Dabs Myla at Metro Gallery – Photo by Dean Sunshine

Here’s some of the amazing stuff that happened in Melbourne last month. I’m sorry it’s so late – I am already working on the March post. Damn I am proud to post about my home town. So much goodness every month. Enjoy!

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Monica Ellis

Last month, I was at the Living Walls Conference in Atlanta, but it’s only now that I’ve really had a chance to sit down and write about it. I thought that I was going to write this really long post, but the environment at Living Walls is difficult to capture in words, so this post isn’t nearly as long as I would have hoped.

Miso. Click to view large.

Living Walls is, as far as I can tell, the best mural conference/festival/program going on right now in North America. Living Walls doesn’t tend to just invite all the artists who are painting at other mural events around the world. They invite good artists. Sometimes those artists are guys like Roa who are everywhere, and sometimes it’s women like Miso who have only ever painted one or two murals. As a result, Living Walls sets trends among mural festivals.

Lex and Sten

For their main conference this year, Living Walls really bucked popular trends and tried to put street art on a new track by having a festival made up almost entirely of female muralists. While guys like Gaia, LNY and I were still invited to speak at the lecture and panel portion of the conference, the murals by Lex&Sten and Indigo&Andrzej Urbanski were the only two where male artists were contributing.

Martina Merlini

While the murals weren’t as amazing on the whole as they were last year and the crowd of artists wasn’t nearly as rowdy (although that might have been a plus), this year’s Living Walls did bring some great work to Atlanta and really showed that there are some underrated female street artists and muralists out there who could be on the mural circuit as much as guys like Jaz or Roa. My hope and expecting is that the top-tier of artists from the conference will get more attention brought to their work thanks to Living Walls and some will start getting invited to a lot more mural festivals. As I’ve said in the past, I do not generally get excited to give artists preferential treatment based on them belonging to some underrepresented group, but I can see why an all-female Living Walls may have been the right move for this year even if the quality of the work did drop slightly.

Jessie and Katey

This Living Walls conference had more artists than ever before who were either more on the community mural side of the spectrum or had never painted a mural before. The results of that move were mixed, but there were some artists like Jessie&Katey and Monica Ellis who took the opportunity and absolutely crushed it.

Hyuro. This wall has since been painted over.

One thing I have to add isn’t so much about the art though. Whether Living Walls were inviting only artists that none of us have ever heard of before or stealing their line-up from Nuart, it would still be at least one of the best mural conferences in the world. That’s because Living Walls’ secret is in their amazing staff. Living Walls has best team of volunteers of any mural festival I’ve ever seen or could imagine. They are unbelievably dedicated to the festival and to getting more world-class street art and murals in Atlanta. Every day, the media team led by Alex Parrish was up until something like 4am putting together a video of what had gone on that day, and then they’d be back up at 7am to start filming all over again. Just last week, I was emailing with Keif Schleifer, their Logistics Director, who was spending her free time advising me on cherry-pickers. The day of the Vandalog Movie Night, volunteers showed up out of the blue to help us set up and run the show. Laura Calle and pretty much everyone else on staff who spent their own money to pay for the gas to drive myself and the artists around Atlanta. The drag queen who was a volunteer last year and this year helped arrange a drag show for the Living Walls Block Party. The artist assistants who stand in the hot sun alongside their artists all day long, offering any help they can. And of course, Monica Campana, the Executive Director of Living Walls, who is the amazing glue holding everything together without ever sleeping or slowing down. Everyone on staff or volunteering at Living Walls works at least as hard as the artists, and they were certainly working harder than me. After visiting two years in a row for just a few days each time, it honestly feels like I have family in Atlanta.

Olive47

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This year’s Living Walls Conference has begun and the team are posting daily updates to Vimeo. Here are the first three days. I’ll be arriving in Atlanta for the conference in less than 24 hours. Please join me on Wednesday night for an evening of short films and Friday evening for a panel about gender and identity in street art. And also, I’m sure the rest of the conference events will be interesting too. Here’s the full line up of Living Walls activities.

Space Indavers is a collection owned by the National Gallery of Australia featuring street art, stencils, posters, paste ups, zines, stickers and graffiti from the last 10 years from across Australia.

The exhibition is like a time capsule containing some of the most well known pieces from the last decade or so.. So many memories! There are far too many artists to mention, so have a look here. The exhibition explores the movement from the street into the gallery as many of these pieces signify the explosion of the scene in Australia and also the start of many of these artists gallery based careers.

While the show is running, RMIT is also hosting a number of interesting discussions including ‘Vandals or Vanguards?‘, discussing the political, social and artistic aspects of street art and zines. Nice work RMIT!

I went down to the opening last week to check it out. Enjoy.

Reka

HAHA

stickers

Phibs

YOK

Reka

A man dedicated to his stencils. HAHA's legs.

stickers

Jumbo and Zap

Miso

Vexta

Ghostpatrol

Marcsta

James Dodd

SYNC

Meek

Photos by Luke McManus

This post aims to show two things: 1. Street|Studio: The Place of Street Art In Melbourne by Miso, Ghostpatrol, Timba and occasional Vandalog guest poster Alison Young is a much-needed addition to the crowded world of street art books, and 2. I am really slow about reviewing books and if you’re writing a book and want it reviewed here, it’s probably better to ask one of the other writers to check it out.

I’m going to start with the second aim because it’s brief and less important. I got my copy of Street/Studio just before the London launch event in July 2010. I was then traveling a fair bit, so probably didn’t end up reading it until August/September. And it’s been sitting on my desk since then solely because I am lazy when it comes to actually writing book reviews. So hopefully that clears that up. Now on to the important stuff.

Everfresh Crew and others

Excluding the Everfresh crew’s book which I’m guessing is more focused on the single crew who are also included in this book, Street|Studio is the only book I can think of that looks specifically at the street art scene in Melbourne, Australia. Given the strong street art scene in Melbourne, something like Street|Studio was long overdue. The book is made up primarily of 10 in-depth profiles a select few street art stars working in Melbourne. Of the artists in this book, I’d probably heard of about half of them, but that does not mean that this book is filled up with random talentless hacks. Melbourne has an active street art scene, but many of Melbourne’s very talented street artists are rarely discussed outside of Australia. Maybe Street|Studio‘s greatest achievement is that it can work as an introduction for the rest of the world to a street art community that, for whatever reason, often seems more cut off from the global community than other cities.

Niels Oeltjen

That said, the interviews with each artist are very in-depth, so I was learn a fair amounts even the artists who I was familiar with before reading Street|Studio. I did realize, after finishing, that I hadn’t read the book in the best way though. I read it straight through, except that meant reading extensive interviews of artists whose work I was just being introduced to. That’s a lot of information to take in. For anyone who picks up this book in the future, I’d recommend flipping through the entire thing and primarily looking at the images, finding a bit more about your favorite artists online and then going back to read the interviews. I think I would have gotten even more out of Street|Studio if I’d done that.

Miso in London

The other day over Twitter, Inkfetish asked if anyone could name some innovative London-born street artists. I had some trouble with that (I think some of the current or former BC guys were raised in London but I’m not sure…). Of course, there are some innovative artists like Banksy who moved to London but didn’t start out there, but even including them, it can sometimes seem like a lot of the strength of London’s street art community is that lots of people want to visit. On the other hand, Street|Studio shows very the Melbourne scene as innovative and active, but that activity is coming, primarily, from a Melbourne-based (though not always raised) community. I guess I’m trying to say that after reading Street|Studio, I want to visit Melbourne.

Photos courtesy of Miso and Alison Young

Unknown artist in TriBeCa

With the riots and protests in Egypt, I thought the above sticker is a worthwhile thing to consider this week. I’m a bit late on this week’s link-o-rama.

• If you like Simon and Garfunkel, this one’s for you.
• I love you so much.
• A TWIST bus stop from 1995. And intense Barry McGee fans may appreciate this video, but it’s kind of lost on me.
• Seems really interesting that this piece has text in English even though it’s placed in Iran. As if they intended for a good number people to see it online in the Western world and placed as much importance on that as on people seeing it in person.
• The Nuart documentary is streaming live online on Monday.
• An artist in Toronto is posting up portraits of his dead partner.
• This seems like odd placement of an LA Freewalls mural by INSA, given that I’m pretty sure he claims his work is about not objectifying.
• Swampy was interviewed for the NYTimes Magazine.
• Juxtapoz has two posts detailing the Shepard Fairey and Mark Mothersbaugh show currently on at Subliminal Projects. Shepard’s stuff looks really good.
• Shepard has being having a very reasoned dialog on his website about the 2nd amendment.
• Hyperallergic reviewed Street|Studio, a book about the Melbourne street art and graffiti scene written by Miso, Ghostpatrol and Alison Young.
• This looks like a crazy group show in LA next week.
• Ripo’s solo show in Barcelona looks nice.

Photo by Loisinwonderland

Here are a couple of shows opening this month that should be worth checking out…

1. C215‘s book launch in Paris: Community Service at Gallerie Itinerrance is a solo show for C215 and will also serve as the book launch for his upcoming Community Service book. The show opens on November 12th at 6pm.

2. Gallery Heist‘s 1-year anniversary exhibition: Till Death Do Us Part is a group show c0-curated by Allison and Garrison from Ad Hoc Art to celebrate Gallery Heist’s 1st birthday. The list of artists here is long but includes Gaia, Ludo, Mike Giant, Justin Lovato and Miso. The show opens on November 13th from 7-11pm, and runs through the 27th. And this show is not at Gallery Heist’s usual space. It’s at 1036 Hyde Street in San Fransisco.

3. Ghostpatrol and DeadLeg in Manchester: Mooch N4 in Manchester has a group show towards the end of November. I don’t know much about Mooch N4, but anybody who is showing Ghostpatrol outside of Australia is okay in my book. And DeadLeg has done some nice collaborations with Best Ever, so that should be interesting too. That shows opens on November 25th and runs through January 31st.

I’ve got a drawer full of books and magazines to read and review right now, but Very Nearly Almost number 13 jumped to the front of the queue this weekend when I took a bus to and from Washington, DC. Why? Because it’s light and small and fits in my backpack way better than Trespass.

Regular Vandalog readers will know that I’m a fan of Very Nearly Almost, and issue 13 is no exception. Interviews with Elbow-toe, Dan Witz and Miso are great because I think they (particularly Miso) are overlooked talents. And then there’s Steve Powers who never responded to Vandalog’s recent interview request (kind of expected that to be honest). There’s even an essay by Dave The Chimp, who never ceases to entertain me, about the need to experience art in real life (as in not on blogs or in magazines). Oh and on page 74 there’s a photo of a topless girl.

Sorry if I’m sounding a bit glib. I really just want to write this post and get to sleep. Just got my flu shot and the symptoms are kicking in a bit. In all seriousness though, VNA is probably my favorite magazine and art lover should pick up a copy of their latest issue. You can get it online for £4.

Some friends came over today and we had a bit of a photoshoot for the upcoming line of Vandalog t-shirts. More about that in the next few days. Here’s a teaser of the shirts. So next week is going to be an exciting one on Vandalog. In the mean time, here’s what I wish I’d spent more time covering (it’s kind of Swoon and Retna heavy this week though):

• David Choe and James Jean have a show coming up in Japan.
• This, I may actually write about again before the show opens and I’ll certainly be mentioning it after the opening: Street/Studio 2.0 at Irvine Contemporary in DC. It’s a group show in two venues with artists including Swoon, David Ellis, Gaia and José Parlá. The show opens on November 6th.
• Also on November 6th, Kaws has a solo show opening in Paris.
• The first two Untitled street art books were interesting, now there’s a third.
• Juxtapoz brought a bunch of artists including Swoon and Retna to Detroit to paint some houses.
• So apparently Swoon had a show open in Paris tonight?
• Os Gêmeos have been painting a bit in Brazil.
• Miso and Ghostpatrol have some nice new pieces up in Fitzroy.
• Bo130, Microbo, San and 2501 were recently busy painting some walls in Milan.
• I’m only half way through this video so far myself, but the producer and editor of Exit Through The Gift Shop recently took part in an in-depth video interview.
• Retna has just released 12 beautiful monotypes. As of this post, some are still available online.

Looks like Everfresh aren’t the only Australians getting their street art into print. Street/Studio is a new book from some of Australia’s top street artists and street art experts. Alison Young works at the University of Melbourne and occasionally posts here on Vandalog, Miso and Ghostpatrol are Australian street artists and Timba publishes Wooden Toy Quarterly. Street/Studio has its UK launch next Thursday (July 8th) at Black Rat Projects.

Their flyer has all the rest of the info you should need: