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The Art of the Illegal COMING TO MELBOURNE THIS SUMMER Explore I MELBOURNE Evening Standard 63 THE ART OF ADNATE, SOFLES AND SMUG ADNATE, ARTISTS THE ILLEGAL 11 JAN – 18 FEB PRESENTED BY MTC AND ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE Peter Barrett traces the evolution ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE, PLAYHOUSE DEAN SUNSHINE of street art in Melbourne Photo of Luke Treadaway by Hugo Glendinning Photo of Luke Treadaway mtc.com.au | artscentremelbourne.com.au PHOTOGRAPHY Curious-Jetstar_FP AD_FA.indd 1 1/12/17 10:37 am Explore I MELBOURNE n a back alley in Brunswick, a grown man is behaving like a kid. Dean Sunshine should be running his family textiles business. IInstead, the lithe, curly-headed 50-year-old is darting about the bluestone lane behind his factory, enthusiastically pointing out walls filled with colourful artworks. It’s an awesome, open-air gallery, he says, that costs nothing and is in a constant state of flux. Welcome to Dean’s addiction: the ephemeral, secretive, challenging, and sometimes confronting world of Melbourne street art and graffiti. Over the past 10 years, Dean has taken more than 25,000 photographs and produced two + ELLE TRAIL, VEXTA ART SILO DULE STYLE , ADNATE, AHEESCO, books (Land of Sunshine and artist, author and educator, It’s an awesome, Street Art Now) documenting Lou Chamberlin. Burn City: ARTISTS the work of artists who operate Melbourne’s Painted Streets open-air gallery, 64 in a space that ranges from a presents a mind-boggling legal grey area to a downright diversity of artistic expression, he says, that costs illegal one. “I can’t drive along a from elaborate, letter-based street without looking sideways aerosol “pieces” to stencils, nothing and is in down a lane to see if there’s portraits, “paste-ups” (paper something new there,” he says. works glued to the wall), a constant state HDEAN SUNSHINE, P1XELS “And it doesn’t always have to sculptures, yarn-based works, be about a beautiful mural that’s stickers and even dioramas. of flux painted, it can be the smallest “There is so much happening little thing. I saw something that the hubs, such as Hosier PHOTOGRAPHY hand-written with chalk on a Lane, Stevenson Lane and wall the other day. It said, ‘We Presgrave Place, are so can’t believe that they used short of space that the art to eat animals. Signed, Future work is layered,” Lou says. Generation.’ Genius!” “Something you see one week For a complex set of reasons, can be replaced or covered street art has flourished in by something new the next. Melbourne over the past It’s this constant change and 20 years, to the point where development that I think keeps its tourist drawcard has forced the scene in Melbourne so alive local governments to not only and energetic.” tolerate, but also embrace, One of the first people to certain aspects of it. These document Melbourne’s graffiti days councils, including the was photographer Rennie Ellis. City of Melbourne, make a In three books – Australian distinction between acceptable Graffiti (1975), Australian street art (artistic works done Graffiti Revisited (1979) and with the permission of building The All New Australian Graffiti owners) and illegal graffiti (any (1985) – Rennie captured many writing or images carried out of the cheeky, sardonic and without proper permission). As a protest comment he found on movement, street art is entering Melbourne walls, such as “NO the mainstream. STANDING, ONLY DANCING.” The latest book to celebrate In 1984, American artist the scene is by Melbourne Keith Haring put the spotlight Explore I MELBOURNE an international reputation, bringing artists and admirers from near and far. British street artist Banksy famously left several stencilled deep-sea divers and parachuting rats around the city in 2003. Local artists continued to test boundaries with police, producing more elaborate works in bolder, more publicly visible places. “It was exciting,” says Berlin-born art curator Jan Dirk Mittmann, who ran the Melbourne Stencil Festival from CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Heesco 2004 to 2008. “Stencils were and Dule Style works in Hosier popping up like mushrooms in Lane, Adnate’s Hosier Lane wall, various lanes and back streets Brim Silo on the Silo Art Trail, the around Melbourne. But it was Sheep Hills silo in the making, Art by Vexta and Elle in Collingwood. also very underground.” Then, in 2005 authors Carl Nyman and Jake Smallman made the reputation official with their on street art when he painted book on the scene – Stencil several murals in Melbourne, Graffiti Capital: Melbourne. including an iconic wall that Of course, the Melbourne survives today at the former street-art scene hasn’t stayed 65 Collingwood Technical College. still. Today, private building Meanwhile, young, mostly male, owners and councils including graffiti “writers” made their Melbourne, Port Phillip and illegal marks on trains and train Yarra regularly commission lines around Melbourne. And, works; street-art agency thanks to the city’s topography Juddy Roller has brought the (easily accessed with plenty of movement to regional Victoria lanes tucked away from prying through the Silo Art Trail and the eyes), not to mention its rich Benalla Street Art Wall To Wall artistic scene, street art began Festival; and, while Melbourne to rapidly evolve. street artists such as Rone, According to the National Adnate, Lushsux and Smug Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) senior may not be household names curator of Australian Art, David yet, their combined 560,000 Hurlston, Melbourne artists were Instagram followers suggest influenced in those pre-internet that interest is building. years by the graffitied Brooklyn Geelong-born Rone moved streets and subways they saw to Melbourne in 2001 and on music television (MTV) and experimented with stencils, films, such as Beat Street (1984). paste-ups and hand-drawn “But because Melbourne was posters before finding his rhythm isolated in the sense that it didn’t with large-scale, freehand- have that direct connection, it painted portraits of female Thinking developed what became a very faces. In 2014 he painted several big interesting, independent style,” large murals inside the NGV for David says. “It was clearly a Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition influenced by New York, but and now regularly flies around that’s what makes it so unique.” the world for commissions, By the early 2000s stencil where he has noticed many art emerged as a genre above cities attempting to emulate all others. These clever, often Melbourne’s look. “It feels provocative images cut into very staged,” he says of those card and then painted onto overseas cities. “Melbourne surfaces earned Melbourne has grown organically so it’s Explore I MELBOURNE CLOCKWISE: A recent project from Rone, Blender Studios street-art tours, collectors SANDREW. more of a wild jungle of art compared to this finished exhibition feeling.” Art collectors are getting on board, too. Melbourne-based couple Andrew King and Sandra Powell sold an impressive collection by artists including Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Brett Whiteley to make room after stumbling across books on Banksy and French street artist Blek le Rat on a 2008 visit to Take in the beauty of this 5-hectare rainforest as London. “At that moment I just realised the audacity and the you wind your way along elevated boardwalks, derring-do and the incisiveness of the social commentary,” whilst discovering exotic wildlife. Andrew says. “I bought the books and that was it.” Today, the pair, known as Sandrew, Uncover the secrets of the ancient supercontinent has amassed more than 2000 works of street art, Gondwana and explore a forgotten world. including Australia’s largest Banksy collection. It’s Tuesday, just after lunch, and we are standing 66 in what our guide Dan, himself a street artist from Docklands’ Blender Studios, calls “the kiddie pool”: Rutledge Lane, a U-shaped, dumpster-lined alley that runs off the city’s most famous graffiti spot, Hosier palpable, it’s audible. Behind Lane. It’s where many graffiti a graffitied wooden hoarding, artists make their start and the nail guns and electric saws walls have become so heavily thump and whine away, building adorned over the years that in the latest outlet for streetwear places you can peel off layers retailer, Culture Kings. As well of paint as thick as your finger. as DJs and a barber, Dan says Dan, who uses found objects to a basketball court is planned. create clever sculptures under “But does everybody get to play the name Junky Projects, is basketball? Do these guys get to Reading list taking us on a street-art tour come in and play basketball?” Soon I begin to • Street Art Now of the city. Our group, which he gestures to a couple of Dean Sunshine, $50, includes a Singaporean family scruffy looking homeless guys. deansunshine.com of three, a Dutch 20-something, “Or is it just about commodifying see art almost a young guy from Brisbane and the culture and selling it to the • Burn City: Melbourne’s two Kiwis, are here because of tourists that come through?” everywhere Painted Streets Melbourne’s international street Later, Dan has us trawling Lou Chamberlin, $29.99, art reputation. through a few lesser-known I look hardiegrantgift.com.au Back in Hosier Lane, we stand laneways, eyes peeled for aside while a troop of uniformed the tell-tale signs of particular • Street Art In Melbourne Free map, whatson. primary school children streams artists: the concrete sculpted Travel info past; the lane is otherwise thick wine casks and firearms of melbourne.vic.gov.au with camera-wielding tourists Will Coles; the geometric-line • Melbourne Street jostling for prime position in drawings of Sunfigo; and yes, Jetstar has great low fares Art Guide to Melbourne from across front of the art.
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