The Good, the Bad and the Average

Bicycling around boho Brunswick, I wanted to catch the last of the sun before the weather turns cold and I was looking for something to write about. I stopped off at Tinning Street Presents where there is a contemporary collage exhibition, “Splitting Image”. Maybe I should add a postscript to my review of the collage exhibition at the Counihan Gallerybut “Splitting Image” is just another average exhibition of collage. It is just not as exciting as the art just outside the gallery’s door in Ilhan Lane.

I & the others, Ilhan Lane, Brunswick

Civil, Ilhan Lane, Brunswick

Ilhan Lane (running between Tinning Street and Albion Street, just east the Upfield train line) is one of the hidden gems of Melbourne’s street art. There is a mix of aerosol graffiti along with other kinds of other street art on the walls and fences of this lane. Now there is a huge Tom Civil mural in the lane and the surrealist game of the exquisite corpse (the parlour game of heads, bodies and legs) pasted up on the corrugated iron fence. Ilhan Lane is good place to see experiments in street art even if they don’t all work.

Exquisite corpses, Ilhan Lane, Brunswick

There was more work by Tom Civil on the front of Brunswick Bound; a large nocturne, quiet a different subject and style than his recent crowds.

Civil, “Anchorage”, Brunswick Bound

unknown, Ovens Street, Brunswick

There is more art in the streets, lanes and bike paths of Brunswick. It is worth taking a look at the beautiful long walls of aerosol graffiti along the factory walls of Ovens Street. Plenty of new stuff happening; I see three different guys spray-painting along the bike path in the middle of day. Not all of it is good; the junk assemblages by “Scrap Princess” are just look boring and ugly – it makes you realize what quality work Junky Projects does.

Scrap Princess – with art failure is always an option

Riding along the Upfield bike path through Brunswick is a great way to view local street art.

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Snotrag @ Brunswick Bound

Tea and cakes with Snotrag makes for a pleasant afternoon.

The small gallery upstairs at Brunswick Bound bookshop is crowded on Saturday afternoon for the opening of Snotrag’s exhibition “Ear”.  Amongst the crowd are the artists HaHa, Junky Projects, Arlene TextaQueen and Pierre Lloga. DJ Tuffy mixing tracks with some radical but relaxed sounds including a Phillip Glass track.

Snotrag is a punk street artist based in Melbourne making art for the street and gallery. She is not only active in decorating the streets of Melbourne and Jogjakarta but organizing and networking (hence the turn out for her exhibition opening). She is involved in the Inter-Location Project building a DIY arts bridge between Melbourne and Jogjakarta.

At the exhibition a large wall painting fills the front wall of the gallery, decorative elements in a frieze runs across the top with two figures in Snotrag’s distinctive style below. There is a wall of black bandanas and t-shirts with images of faces and birds. Her images of birds in drawings and t-shirts would be ordinary were it not for her totemic decorative details. These decorative details that were developed through doodling and looking at architectural details, remind me of elements of calligraphic ornamental borders.

On the other wall are framed mixed media drawings, most impressively her Skull and Dust series. I wish that there were more narrative elements or cheeky intelligence in her drawings, as in her crossed hammer and vibrator drawing – DIY. It is Snotrag’s 2^nd exhibition and it looks like she is still developing/expanding her style. The works are all reasonably priced and work was selling quickly at the opening. There is even a painting free for the best cop story and a box to post the stories in.

Talk at the opening was punctuated by “Yeah yeah” from all New Zealand artists; it is like listening to the antipodeans equivalent of Dada (“yeah yeah” in Romanian).

It looks like her work on the street

Snotrag piece in Brunswick