Melbourne Monthly Madness – December 2013

Damn, it’s February already. How did that happen?? (Actually – I have been extremely busy working on a new project which I hope to share with you soon). Sorry to keep you waiting for this post.

December 2013 was another MASSIVE month in Melbourne, a great way to end the year.

Darbotz, an Indonesian street artist, visited Melbourne in December and put together this great little video.

Adnate painted Strike Bowling in Macquarie in association with Red Bull. A great video by Michael Danischewski. Adnate’s photo realism is just amazing.

Wonderwalls, a 3 day street art and graffiti festival up north in Wollongong looked awesome, featuring a great line up of Australian and International artists. From Melbourne Shida, Wonderlust, Adnate, Two One, Idiot and Sirum.

Wonderwalls Festival 2013 from The Hours on Vimeo.

Backwoods Gallery had their last show “A Study of Hands” for 2013 and it was a cracker, continuing on in the anatomy series – which will apparently continue over ten years – epic. I particularly liked works by Dave Kinsey and Lister.

Alex Mitchell, Curator of Backwoods Gallery and writer for The Opening Hours was back in Melbourne for the month. Alex did some great studio visits with Two One, Miso and Ghostpatrol. Some great, intimate photos.

Two One - Photo by Alex Mitchell
Two One. Photo by Alex Mitchell.
Miso. Photo by Alex Mitchell.
Miso. Photo by Alex Mitchell.
Ghost Patrol. Photo by Alex Mitchell.
Ghost Patrol. Photo by Alex Mitchell.

Everyone’s been talking about this abando and I can see why. David Russell managed to find his way in and capture some amazing work. I really love Slicer’s geometrical shapes filled with his signature slices, as well as Deams, and Rashe’s pieces. All of this work feels so at home in this place. I do love abandos! More here.

Slicer - Photo by David Russell
Slicer. Photo by David Russell.
Slicer - Photo by David Russell
Slicer. Photo by David Russell.
Slicer - Photo by David Russell
Slicer. Photo by David Russell.
Slicer - Photo by David Russell
Slicer. Photo by David Russell.
Deams - Photo by David Russell
Deams. Photo by David Russell.

Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – December 2013”

Melbourne Monthly Madness – November 2013

Wow! What a year it has been in Melbourne street art and graffiti, this is my 2nd last post covering 2013. December post coming soon. I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Years Eve whatever you got up to.

I’ll start off with this great talk Ghostpatrol gave at Renew Newcastle Creative Talks. GP talks about his current life as a full time artist, growing up and the influence and importance of street art on his current work. GP also mentioned the ABC documentary made about him (and his partner – Miso) which is also definitely worth a watch – available here.

Kaffeine used the All Your Walls event as a launching board for her latest project HEARTCORE. (I’ll be doing a separate article on All Your Walls Part 2 soon).

Kaffeine painted her 1st piece for her new project HEARTCORE. For this amazing project Kaff is working with Berry Street, a child and family services organisation, and using real stories created by young people at the at Berry Street.

Kaffeine's HEARTCORE sketch. Photo by Kaffeine
Kaffeine’s HEARTCORE sketch. Photo by Kaffeine.
Kaffeine. Photo by Kaffeine
Kaffeine. Photo by Kaffeine.
Kaffeine. Photo by Kaffeine
Kaffeine. Photo by Kaffeine.

From the Just Another Blog “Creative writing and poetry from young people in Berry Street School will be interpreted by renowned Victorian street and contemporary artist Kaffeine and painted as a series of large and small street art murals on walls across Melbourne; including one that will take up a whole inner-‐city laneway. A coffee-‐table book titled HEARTCORE will then be launched at the conclusion of the project, made up of professional and artistic photographs of the murals together with the writing”.

Plus here’s a great interview (via an article in The Age newspaper) with Kaff talking about the project/piece.

I’m really excited to see what else Kaff produces as a part of this project.

Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – November 2013”

Melbourne Monthly Madness – September 2013

Juuuust in time for the end of the month, as usual. I’ve been working on some very special projects here in Melbourne all of which I will be sharing over the next month!

September was another great month in Melbourne. As usual a bunch of shows and some of the best street art and graffiti from the streets. Enjoy!

Meggs painted one of his biggest ever murals on the the Fare Share building. Fare Share is a “good rescue” organisation, taking unwanted food and making into meals for charity. Nice work.

Some mad work in Collingwood by some of Melbourne’s most prolific writers, Bolts, Sauce and Kawps. More shots here.

Bolts. Photo by Dean Sunshine
Bolts. Photo by Dean Sunshine.
Kawps. Photo by Dean Sunshine
Kawps. Photo by Dean Sunshine.
Sauce. Photo by Dean Sunshine
Sauce. Photo by Dean Sunshine.

I’ve posted a bit of DVATE’s work in the past. Here’s some more of his work on a recent trip across Europe (not sure who all the collabs are with). More here.

DVATE. Photo by Just Another Agency
DVATE. Photo by Just Another Agency.
DVATE. Photo by Just Another Agency
DVATE. Photo by Just Another Agency.
DVATE. Photo by Just Another Agency
DVATE. Photo by Just Another Agency.

Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – September 2013”

Weekend link-o-rama

Unit 12, maybe. Photo by Dani Mozeson.
Unit 12 or Unit 112, maybe?

This link-o-rama is super helpful for me, because all week I’ve been working on my upcoming ebook instead of blogging. Hopefully the ebook will be out in November… Anyways, links:

  • I love that this show at LeQuiVive Gallery reframes a certain kind of work that often gets lumped in with street art or urban art as Neu Folk Revival, which describes the work much better than calling it street art or urban art or low-brow art. Some real talent in this show: Doodles, Troy Lovegates, Cannon Dill, ghostpatrol, Zio Ziegler, Daryll Peirce, Justin Lovato… It opens next month.
  • This piece by Part2ism needs to be seen. And look closely. That’s not just paint on the wall. Very interesting. I am glad to see Part2ism on the streets again, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. Once again, he has shown that he is ahead of the rest of us. This piece doesn’t look like graffiti. It doesn’t look like street art. It looks like art on the street, and that’s much too rare.Swampy has relaunched his website and posted a video diary sort of thing. I’m very curious what people think about it. Have a look and let me know.Check out this concept from Jadikan-LP: Art that only exists within Google Maps. Click the link. Explore the room. I normally hate lightpainting or “light graffiti,” but I absolutely love this piece. As far as I’m concerned, the internet is a public space and Jadikan-LP has invaded it with artwork, so this project is street art.
  • CDH wrote a really fascinating article in Art Monthly Australia about the commodification of street art. While I don’t agree with him entirely, I think it’s a must-read because at least it sparks some thoughts. It’s one of the best-written critiques I’ve read of the capitalistic nature of contemporary street art. Over on Invurt, they have posted CDH’s article as well as a response by E.L.K. (who CDH calls out in his critique). In his article, CDH called out E.L.K. for using stencils with so many layers that the work isn’t really street anymore, since stencils were initially used for being quick and a piece with 20 layers isn’t going to be quick. It’s just going to look technically interesting. Well, E.L.K. shot back in his response and made himself look like an idiot and seemingly declaring that all conceptual street art and graffiti is crap. There were arguments he could have made to defend complex stenciling or critique other points of CDH’s article, but instead E.L.K. mostly just attacked CDH as an artist. Anyway, definitely read both the original article and the response over at Invurt. The comments on the response are interesting as well.

Photo by Dani Mozeson

Melbourne Monthly Madness – July 2013 (belated)

Apologies for the delay posting this. I have had to hold off posting it due to Illegal August.

HAHA - Photo by David Russell
HAHA – Photo by David Russell

Metro Gallery started off the month with the opening of their group show “Writing on the Wall” with works from local and international artists such as Swoon, Rone, Matt Adnate, HAHA, Word to Mother, E.L.K, Dabs Myla and D*Face and more. Some shots from the opening below and more here.

Rone - Photo by David Russell
Rone – Photo by David Russell
Word to Mother - Photo by David Russell
Word to Mother – Photo by David Russell

The day after the opening Metro hosted more live painting, this month featuring work by Unwell Bunny, Two One and again E.L.K. More shots here.

Unwell Bunny - Photo by David Russell
Unwell Bunny – Photo by David Russell
Two One - Photo by David Russell
Two One – Photo by David Russell
E.L.K - Photo by David Russell
E.L.K – Photo by David Russell

Chaotic Gallery’s 1st show BRUISER by Creature Creature was a cracker. A massive turnout for the Southside’s newest gallery. The works were amazing; a combination of the two artists styles which mesh so well together, featuring influences from the samurai era throughout. Check out some of my favourite pieces below and more here.  Also check out some of their recent paste ups, which I also love, here.

Creature Creature - Photo by David Russell
Creature Creature – Photo by David Russell
Creature Creature - Photo by David Russell
Creature Creature – Photo by David Russell
Creature Creature - Photo by David Russell
Creature Creature – Photo by David Russell

Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – July 2013 (belated)”

King Brown issue 9 launch party

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NYC is having a good couple of weeks for magazine launch parties. Today was the Very Nearly Almost issue with Faile on the cover, and August 10th is the launch of King Brown issue 9. This issue comes in a bag with designs by Unga of Broken Fingaz and Ed Templeton and the magazine includes features on Ed Templeton, Unga, Nychos, Huskmitnavn, Dabs Myla, Ghostpatrol and others. Issue 9 will be launched at Schoolhouse Gallery (330 Ellery St Brooklyn – Flushing Ave stop off the JMZ) on August 10th from 6-10pm. The launch party will include music by Fake Hooker and live painting by The Yok, Sheryo and Nychos. All good things. Except that I won’t be there, so please have fun for me.

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Photos courtesy of King Brown

Melbourne Monthly Madness – June 2013

June was another busy month in Melbourne. My round up for the month includes trains, walls, shows, a rad new publication and some other bits and pieces of goodness.. I’ll start with my favourite train for June. This one ran on June 6th – thanks to The best of Melbourne Graffiti for the pic. This guy has been killing it lately!

01 RUNZ - Photo via The Best of Melbourne Graffiti
RUNZ. Photo courtesy of The Best of Melbourne Graffiti.

Some shots from Burg’s show at the Vic below, more here. Burg’s street characters are some of my faves with twisted and expressive faces appearing all around Melbourne.

BURG - Photo by AllThoseShapes
BURG. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
BURG - Photo by AllThoseShapes
BURG. Photo by AllThoseShapes.
BURG - Photo by AllThoseShapes
BURG. Photo by AllThoseShapes.

Knock Knock Magazine released their latest issue, Issue 4 -The Travel Issue. Knock Knock is an online magazine focusing on talented creative people, this issue features articles on Ben Quilty, Mark Drew, Geoffrey Lillemon, Dave Cragg, Sobekcis, Sheryo & The Yok, Onur Gulfidan, Rosek, Haribow, Maaden, Beatrix Curran, Kate Florence Knowlden, Val Kelmer, Jess Howell, Robyn Aubrey, Arman Nobari, Embassy, Spoonty and DoubleTrouble. A great read and a well put together production. Check out these screen shots from Issue 4:

Screenshot from KnockKnock Issue 4
Screenshot from KnockKnock Issue 4
Screenshot from KnockKnock Issue 4
Screenshot from KnockKnock Issue 4
Screenshot from KnockKnock Issue 4
Screenshot from KnockKnock Issue 4

Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – June 2013”

Melbourne Monthly Madness – May 2013

Adnate - Photo by Dean Sunshine
Adnate. Photo by Dean Sunshine

Ok, so I am super late on this post, it’s almost July. I’ve been extremely busy this last month working on an introduction to a friend’s street art book and also some exciting projects here in Melbourne (as well as taking care of my good mates Melbourne Street art blog while he is away), all of which I hope to share with you soon.

Anyway, May was another exciting month in Melbourne, I love the energy Melbourne has when it comes to street art and graff. It just doesn’t stop. Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – May 2013”

Thinkspace curates a show at Gallery 309 in Philly

Dabs_Myla_The_Spirit_Shines
Dabs Myla

LA’s Thinkspace Gallery is coming to my city of Philadelphia soon for a show they’ve curated at Philadelphia’s Gallery 309. LAX / PHL will include work from dozens of artists including Dabs Myla, Gaia, Ghostpatrol, La Pandilla, and Pixel Pancho, but the highlight is likely to be an installation by NoseGo. Thinkspace Gallery is suggesting that this show includes artists from the “New Contemporary Art Movement.” I call it that movement “The artists that Juxtapoz might cover,” but whatever. The point is, there’s gonna be a lot of really impressive artwork at this show.

LAX / PHL opens on Saturday, May 11th from 6-10pm, and runs through June 21st. There will be a second opening reception on June 7th from 6-10pm to coincide with Philadelphia’s First Friday art events.

Photo courtesy of Thinkspace Gallery