INVURT

Perhaps one of the most inspiring things about the shows and works we get to see, is the motivation and drive behind each of the artists that starts it all. Getting out there and getting stuck in is something I have huge respect for, and this exhibition is another fantastic example of this.

Paper, Scissors, Rock is something a little different to the work we normally see and without question will have something for everyone. Organised by architects and designers, the show is open for submissions from whoever may be interested to get involved. “Its basically an opportunity to make and show. To experiment, draw, design, build, record and then exhibit. No client, no budget, no bullshit.” 

Work can be your own or a collaboration, for sale or not. Excellent.

This is a show with no airs or graces and no specific expectations other than an opportunity for creative people to get amongst and do something – anything in fact.

What: Paper, Scissors, Rock exhibition 
Who: A whole collection of artists ranging in mediums and even you if you like. 
Where: Eckersley’s Gallery, 97 Franklin Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000
When: Show opens Thursday 23rd June 6 till 9pm, and runs till the 30th of June

For more info, or to register your interest, contact the organisers here

Given the opportunity to paint your favourite comic hero or villain, its no surprise that a whole bunch of awesome artists got stuck in to producing work for ArtBoy Gallery’s new show Fanboy Vs Artboy: Comics.

FanBoy vs. ArtBoy brings together unknown, amateur and professional artists for a common goal in creating genre specific works all under the banner of FanArt and exhibiting these in an exciting and fun series of exhibitions.

Following on from the success of round One: Videogames, the next Comics round of shows is sure to provide a whole host of visual delights, crazy characters, and super epic battles on canvas between heroes and villains.

Who: Bruyn, Matthew Dunn, Nicole Tattersall, Mike Adey, Allain De Leon, Brett Willis, Heesco, Jennie Rosenbaum, Nick Abdilla, ADi, Ishi, Fletcher Andersen, Ex-Robot, Rickie Swain, Beanz, Ed Bechervaise, Ralph Rosa, Satta van Daal and many more…
What: Fanboy Vs Artboy: Comics
Where: Artboy Gallery,99 Greville Street, Prahran, Melbourne 
When: Starts Friday 10th June 6-9pm and runs till the 13th June

For more info, check out the facebook page and the Artboy Gallery website.

It’s been a mainstay of the Newtown arts culture for a long while, but all great things must come to an end – and for the Oh Really Gallery, that’s this week.

“Yes Yes, the rumours are true..

The time has come, to close our doors and move on to greener pastures and other projects. We know manEvent – Oh Really Gallery Closing Partyy people will be sad that our humble little gallery will be gone, but when its time its time. We’ve had an amazing journey and would like to thank you all for sharing it with us. If you can come down on the 9th June for the closing party and say goodbye one last time it would be grand. Doors open at 6pm to come and say goodbye to the space that was Oh Really Gallery.
We will be doing this proper Oh Really style, with live music
featuring, Ungus Ungus Ungus, along with other assorted musical flavours and a wall to wall install of mural work featuring some of sydney’s finest street artists.

DONT MISS THIS ONE FRIENDS, PUNKS AND CHUMPS!!!”

Many, many kudos to the whole crew at Oh Really for all their work over the years in providing an amazing haven of great art and creativity in Sydney – here’s to bigger and better things for all of you!

Who: The Oh Really crew and friends
What: Oh Really Farewell Party
Where: Oh Really Gallery, 55 Enmore Road, Newtown, NSW
When: Starts 6pm and goes til late!

Go to the Oh Really website to read all about them!

We love these features – between MSAs top ten and Dean Sunshines, we’d like to think that some of the best Australasian street art is represented amongst their photos. Always something for everyone, and todays selection from Mr Sunshine is ace.

Help us out with names we’ve missed, check it out, click for larger pics, view for pleasure.

For more really cool street art photos, check Deans awesome website, Land Of Sunshine.

Continuing our feature profile on the delightful bunch of female artists taking part in the Fibre Femme exhibition, it is our pleasure to introduce Doctor.

A relative newcomer to the Urban scene, Doctor is, nonetheless, making her mark and making it oh so beautifully. With a refreshing combination of both written and visual elements Her work is elegant, thought provoking and curious. Doctor utilises her skills as a talented photographer to create pieces which through their subtlety, linger in your mind for a pleasant while after.

We caught up with Doctor as she prepared for the exhibition, and found out a little more about what drives her work, her plans for the show, and just what inspires those beautiful little anecdotes …

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We are huge fans of Finders Keepers – the markets they’ve held in Melbourne have been spectacular, and really inspiring.

The next event in Sydney is coming up this weekend, and everyone should go check it out – go for the afternoon, browse around, eat, drink, listen to music, and enjoy!

Oh, and here’s a small treat for you – we weren’t able at the time to post the photos we took at the last Melbourne Finders Keepers, so we’ve uploaded them so you can get an idea of what this really cool event is like!

“The Finders Keepers are design and art markets dedicated in supporting emerging designers, artists & musicians and bringing new contemporary design to the forefront in Australia.

We are a bi-annual event which started in 2008 in Sydney and also launched in 2009 in Brisbane, and then in Melbourne in 2010. Our market events are set over two days and over these days we represent designers from all around Australia, and hope to continue to grow and support Australia through our events. We help promote original work with high quality standards, we believe were helping to create a benchmark in Australian design.

The Finders Keepers also features live music from emerging local musicians and we re-create a festival type feel with a bar and café. Our events are free for the public and we encourage locally produced handmade product and other ethical design principles. It is important to us to support Australian made, but also for designers to develop their small businesses to full time ventures.

Our aim was to create a platform for emerging designers, artists & musicians to showcase their work in a supportive and creative atmosphere.”

Who: Oh man, just click here – too many awesome designers to name! What: Finders Keepers designer market!
Where: Foyer of the CarriageWorks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh NSW
When: The markets run from Friday, 6pm til 10pm and Saturday, 10am to 5pm

Check out more info on Finders Keepers at their website!

Brunswick Street Gallery brings the Melbourne street art goods once again, this time with Urban Art Throwup, a showcase of both established and up and coming urban artists. Curated by Tessa Yee, who did last years Urban Art 10a and Sweet Streets @ BSG exhibitions, this should be a really great night, with walls set up for people to sticker or paste on to, live art performances by Heesco and MissRiz and a bunch of slam poetry from Luka Lesson.

It’s great to see another collection of artists getting up in this great Fitzroy establishment, and its sure to have a lot of cool work on display.

Who: Apeseven, Benjamin, Ben Hutchings, Chris Murray, Danny Guinsberg, Damien Mitchell, Enjoy, Eugene Plotnikov, Fletcher Andersen, Heesco, James Panic, Jess/Nektar, Josh Cleary, Juliet Foxtrot, junkyprojects, Jussi Twoseven, Kaitlin Beckett, Katja Mouvlin, Kirpy, Logan Moody, Malicious, Megan Dell, MissRiz, Paul Meates, Phoenix, Rachael Miller, Rachee Renee, Ross McMaster, Guz, Sinuet, Scott McAllester, Sparcs, Sylvia Jeffriess, thepeatreecollective, Yarnwrap, live performacnes by Heesco, MissRiz and Luka Lesson
What: Urban Art Throwup
Where: Brunswick Street Gallery, 322 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, VIC
When: Show opens 27th May, 6pm til 9pm, and runs til 9th June

Check out the BSG website for more info!

We had some good feedback on our last Press Wrap, so we’re going to keep it running for a little while and see how it goes … so, once again, we’re rounding up the past fortnights media news about street art, graffiti and all that ilk – so read on …

• Theres an interesting new web site that is using crowd sourcing to track “vandalism” here in Australia – Vandaltrak “asks the community to submit photos of graffiti and to pinpoint the location of the incident on a map. It then uses the location data to determine under whose jurisdiction the clean-up falls and forwards the report to the appropriate group.” – check the article here and on the SMH.
• Theres a little article up on the Adelaide Now site on the recent opening of the Indelible exhibition.
• This is just perplexing – the new NSW Attorney-General also wants to suspend a graffiti “vandals” license – does this strike anyone as odd? Some would wonder what exactly graff has to do with driving a car, and others would like to throw the book at them …
• Stonnington Leader had a cool article on stencil artist Ralph Kempken – trams rule.
• A whole bunch of Australian news outlets just picked up on French artists OakOaks challenging work … always great to see mainstream media so fast on the uptake when it comes to these kinds of things!
• It was pretty amazing to see an Australian art critic pick up this years Pulitzer – kudos to Sebastian Smee. Like them, hate them, agree with them, disagree with them, critics are an essential part of art culture, and its great to see that one of the worlds most prestigious awards has reflected this.

Thats about all we’ve seen in the past two weeks – if you spot any media pieces that you’d like us to link to, just contact us and we’ll be happy cover it …

This is Press-Mill Wednesdays (we were going to call it WTF Wednesdays but thought this title was maybe a little less abrupt) .

Press Mill Wednesdays is a new fortnightly column where we’ll be summarising all the crap, cool, scary, delightful, misguided, spot on, angry and supportive articles that have run through the more “mainstream” press week in and week out. We thought it would be a cool way to keep you all up to date on what is happening in media-land, and what the current opinions and issues are out there … and, maybe even spotlight a few artists along the way, who have been showcased in the press – if we can do that as much as possible, we’ll be happy…

This is an experimental column, and if we feel it doesn’t work or if anyone has rational issues as to why we shouldn’t link to news articles, we’ll discontinue it. Also, if anyone has issue with any specific links to public domain articles, just let us know and we’ll remove them. We will admit that this column will show a little pro-bias towards graffiti, street and urban art (that said, we don’t condone illegal activities – we just understand that it is a part of the culture, and that it is being combated incorrectly), but we’ll attempt to keep it as neutral as possible, as always, where we can. There is a lot of goodness out there in “mainstreamland”, so don’t let all the negative media get to you – we’ll do our best to weed through it all, and find the good, as well as the bad …

• The big one for the past week, is that new NSW Attorney General feels that the government should “emphasise more the anger that society feels toward the damage done by graffiti.” with his new plan to toughen of NSW graffiti laws, he also thinks that artists should go to jail for it – apparently painting pretty pictures more than once is a “serious offence”, so much so that the artists who do it should be thrown into jail with all the murderers and rapists, because, allegedly, street art and graffiti are gateway crimes. There’s a great blog entry on the ABC showing the other side of the argument as well – have a listen to it.
• Cairns artists are apparently running out of space to get up on the walls – they’ve been working really hard to get the back lanes and uglier spots looking beautiful again, but they really need more spots, and more support from local businesses (ed. having gone to high school and lived in Cairns for many years, I love seeing this shit happening up there). If you know anyone up there that has a business and could use a lick of cool paint, let them know.
• We don’t hear too much news from up in the NT, but this show looked like it was pretty cool – it included an urban street art laser exhibition, and the comment from the curator, Carol Phayer,  was pretty cool – “Street Art seeks to connect the everyday viewing audience with the streetscape and in doing so link the community back to the creative, cultural and natural landscape.”
• Strathmore Secondary College is encouraging their students to brighten up the environment by painting colourful and rad murals – its nice to see councils and educational institutions teaching the up and coming artists of tomorrow that street art can be beautiful.
• Skaters & artists honoured a fallen mate as a part of Mannings Youth Week Celebration, where “youths learnt the finer points of professional graffiti art during a session at Manning Regional Art Gallery, and came up with their own concepts and designs for the mural to adorn the skate park.” – grand.
• Apparently Graffiti is on the rise in Ballarat and the police there are “working hard to tackle the city’s growing graffiti problem” – if you’re in Ballarat, you might want to go and check out Eureka street, because apparently its “just become a big billboard for everyone else to spray tags on there.” – they should just get someone to paint the wall up – maybe someone should give Ballarat City Council a call or something …
• It’s a little older, but we liked this article of a piece that was done down in Tasmania by Hobart artists Trent Fischer and Lukan Smith on the MyState Financial building – cool stuff, dudes!

There’s so much more – but that’s enough for this first round. If you see something in the news and general media thats interesting, and relevant, and want to send us the link to include in this column, then please feel free to contact us and we’ll put it up for you …

Having heard little bits and pieces of rumour about this the past month or two, we’re pretty thrilled to see that its finally unwrapped and some of the details are out there on a fantastic new space opening up in our ‘hood.

Friday, April the 1st sees another addition to the reinvigorated and renewed arts and culture vibe in Prahran in the form of RTIST Gallery, with their un-official launch and group exhibition, featuring over twenty of Australias coolest and talented urban artists. This is a private, un-official opening, so bring yourselves and your crew, keep it neat, and enjoy a preview of what’s to come at this fantastic new space.

“RTIST Gallery is proud to announce it’s unofficial opening event on Friday 1st April 2011 that will feature cutting edge artworks from 20 of Australia’s finest established and up and coming urban artists. Live music and painting throughout the evening will also add to this not to be missed occasion, along with free beverages and canapés for all invited guests. ‘This opening exhibition is designed to give the Melbourne public a taste of what’s install for this exciting new space’ says Toby Armstrong, Director of the new gallery.

Jeremy Gaschk, head curator of the RTIST Gallery is eagerly looking forward to the opening night. Jeremy has been responsible for significant events across Melbourne including The Croft Alley Projects, Tiger Translate Melbourne, Battle for Space at the National Gallery of Victoria, along with a host of other projects and exhibitions. ‘We have been very fortunate to assemble a unique line up of established and emerging urban artists for the opening exhibition’ said Jeremy. New works featuring on the opening night include those from Jason Jacenko, Sofles, Slicer, Shida, Numskull, Beastman, Amelia Lackman, Gimiks Born, Adnate & Ojae, Deams, Itch, Vans the Omega, Johnny Duel, Urban Cake Lady, Rone, Stabs, Phibske, Lucy Lucy, Roachy and Marko Maglaic.

The space itself is situated in the rapidly developing arts an culture hub of Melbourne located at 29 St Edmonds Road Prahran, just off Melbourne’s iconic Greville Street. Featuring an impressive open and light filled exhibition space, with two private plant filled courtyards and stylish cafe/bar area, the gallery is sure to become a prominent ‘must see’ gallery for art lovers across Melbourne. Both Toby and Jeremy at RTIST are keen to help showcase local and international talent to a broader demographic across Melbourne, giving established and rising urban artists the chance to showcase their works in a professionally sleek and vibrant exhibition space.”

Many kudos, and the best of luck to the RTIST family on their new endeavour, we’re pretty excited for them, and hell excited to see what shows they have on offer for us in the future …

Who: Jason Jacenko, Sofles, Slicer, Shida, Numskull, Beastman, Amelia Lackman, Gimiks Born, Adnate & Ojae, Deams, Itch, Vans the Omega, Johnny Duel, Urban Cake Lady, Rone, Stabs, Phibske, Lucy Lucy, Roachy and Marko Maglaic.
What: RTIST Group Show and Gallery Opening
Where: RTIST Gallery, 29 St Edmond Road, Prahran, VIC
When: Gallery and show will be opening on Friday 1st April, 730pm til late.

Check out the RTIST Gallery website for contact details and news …

Bados is just fun, and, combined with Nick Iltons skills, together they’re just, err, fun-er? Anyways – following on from their successful performance at xmas, they have another one lined up for us – this time in the leafy confines of Kings Domain Gardens – these guys always put on a cool show!

“Come on Aussies come on! The street artists who brought you the Street Art Christmas Wall, Bados Earthling & Nick Ilton, are collaborating again; this time they are doing their own celebration of Australia Day on Wednesday 26th of January, at 10am.

But this time they are not creating street art. They will create park art. In Kings Domain Gardens, Melbourne. Installing their unique style of street art & performance in the park. They promise no trees will be harmed in the installation.

Australia is celebrated for the great outdoors, this is why Come on Aussies will be out in nature and not in Melbourne’s lane ways. Bados Earthling will be there with his speech bubbles, asking where does Australia need to head in the 2nd decade of the new millennium. Nick Iltion will install his unique wooden  boxes filled with his & Bados’s imagery as they reflect Australia’s history & contemporary culture.”

Shazamshamwow!

Who: Bados Earthling & Nick Ilton
What: Come on Aussie Come on, live street art inspired/park art
Where: Kings Domain Gardens, Melbourne
When: Australia Day – Wednesday 26th of January @ 10am

For more information contact Bados Earthling at badosearthling@yahoo .com.au

His work is amongst some of Melbournes finest, and definitely a favourite of ours around here – and TwoOne just gets better and better.  This time he’s having drinks and a launch of the new artwork that he has done for Wasabi Salon in Collingwood – we saw some of the early preview pics and it looks cool!

Who: Twoone
What: Wasabi Salon art launch
Where: Wasabi Salon, 94 Smith St, Collingwood
When: Wednesday 2nd February, 5pm til 7pm

The first Without Walls was held at Oh Really Gallery back in May, and now, following on from the success of the first installation, and with a move to aMBUSH Gallery, Volume 2 looks set to continue the series with a whole new line up of artists. Pretty cool idea too.

“Wall less lawless art by friends for fiends – Without Walls is a collective of friends who throw exhibitions for local artists and then take some of that art and make t-shirts from it.”

 
Who: Ben Toupein, Jin Hien Lau, James Jirat Patradoon,  Brett Chan,  Aisling King-Macklin, Jumbo
What: Without Walls group show and t-shirt designfest
Where: aMBUSH Gallery, 4A James Street, Waterloo, NSW
When: Show opens Wednesday 8th December @ 6pm, runs til Sunday 12th December

Via Ambush gallery & the Without Walls website

I just realised that it’s been almost six months since I decided to, mostly,  move on from writing about music, and to really getting back into covering my first love: art.

Its always been the goal that once I managed to regularly cover events here in Melbourne, that I wanted to begin to cover events and artists out in other parts of Australia – so, I’m looking for people to help out here and there to cover events and artists across the rest of Oz. (more…)

On Wednesday June 9th, Revolver Upstairs presents the sounds of popular DJ and street scene aficionado Hans DC playing an improvised set to the mad painting skills of Drewfunk.

There need to be more of these types of events happening – lets hope that this kind of thing springboards more events like it. Really, theres nothing like a beer, good tunes, and great art to keep smiling through the winter months – should be a fun evening!

Who: Drewfunk & Hans DC
What: Live Painter/DJ Improv
Where: Revolver Upstairs, 229 Chapel St, Prahran
When: Wednesday, June 9th, 8pm

Check out Drewfunks website here for some awesome art, as well as Hans DCs blog for more info on his gigs, and plenty of other cool shit.

Moving to another city in order to pursue an artistic dream, let alone another country, is one of the biggest challenges any artist can face – and yet, collaborative duo Dabs Myla have not only overcome challenges in doing so, but have flourished within their adopted scene. In the past year since their move, they have further enamoured fans worldwide with their unique  artwork, and now, with their second solo show being presented at the Per Square Meter Gallery here in Melbourne, they are set to unleash the fruits of their artistic sojourn onto their home town.

Thankfully, they had some time to speak to us to give us a run down on what they’ve been up to of late, and let us know their how their invasion of Los Angeles has been progressing …

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Prodigal son and Oz stencil art pioneer Anthony Lister returns to the southern shores shores with an upcoming exhibition at the Metro gallery. Love him or hate him, this is going to be a great exhibition.

“‘Antony Lister was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1979, and later completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Queensland College of the Arts. He helped pioneer the stencil and street art movement in Brisbane before moving to New York in 2003 to work with his mentor, Max Gimblett. He met the New Zealand-born artist at the opening of Gimblett’s major solo exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Lister borrows from his immediate surroundings, painting parodies of modern life. His influences are varied: graffiti, stencilling, installations, Pop art, comic book imagery, cartoons and his recollections of childhood when everything seemed fascinating and animated super-heroes ruled his television screen.

With bold and brash spontaneity and remarkable confidence he paints the complex contradictions of everyday life, and does so with an element of humour. He admits:

“What I read, what I see, what I do, who I know and what I eat for lunch, it’s all relevant to me. I guess I am in a perpetual state of accepting the obvious as a valid source of inspiration. And it’s also very important that my work continues to be fun and exciting to me.””

-Ken McGregor
Extract from ‘Anthony Lister’, Macmillan mini-art series No. 13, 2010

Who: Anthony Lister
What: You Call That a Backrub – Solo Exhibition
Where: The Metro Gallery, 1214 High Street, Armadale, Victoria 3143
When: Wednesday the 7th of April, 6:30 – 8:30pm

Via the Metro Gallery website

Some friends of mine, Brian Simms and Jaz Miu are opening a gallery in Northcote this Saturday, so please feel free to come and check it out – the following is from their facebook invitation:

“AFTER MONTHS OF SLAVERY HARD WORK AND HELP FROM SOME OF YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, OUR PROJECT, AT LARGE GALLERY IS FINALLY OPENING ITS DOORS TO THE PUBLIC!
Kicks off with a huge group show of 25 street and illustrative melbourne artists, 4 live graffers painting our massive brick wall outside, dope dj’s spinning dub, hiphop and specially crafted beats, and a visual montage projection of the city we know and love from 6-9.

Official Opening 6-9pm Saturday 20th June.
After party closed to public.
The group show is up for 3 weeks till 11 JULY.

free wine and nibblies, and cupcakes courtesy of anita ;) and cheap beer at the bar.

come git. it. on. and help us celebrate this awesome thing to support beats and art.”

… yes, I will be showing a piece in the exhibition and theres some really amazing work in it from a diverse range of street artists :)