Spectator and Grange District Advertiser, Saturday 12 November 1864, (p. 3). So the idea that Halloween is alien to Australia is absurd.

Halloween celebrations continued to be enjoyed in Australia after federation often organised by the local Caledonian Society. But by the 1970s Halloween was not just a Scottish event. In 1970, the Australian Jewish Times wrote about plans for a “halloween party” in “Briefly on youth” p.17. Halloween in Australia was changing from parties for adults to a day for children to dress up. And in 1974, the Canberra Times reported on children in the suburb of Hughes playing trick or treat.

Australia has borrowed most of its holidays from the northern hemisphere and most of its culture that isn’t British, from America. So neither explanations of climate nor anti-Americanism feel satisfactory; otherwise, Easter, Christmas, along with Mother’s Day would also be failing in Australia. Holidays come and go; Guy Fawkes night is no longer celebrated in Australia primarily due to safety restrictions on the sale of fireworks but also because Australian culture is no longer that closely tied to England.

According to market research, Halloween is currently Australia’s least favourite festival. I can’t believe it is less popular than St. Patrick’s Day and the horse racing holiday. One contributing factor for this might be the decline in people identifying as Scottish Australian as there was a corresponding decline in membership of Caledonian Societies, and the Royal Caledonian Society of Melbourne ceased to operate on 21 April 2016. 

Culture is not static but constantly evolving, so claims that Halloween is not Australian are not definitive. Indeed claims that Halloween is not Australian are a recent development in the history of Halloween in Australia.

I proudly bear some responsibility for the introduction of Halloween trick or treating in Coburg. As a bit of a goth with fond memories of a Canadian childhood, Halloween is a celebration I enjoy. It has been enthusiastically taken up by a multi-cultural neighbourhood for unlike any other annual event because it is not religious and is not about the family. I am interested in Halloween because it encourages children to explore memes and their physical neighbourhood. There are problems with Halloween that I would like to change, the amount of plastic, the sugar and the commercialism.

Halloween decorations in a garden in Coburg

The Unnamable Present

I walked to Dan Murphys, my local provider of alcohol this morning, past this poster. I have plenty of lemons; everyone in Coburg has a bumper crop of lemons. If you don’t have a lemon tree, someone in the street will have a basket of lemons out the front of their house to give away. So I bought the cheapest bottle of vodka that I could find because I’m only interested the alcohol. (I am using this recipe for my limoncello.)

“When life gives you lemons make limoncello – make lots”

This post is a result of a Twitter poll that I posted on September 14 where incautiously I asked: “Given that I will be in lockdown and I can’t go to any art exhibitions for the next who knows weeks, what should be the subject of my next blog post?

20th Century Music

Drinks from Dan Murphys

Philosophy book reviews

Walking in my suburb”

I suspect it was sabotaged as the votes were evenly spread; it only received 4 votes, 1 comment and 6 total engagements. Anyway, I will accept the challenge and write about all of them: my first paragraph covers two of those subjects.

Currently I am reading Roberto Calasso The Unnamable Present. The first chapter is titled “Terrorists and Tourists”; these two contrasting figures, one demanding certainty and the other expecting a different experience. He does find one point in common.

“When describing a place, people immediately say whether it is unblemished or disfigured by tourism. They talk about tourism like a skin disease. And yet the ideal tourist would like to visit places unmarred by tourism, in the same way that ideal terrorist would like to operate in places unprotected by security measures. They both encounter certain difficulties. And to put the blame on their fellows who have gone before them.” (p.61)

The second chapter, “The Vienna Gas Company” starts in 1933 with various writers, tourists in Europe, including Samuel Beckett, Virginia and Leonard Woolfe, Celine, George Simanon … as state terrorism rises. If you have faith in anything, spiritual, intellectual, secular, or physical, this book is not for you; it is only for those prepared to be uncertain in the unnamable present.

Penguin Books classifies The Unnamable Present as Philosophy, and I’m not going to debate the point for whatever philosophy is; it is certainly a form of literature. Calasso is not an academic philosopher, and he is not presenting a thesis or argument in his books. He is a writer and who worked for Adelphi Edizioni, a publishing house in Milan.

Unfortunately for me although Calasso writes about everything, he hardly ever mention music. This absence only becomes apparent because I struggle with this segue to my final topic, 20th-century music.

So now I’m left without a segue and the limoncello sitting in a dark cupboard for the next two weeks. I could try to emulate Calasso and find a quote about music for the final paragraph. I read a couple more pages of his book and find one on p.143 from Gobbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda: “At midday the state funeral of Field Marshal von Reichenau took place. Prepared by Supreme Command, extremely poor, psychologically clumsy, with an absolutely amateurish music. After the national anthems pupils of the army music school perform the first movement of the Fifth Symphony so far as they can. I agree with General Schmundt that in future Wehrmacht state funerals be substantially entrusted to our Ministry, since only we off er the guarantee that they can be carried out in a form worthy of the State.” (A note from 24 January, 1942 in Tagebücher Aus den Jahren 1942-1943, edited by L.P. Lochner, Atlantis, Zürich, 1948, pp.52-53) Music, like all the arts, was subsumed by the nation state’s need for propaganda.

Street Art Sculpture 11

This has been a big year for unauthorised public sculptural artwork; both for little and larger works, veterans and novices.

The Little Librarian up-cycles old books into new art using books for the support for the tiny installations. Unlike Tinky, The Little Librarian doesn’t use puns. The old books used would have been thrown out but have been made into something before being placed on walls. They don’t last long outside, due to the weather and, I assume, being ripped off by a passer-by. Tinky has continued to install miniature scenes on the street. Still, she is not the only street artist in Melbourne using HO scale figures.

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  The Little Librarian

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  Tinky

There is a golden young woman’s head on a slender concrete plinth on the island inhabited by ibis in Coburg’s Lake Reserve. Last year a similar golden head of a man appeared atop a similar concrete plinth in Northcote’s All Nations Park (The Age reports).

The new sculpture’s placement on the island must have been strategically tricky as there is no bridge. This location avoids the Northcote bust’s problems whose plinth was knocked over shortly after it was installed. The Darebin Council restored it, deciding that it would remain in place for a year and then be auctioned with the proceeds donated to homelessness services. 

Elsewhere in a city mainly under quarantine lockdown for much of year children created spoonvilles. These settlements of decorated wooden spoons are open contribution sculptural works that invite others to participate. 

Some graffiti writers, like Cheros, expand their techniques, creating three-dimensional tags.

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  Discarded

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And ceramic works continues to feature as one of the more surprising mediums for street art be it from Discarded or other, unknown artists.

For more about unauthorised public sculptures see my earlier posts:

• Street Art Sculpture 10 2020
• Street Art Sculpture 9 2018
• Street Art Sculpture 8 2017
• Street Art Sculpture 7 2016
• Street Art Sculpture 6 2015 
• street art sculpture in the Whitechapel Area
• Street Art Sculpture 5
• 10 Great Street Installation 2014
• Street Art Sculpture III 2012
• More Street Art Sculpture 2010
• Street Art Sculpture 2009

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