Urban Folk Art in Melbourne

Just as there is rural folk art, there is urban folk art. The urban scarecrows, topiary, handmade grave markers made by relatives, scratches in wet cement… So here is a look at various urban folk arts in the vast metropolis of Melbourne.

Folk art is made by amateurs, not professional artists or even students, and there is no intention to be taken seriously or do anything but satisfy themselves. (In this respect, graffiti is a folk art). It is not intended to be assessed, discussed or traded. It is not an art form that is mediated financially or academically.

However, urban folk art shouldn’t be ignored because it is not professional. It is done for pleasure, not profit or glory. It is part of our visual culture. The aesthetics are simple, a face or other resemblance or a decoration. If there is a message, it is a direct message to a limited audience; there are no references or tributes.

The critic’s role in discussing folk art is not to examine technique, taste or quality but to look at the diversity of decorative items and their relationship to the community. In the urban world, where almost everything is done by professionals with standards, urban folk art stands out, like the homemade grave markers I saw at the Coburg Cemetery. And in this diversity, there will be impressive works because of their scale or technique — for example, the sizeable grotto and mixed media constructions at the Veg Out Garden in St Kilda.

The Moreland Free Library is a miniature version of the original train station. This was constructed during the lockdown when various urban folk arts flourished, along with spoon gardens and chalk sidewalk drawings. The impressive carpentry is the work of one local amateur. There are other miniature buildings as libraries in parts of the US.

Although some folk art is impressive, we should not ignore small juvenile urban art projects like spoon gardens or painted rocks, like the Coburg Primary Painted Rock City. Their painted rocks are the opposite of monumental sculpture, an almost hidden sculpture with multiple creators of small units where each builds the rock community.

Most urban folk art is on private property, particularly in gardens. What is public property is mostly unauthorised but tolerated, like yarn bombing, guerilla gardening, or the painted rock city. (Only graffiti seems to be objected to.) Or, the Gnome Village in Keilor Park, listed on Google Maps, is just off the Calder Freeway. Or, the toy tree in Coburg, where toys that would have been thrown out hang from a tree.

For long before recycling was a word, long before Arthur Danto wrote The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, folk artists have used found materials. Up-cycling has the cornball appeal of a something-for-nothing sales pitch. In a corny part of this urban folk art, there is the use of readymade/fly-tipping as street art.

Ten years ago, I wrote another blog post about Urban Folk Art. In it, I considered whether graffiti is folk art, as well as considering mail art, punk DIY, and Dadaist collage. Rather than examining urban folk art, I was distracted by its influence on art.

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Coburg Cemetery

I went to Coburg Cemetery primarily to find the grave of the Melbourne sculptor, Charles Web Gilbert. It was an easier task than I expected because Coburg Cemetery now has a Heritage Walk. And Charles Web Gilbert’s grave was one of the stops on the walk.

The self-guided walk starts at the visitor’s rotunda and takes the visitor around 30 graves in the cemetery. There are the graves of notable people like ornithologist George Arthur Keartland, victims of disasters, sporting heroes and politicians. The grave of gangland enforcer John Daniel (Snowy) Cutmore and the graves of murder victims, like police constable David Edward McGrath or bank manager, Thomas Anketell. And the graves of early Coburg’s Chinese residents and the grave of Said Ahmed Shah, the first Moslem religious leader in Melbourne.

The grave of Said Ahmed Shah

The hillside site for Coburg Cemetery was surveyed and gazetted in 1860 but was not used until 1875. The cemetery is divided into denominational compartments and the style of tombs reflects these religious differences. The cemetery is now an attractive, although muddy old cemetery full of examples of late 19^th and 20^th century funerary monuments, statues of angels and other ornamental marble carving. Some of the graves are in bad repair and erosion is causing some monuments to tilt and others to collapse.

Back to Charles Marsh Web (Nash) Gilbert (1867-1925); who made a total of 9 WWI memorials, more than any other Australian sculptor. He also made the Mathew Flinders Memorial next to St Paul’s Cathedral on Swanston St.

Charles Web Gilbert, Matthew Flinders Memorial, Melbourne

Charles Web Gilbert learnt sculpture as an apprentice chef modelling icing-sugar decorations. Mostly self-taught as a sculptor his only formal art training was in drawing. His first studio off was Collins Street, he then at 59 Gore Street where he built his own foundry and started experimenting casting in bronze. He regularly exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ and Yarra Sculptors’ societies and in London at the Royal Academy. Late in 1917 Gilbert joined the Australian Imperial Force as a sculptor in the War Records Section. After that the rest of his life was dominated by making memorials. Gilbert made 9 World War I memorials for the Chamber of Manufactures, Melbourne, the Malvern Town Hall, the British (Australian) Medical Association, Parkville, Shepparton, Burnside, Adelaide, and Broken Hill.

Charles Web Gilbert had always done everything for himself, including his own foundry work. He wore himself out carrying clay for a huge full size model and died suddenly on 3 October 1925. Web Gilbert’s grave in Church of England section of cemetery is very plain with out any memorial sculpture or even a headstone.