And they call them vandals

Walking around Melbourne, looking at street art and graffiti and thinking about the value of art, distinguishing between cultural, monetary and aesthetic values. Thinking about the street art being destroyed in the building boom. While ancient petroglyphs on Burrup Peninsula (Murujuga) are being destroyed in an act of industrial iconoclasm. The rock art gallery in the world means nothing to Woodside Petroleum or the WA Labor government (read the ABC news story). Nor does destroying the climate. 

Manda Lane and Kasper in Hosier Lane

I know that so much of the art world is a massive art wash, tax dodge, looted, exploitation move by the rich and powerful, as it’s been for centuries. I am still interested in art, and art-like activities, because they are, more or less, the best contiguous record of human and pre-human existence. Unauthorised street art and graffiti can be seen as an alternative to this plutocratic view. Like traditional art, it is a practice that doesn’t require wealthy patrons to pay, validate and promote the art.

Melbourne’s street art and graffiti boom occurred when the city was dying and decaying in the centre. Street art flourished because there were plenty of walls, lanes where old buildings were still standing, not because they were worth anything but because nobody had an economic reason to tear them down. The marvellous city, which had boomed in the gold rush, continued to offer ever-expanding suburbs, resulting in fewer demolitions at its core.

Melbourne is changing, new buildings changing the local geography, sometimes I no longer recognise the location anymore. The skyline on the west side that I see coming into Southern Cross Station is full of new glass towers.

“At what point do we say no?” writes Cara Waters in The Age. Now that it is being built over, people (Adrian Doyle) talk about its historical value Of course, everybody wants to rewrite history. It is a nice bit of rhetoric, but it will probably be flooded in twenty years, given the rising sea levels and Australia’s response to climate change. We all knew that it was going to be, more or less, ephemeral. Ars langa, vita brevis (art is long, life is short) – Hippocrates

Like art collecting, art destroying is largely the preserve of governments, mining companies and other plutocrats. And they call street artists and graffiti writers vandals?

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Street art notes July 2021

On the eve of Melbourne’s fifth lockdown, I decided that I had better look at some of the best of Melbourne’s street art and graffiti while I still had the chance. So I mask-up, jump on a tram and walk around the city on Thursday afternoon. Now, as I write this I am confined to my house and can only travel 5km around it for exercise, shopping … you know the drill.

A wall in Lovelands

Although I regularly reflect on what has been put up in Hosier Lane, AC/DC Lane, Croft Alley and Presgrave Place, there are many lanes that I haven’t seen in years. It was not just a lockdown that was limiting my chances, whole laneways full of art on the cusp of being demolished, art disappearing into construction projects.

I was photographing work down a familiar lane off Franklin Street, near the Queen Victoria Market and the Mercat. I have fond memories of both meals and gigs at the Mercat, which closed in January 2017. Now a massive multi-storey construction looms over it all.

A builder wearing fluro noticed my interest: “There is even better stuff further down,” he informs me. I knew that there was. The building site hadn’t swallowed up the network of lanes known as Lovelands, but it looked like it soon would.

Blender Alley is now one of the entrances to the massive construction site. Although Blender Studios have moved to a new location there is still some historic stencil art from HaHa and Psalm and quality new work on its walls. 

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Blender Alley

People always wondered how long street art and graffiti was all going to last. I remember Ghost Patrol saying that it was over in 2008. They should have been concerned not that it was a fad or how long the pigments in the paint will last but how fast the walls in the city are rebuilt. Melbourne’s street art fame has as much to do with the design of the city and these service lanes as the artistic talent.

I will pause for some lunch before examining some of the deeply held assumptions about art and the influence of the philosopher and historian David Hume. Hume came up with the idea of fads and fashions when he started to record English social history after the English Civil War. Now I’m more inclined to believe in structural influences, even the built environment, rather than the whim of a population.

However, walking around the city on Thursday afternoon I just feel negligent that I haven’t seen these years. I walk these laneways in search of the latest instantiation of the zeitgeist. There are hundreds of these service lanes, and the latest, freshest work could be hiding up any one of them. Jazzy capping Ash Keating in Chinatown, Sunfigo keeping social media real, more black and white stencil pieces by Night Krawler, paste-ups by Suki, Phoenix, and collaborative pieces by Manda Lane and Viki Murray (read my earlier post on Murray’s skateboard riders).

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Star Wars Inspired Street Art

A gallery of Melbourne street art inspired by Star Wars collected over the last decade. Crisp and HaHa are the two major contributors to this theme but there are also great pieces by anonymous artists. Roughly in chronological order.

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May the force be with you.

Bushrangers in Australian Art

During the gold rush colonial artists, including S. T. Gill, Frederick Grosse and George Lacy, were depicting bushrangers in ink sketches, watercolours and engravings. Bushrangers soon became an enduring theme in Australian art.

Patrick Marony, Death of Ben Hall, 1894

Another attempt to capture the bushranger theme was made by the artist and cartoonist, Patrick William Marony, aka Nick O’Tine. Marony was born in Curragh, Ireland in 1858 and after studying at a seminary he arrived in Australia around 1883. In 1884 he exhibited sixteen large oil paintings and a number of smaller paintings of bushrangers in the cities of Orange and Sydney.

On Thursday 29 March 1884 the National Advocate, reported on Marony’s exhibition in Orange and praised the accuracy of his landscapes, noting that Marony visited the location for the Death of Captain Starlight.

Reporting on Marony’s exhibition at the Strand Arcade in Sydney Freeman’s Journal, Saturday 30 June 1884, noted: “Apart from the technical merits of the pictures they should be of interest to Australians, as being the first attempts to show the condition of the colony during the reign of terror.”

Marony lived between the end of history paintings in oils and the beginning of cinematic versions of history. Around 1911 he wrote the story for the silent film, Ben Hall, Notorious Bush Ranger, also known as A Tale of the Australian Bush.

In 1887 William Strutt painted Bushrangers on the St Kilda Road. His large oil painting was based on a robbery that had taken place thirty-five years earlier when four men stopped, bailed-up and robbed seventeen travellers on the St Kilda to Brighton Road. Strutt’s painting is like a Charles Dickens’ novel, full of engaging characters; however his bare, flat, desert landscape looks nothing like the scrubby, rolling hills of St Kilda that existed at the time.

In 1895, Tom Roberts painted two bushranger paintings: In a corner on the Macintyre (Thunderbolt in an encounter with police at Paradise Creek) and an epic painting of a stage coach being robbed, Bailed up when he was staying at Newstead, a station near Inverell in New South Wales. Roberts was more interested in combining the romance of crime with the rugged beauty of the Australian landscape than in accurately depicting events that had taken place thirty years earlier; although the model for the stagecoach driver, ‘Silent Bob Bates’ had been held up by Captain Thunderbolt, aka Frederick Wordsworth Ward.

Marony’s transition from painting to cinema highlights the similar aesthetics of 19th century painting and 20th century movies. Marony’s “accuracy of landscape”, Strutt’s cast of characters and Robert’s romance of crime and landscape are all familiar features of movies.

Although depictions of bushrangers diminished one particular bushranger, Ned Kelly, continued to be depicted in modern, contemporary and street art in Australia; from Sidney Nolan to Adam Cullen to HaHa.

Ha Ha Ned Kelly 2017

Nicky Winmar Statue – Significance and Beauty

Hanging above my desk is HaHa’s stencil portrait of Nicky Winmar and I have long wanted to see a public bronze statue of Winmar ever since that football match at Victoria Park in 1993. I’ve never been interested in Australian football nor do I think that more bronze statues are a great addition to a cityscape. I wanted one because Winmar’s gesture in reply to racist taunts is both significant and beautiful.

HaHa, Nicky Winmar, 2009

Australia is still in love with monuments and memorials. There is no shortage of recent official monuments and memorials in Melbourne from traditional bronze figures to abstract monuments, like the Great Petition. These permanent monuments express the desire to establish a national mythology but given the lack of statues of both women and Indigenous people it is not representative.

Public sculpture is an obvious indication of the political and social values and structures of a place. Public sculptures make obvious public statements, from the choice of subjects to the style of the finished work it is all deliberate. This is why Australia needs a statue of a proud Noongar man standing victorious in defiance racist taunts.

If someone had asked me which sculptor I would like to sculpt Winmar I would have picked Melbourne-based sculptor, Louis Laumen because of his experience in sculpting sporting heroes around the MCG. Not that anyone asked me (nor I am surprised that they didn’t, I have no power or influence) but the commission did go to Laumen. I don’t like Laumen’s style but I know that it will be appreciated by the crowds of football supporters. My one criticism is why Laumen keeps on making statues with their mouths half open; Wayne Ludbey’s photo shows that Winmar was tight lipped as he points to his chest.

The only problem now facing the statue of Winmar is that it hasn’t been decided where to install it: Melbourne or Perth. Perth because Perth’s Optus Stadium on Noongar land. It is a strange problem for a sculpture and the Indigenous Past Players Association is right to question the process because generally a location for the sculpture is agreed before it is commissioned. There is an obvious solution to this problem; bronze sculptures can be made in multiple additions. So lets put our hands in our collective pockets and pay Louis Laumen and Fundêre Foundry in Sunshine for another edition of this important sculpture.

Ten years of Melbourne’s street art and graffiti

Ten years in the history of Melbourne’s street art and graffiti told with a series of artists, crews and events. Rather than another listical of notable street artists this is an attempt at a kind of chronology that points out peaks rather than beginnings and endings. In it there are artists who opened new directions, who could not be ignored, who reinvented themselves or the techniques and the idea of street art and graffiti. There are artists who have persisted along with artists who for a short time made a big impact. It is a list based on my observation of Melbourne’s street art and writing them in this blog.

 

Ha Ha ‘Ned Kelly’

2008: Drew Funk and HaHa

Drew Funk and HaHa are two affable guys, studio mates and friends on the two sides of the aerosol paint use. Drew Funk’s aerosol art and HaHa’s stencil work were once ubiquitous with the Melbourne street art scene.

2009: Ghostpatrol and Miso

The power couple of the emerging illustrative street art scene. Ghostpatrol’s whimsical character illustrations and Miso’s paper cuts were fresh styles and techniques. Neither does any street art now both quickly moving into the fine art and legal murals.

Junky Projects in Fitzroy

2010: Yarn Wrap and Junky Projects

Both these artists expanded media of street art. Before Bali Portman and Yarn Corner crew there was Yarn Wrap guerrilla knitting. I was sceptical when I first heard about yarn bombing but I was wrong and the technique quickly became a favourite of city councils. Meanwhile, Junky Projects collecting rubbish from the street and transforming it in the most coherent and long term up-cycling project ever.

2011: The Everfresh and the AWOL Crews

The Everfresh crew of Phibs, Rone, Reka, Meggs, Sync, Makatron, Wonderlust, Prizm and the Tooth have been the most significant crew in Melbourne. The AWOL crew of Adnate, Deams, Itch, Li-Hill, Lucy Lucy, Slicer were not far behind and by changing their styles they sprayed their way to more fame.

Immolating portrait of Yukio Mishima by CDH

Baby Guerrilla at Union Dinning Terrace

2012: CDH and Baby Guerrilla

Two ambitious artists who made a big impact but are no longer actively making art on the streets. CDH was the mad scientist of the street art scene; trying out new techniques using fire, hydroactivated paint and creating conundrums for the NGV with his Trojan Petition. At the same time, Baby Guerrilla was reaching for the heavens, trying to fill the largest and highest walls with her floating paste-up figures.

2013: All Your Walls & Empty Nursery Blue

Both projects buffed the walls of Melbourne’s graffiti central to good effect. Adrian Doyle painted the whole of Rutledge Lane blue. And, as a curated part of the NGV’s “Melbourne Now” exhibition, the whole of Hosier Lane was repainted by some of Melbourne’s best graffiti and street artists in All Your Walls.

Rone in Collins Street, 2014

Adnate, Hosier Lane, 2014

2014: Rone and Adnate

In 2014 year both artists painted very large legal murals of big faces on big walls. Everfresh crew member Rone painted women’s faces and AWOL crew member Adnate painted Indigenous people.

Kranky, Melbourne

Tinky, Melbourne

2015: Kranky and Tinky

Kranky was a crazy explosion of assemblages, then it stopped; maybe the supply of plastic toys ran out. Tinky used even smaller toys to make her little scenes Along with other artists Kranky and Tinky revived the street art in Presgrave Place.

Lush’s work in Richmond

2016: Lush and Nost

The most irritating assholes in Melbourne’s street art/graffiti scene where there are plenty of irritating assholes. These two guys have made it a speciality. Lush does have a trollish sense of humour but he highlights a problem that is essentially for so much street art, especially murals, they are just click bait. Nost is a tagger, an aerosol bomber who hates street art.

2017: Astral Nadir

The art Astral Nadir encouraged me to look down at the sidewalk and not up on the walls. With so many walls already painted and the backs of signs covered in stickers Astral Nadir artistically exploring a relatively unused area in Melbourne.

Friday night @ Off the Kerb

Off the Kerb is a favourite for street artists exhibiting and the exhibitions that opened last Friday night were very much about street art.

“House of Ghosts” by Barek features both paintings and sculptures of Barek’s whimsical ghosts. A large ghost house model serves as centre-piece for the exhibition, visible from the street through Off the Kerb’s shopfront window. Barek’s ghosts and other characters have a narrative sense but often they seem like the ghost of rabbits frozen in the headlights of the artists vision. Although he has long had a presence on Melbourne’s street’s with his paste-ups Barek is now based in Melbourne after moving from Brisbane.

Akemi Ito, Wisdom

Drasko, B-29 Super fortress

“Hard Boiled Wonderland & The end of the World” by Akemi Ito and Drasko (who signs his work DB) is an exhibition of stencil art. Akemi Ito looks to Japan for inspiration whereas Drasko looks to America. They also have a different approach to stencil making; Akemi hand-drawn stencils emphasis the line whereas Drasko uses the blocks of colour to create his images. Drasko’s spray painted rubber floor-pieces are both effective and unusual.

Tinky, “Sam knew this was going to be his most impressive topiary attempt yet.”

Tinky, Wilbur loved going for his evening walk in the park.

“Tinkyville: Land of Folly” by Tinky packs in 30 of her Lilliputian models to one of the upstairs rooms. Her tiny HO scale figures are often oblivious of the larger scale objects that they are set in. The humorous scenes are full of action, their titles adding to the narrative and the joke, like “Sam knew this was going to be his most impressive topiary attempt yet”. Even at this scale Tinky’s work can also be found in Melbourne’s streets; I first saw her work in Presgrave Place.

Mie Nakazawa, Untitled

“Same Same and Different” Mie Nakazawa monoprint line drawn heads; I hesitate to use the word ‘portraits’ because they are all untitled. They looked inspired by the Austrian Expressionist artist, Egon Schiele. Unlike all the other street artists Nakazawa is a Sydney-based contemporary printmaker who has also painted a few murals in Sydney.

There were galleries with exhibitions opening all along Johnston Street on Friday night. There was a group exhibition with work by more of Melbourne’s artists associated with Melbourne’s streets. Be Free, Baby Guerilla, HaHa and Suki amongst almost twenty artists exhibiting at a pop-up exhibition at 178 Johnston Street, as part of the first birthday celebrations for Qbank gallery from Queenstown, Tasmania.

James Wilson, “Portrait of Regan ‘HaHa’ Tamanui” 

Regan Tamanui (HaHa), Fred Whatley