Street art is dead

Will Coles, the street art sculptor of cast concrete, was at the opening of This is Not a Toy Store’s new location on Lygon Street. He was handing out postcards with an Apocalypse Now meme: “I love the smell of street art in the morning. The smell, you know, that graff smell. Smells like … a fashionable investment opportunity.”

Coles reminded me that none of the street art sculptors I wrote about in my book Melbourne’s Sculptures is still working on Melbourne’s streets. Seven years after, where are they now? Coles is living in Spain. Mal Function is busy with his foundry. CDH is reproducing genetically similar life forms. GT Sewell was selling NFTs. And Junky Projects lives wild and free from this dirty old city.

And it is not as if a new generation has come along that has been so prolific over an extended period or as audacious. Golden head has yet to make an appearance for over a year. So please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think street art (not just street sculpture) in Melbourne is dead, or, instead, to employ a less morbid metaphor, street art is tailing off, markedly declining. Declaring an art movement dead is such a 20th Century thing when a progressive art theory meant the next movement would logically replace previous movements.

I can’t say I’m surprised. I could always hear the sound of cash registers ringing with street art. And both major politic parties in Australia have moved further to the right, militarising and persecuting dissenters and whistle-blowers. Like all love affairs, I’m just disappointed it didn’t go on for longer and had to end like this.

When I fell in love with street art, I saw a utopian aspect where art from the people and by the people decorated the city’s least attractive features. People are taking action to make their lives more meaningful. People who want to make art, to be something other than a consumer or a worker. Psy-ops for civilians, a form of free and public expression. A creative and joyful response to being alienated in an ever-changing city. A way of connecting place with identity. Propaganda by deed, encouraged more street art—a subversive counterforce against mainstream advertising.

Others saw it as a commercial opportunity for themselves, like promoting NFTs or some other product. Consider Time-Rone show (see Giles Fielke’s review in Memo https://memoreview.net/reviews/timerone-by-giles-fielke). Rone did not promote his exhibition at Flinders Street Station with the old-skool method of a blitz of new street art. No, he abandoned the street once the business objective is achieved.

Adrian Doyle writes almost entirely about the commercial opportunities of how “nu-muralism” has replaced street art (see the CBD News). https://www.cbdnews.com.au/nu-muralism/ There is little consideration of these murals’ aesthetics or content because they are conservative in both style and content, especially when compared to Melbourne’s murals from the late 20th century. Geoff Hogg’s Melbourne Central Station Mural http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/search/nattrust_result_detail/65289 is radical, especially compared to the kitsch sentimental ANZAC biscuit tin art and uncritical Australiana of “nu-muralism.”

Street art didn’t die under the gaze of academics, from street art festivals, or from being preserved in art collections. Nor was it killed by government regulations or policing. No, it largely poisoned itself, assisted by social media likes, to subvert a progressive vision. That said here is some recent street art from Melbourne.

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Van Rudd at Work

“I wanted to be a conservative painter but something…” Van Rudd pauses, searching for the best way to explain his life and the world. Van Rudd, the nephew of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is a politically engaged socialist artist who installs provocative street art sculptures, exhibits the stolen forks of the ultra-rich and parts of exploded vehicles from Afghanistan.

I wondered what he had been up to since he ran for parliament against Julia Gillard in 2010. As it turns out he is painting a mural the Trades Hall carpark.

It is hard to believe that Van was ever a conservative painter but he was shows me some photos of his early paintings, they are very good but conservative in style. In his late-teens he was painting plein air Impressionist paintings of Brisbane. He then shows me some cool paintings that he did of exploding figures in stylish lounge rooms; paintings that looked like a mix between Geoffrey Smart, James Gleeson and Brett Whitely. He tried the fine art and contemporary art audience and he didn’t get the response was looking for, so he went in search of a different audience.

Now his audience is not into contemporary art or street art. Now his audience is the union member who has no interest or time for following artists on Instagram or buying art in galleries. It is the person in the street or someone looking at the news. Van sees himself as a propagandist, even though he freely admits that the power of art is minimal compared to economic power. His art is there to support and illustrate the message.

Considering Van’s diverse art practice, from illustrating a children’s book to street art installations, I wanted to know what he did with most of your time as an artist? Did he work in a studio? He doesn’t really have one. When he is not an artist his hobby is indoor football. He also goes to a lot of left wing meetings because he finds that is a condensed way of doing research and getting information.

The carpark walls at Trades Hall are covered in graffiti and Van has had to buff back two large concrete sections. The graffiti in the carpark is a mix of the most basic tagging, by writers like Pork and Nost, along with political slogans: “Unions are part of the detention industry.”

The large mural that he is painting in Trades Hall carpark is just at its outline stage. Van says wants to revive the tradition of political mural painting in Melbourne that happened with Geoff Hogg in the 1970s.

Work progresses slowly, especially with me asking questions. Van with a paintbrush is not as fast as the street artists with their spray cans. He is critical of what he calls the “proletarianisation” and the “hyper-exploitation of street art.” The artist as sole trader has no protection, from exploitation and hazardous conditions especially the street artists working at heights. He tells me that has recently got his CFMEU white card for working on elevated work platforms; scissor-lifts, booms lifts, etc. Not that he is going to be working at height with this mural. He puts on a fume mask to protect against both the paint and car exhaust fumes and gets back to painting.