INVURT

You would think that the boys from aMBUSH Gallery would have their hands full with the ongoing Outpost Project, but no – these guys just keep powering on, and the next show up at aMBUSH Gallery sees a bunch of our favourites smashing it down in Sydney with an awesome group show, Surface Tension.

"Australia’s new wave of street art is already here. Following on from their curatorial hit Outpost Project at Cockatoo Island, aMBUSH proudly presents Surface Tension, featuring artists E.L.K. (Luke Cornish,
VIC), Heesco (VIC), Shida (QLD), Slurpree Slug (NSW), Sofles (VIC) and Sprinkles (NSW).

The artists will paint and transform the gallery walls, integrating the space itself into their body of works. Hailing from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, the stellar emergent line-up represents the next epoch, the next movement. Come and see where it all starts.

The opening will take place on Friday 25 November from 6-9pm at aMBUSH Gallery, 4A James Street Waterloo. Join us for complimentary drinks provided by Absolut and future leaning beats and Hip-hop
between provided by Zwelli.

On the billing will be Brisbane born, cut-back king, Sofles, recently returned from the San Francisco all-Australian show ‘Young and Free’ – himself one of the country’s finest graffiti exports. Also from Brisbane,
Shida’s vicious extra dimensional figures will grin across the concrete backdrop.

Moving further down south, representing Sydney will be Sprinkles, co-founder of Half-Star clothing, with his hyper-cartoon skulls stalking the back of your thoughts. Marking his exclusive gallery appearance is the mysterious street thrasher, Slurpee Slug, with his raw psychedelia a cross between whizz fizz characters and acid. From the Melbourne camp, and representing Blender studios we have Heesco and E.L.K.

Heesco, the current Sydney Secret Wars champion, has a talent in creating anguished faces and loose figures caught in motion.
E.L.K. (Luke Cornish) is widely regarded as a National stencil treasure, able to bring photorealistic portrayals in muted tones through painstaking execution of layering, deconstructing and reconstructing his works with his own flair. E.L.K. was the winner of the 2010 Australian Stencil Art Prize, and made the cover of Monthly Art Magazine, April 2011.

The exhibition will also run alongside an online catalogue with works for sale from Saturday 26 November and runs until 4 December, allowing interstate buyers to remotely buy works. Information regarding this will be available on the aMBUSH website from the opening night."

Damn. We love aMBUSH more and more every day – and you should too!

Who: E.L.K., Heesco, Shida, Slurpee Slug, Sofles, Sprinkles
What: Surface Tension group show
Where: aMBUSH Gallery, 4a James St, Waterloo, Sydney, NSW
When: Show opens Friday 25th November, and runs til Tuesday 29th November.

Check out the aMBUSH gallery website and the facebook event page for more info on the show.

Back in October, we finally had a chance to get down to one of the Trails drawing sessions. Hosted by Braddock at the infamous Blender Studios, the theme behind Trails is simple – you turn up, take a pen, and draw your heart out alongside others in a mad massive collaborative fun fest.

Held once a month, Trails has been running since 2009, and in that time all kinds of artists and creatives have joined in on the event. It’s laid back, entertaining and welcoming of all. So, no matter your level, if you want to draw, chat and have a couple of polite beverages in great company, then this is a cool event to do it at.

Who: You!
What: Trails drawing sessions
Where: Blender Studios, (access via laneway), 110 Franklin Street, Melbourne
When: Friday 2nd December, 7pm til late

Check out the Trails blog, as well as the facebook event page for more info.

It was a sad moment last week when I got the invite from the At Large crew about their closing down event this coming weekend. I knew it was on its way, but it was still lamentable when I got the invitation to their very last event – and I’m even sadder still that I can’t attend due to being in Perth for the weekend!

It’ll be hard to imagine Northcote without At Large Gallery – and I can’t help but say a few words about the people, shows, and the crew there. Please excuse me whilst I take a rare moment to talk on a personal level – and, in case you don’t want to read my shit, just jump down to the bottom of the post for all the info on the actual event!

I attended the opening of At Large (I’m pretty sure it was the first article I posted on this blog, actually), and I even had a piece in that very first show – I believe that was the first show in Melbourne that I had put a piece in since I’d moved here. I’d met the crew through a mutual friend pretty much as soon as I had first arrived in the ‘burn – two people whose own art I immediately loved, and who had, no, made, time for someone who was still fresh eyed and full for questions about Melbourne and its art.

As it happened, I also put some work into a few other group shows there, and, I had two of my own there also. The biggest moment, for me, was holding my first solo show, Inhabited Times, at the gallery – which was amazing and had an amazing turn out. I pretty much did the show because of the guys there, they inspired me – after years of drawing in books and never showing anyone the stuff I’d been doing, they made me so comfortable and were so encouraging that I couldn’t not – they helped me take my art out of my own private little world  – and since then, I haven’t looked back.

Invurt and the crew at At Large also put on the group show there, Cardbordia with a bunch of other great artists, it was so much fun covering the walls in Cardboard and making an instillation styled show – what a blast.

So, to say that the place has a special place in my heart is an understatement. At Large, the crew themselves and their many helpers, as well as the people I met through the gallery and its shows,  and those I became friends with along the way, were one of the inspirations behind my starting this whole website – if you’re a fan of Invurt, then there’s a part of thanks that should be directed to the At Large crew for what you see today.

Beyond myself, there is absolutely no questions as to what these guys did for the Melbourne art, and upcoming and established artists. You need to only look at the list of exhibitions they’ve held over the past three years to get an inkling as to the kinds of artists they helped promote and support, the shows that they worked on and the events that they also held. With names like Heesco, Adi, Simz, Mupz, Jak Rapmund, Nicole Tattersall, Mishap, Rachee Renee, Sketch City and so many more … take all those great shows, and combine them with a whole range of events, battles, workshops, live art, great tunes, good beer, great people – well.

So, in their own words …

"After three ears in Northcote, At Large are closing its doors at 208 High St!!

We have always run At Large as we felt fit, and through this unconventional practice have met some truly amazing Artists, DJs, Emcees, and some of the most chilled beautiful down to earth people here, (some of who are now our family.) We have run countless gigs, openings, exhibitions and festival days, and it has been a great hub for Artists and all sorts. The ride has been amazing and unforgettable, but for now we just need a break, and a new chapter to focus on our lives and our own art.

Mishap and Dopio will be back in 2012 curating and participating in battles and exhibitions, burning walls and getting drunk in your backyard. We would love to thank every single person who made the last few years what it was by buying a can of paint, sharing a beer or spliff, or coming to a show. We are humbled by the amount of support we’ve gotten from our big Melbourne fam, customers and regulars. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Please contact us through the At Large email or website for future projects, jobs, and the usual from now on ‘cos we won’t have a shop for too much longer but we are STILL AT LARGE."

Before they close their doors, however, there is the aforementioned closing party – and, as usual with the way these guys roll, it’ll be a fkn great night – art battle, and merchandise and art up for grabs at awesome prices!

"We are closed to pack up shop generally from now until the 26th so come hang out for the last time @ At Large on Sunday 27th Nov 2011, watch Getn Jigy, Twos and Glyphics battle it out, sink a few beers and check out the huge instore sale.

15-60% off EVERYTHING including

• brand new Sourpuss range of kooky kitchen ware, beach towels, skull cushions, lamps and unique gift ware you won’t find anywhere else
• all tees and streetwear
• custom graffiti lamps made by Jest
• ALL ART AND PRINTS by various Artists
• ALL IRONLAK 6 PACKS A FURTHER 10% OFF SO $40 EACH SIXER

We will also be selling most shopfitting and furnishings so if you see anything you like or need make us an offer!!

Hope to see you all there and thanks again for your love!"

See what I mean? Going out in total style!

Anyways, the silver lining about the gallery closing is also personal – I can’t help but feel a little lightened at the news knowing that this now frees up two of my mates to come painting with us on the weekends (which is the only time I get to paint due to this whole full time work bullshit!). They’ve already both taught me a lot – about painting, about Melbourne, and about a whole bunch of amazing artists and creative individuals that they tirelessly supported – and I really can’t wait to hit some walls with them now that they aren’t stuck in the gallery.

J & B – thanks for the beers, thanks for the shows, thanks for the support and for all you did for the Melbourne street art culture with At Large Gallery, we’re looking forward to seeing what you guys get up to next year – now, lets fkn paint!

Who: The At Large crew and live art battles from Getn Jigy, Twos and Glyphics.
What: Live art, sales and awesome fun times.
Where: At Large Gallery, 208 High St, Northcote, VIC
When: Sunday 27th november, 1pm til 6pm – and then closed forever!

Check out the At Large Gallery website, and the facebook event page for more information.

No, its October. Honest. Really. Look, it is if I say it is .. but, anyways. We were supposed to get this up late last month, but with so much in between we had a massive backlog. This, however, is the last of it and we’re all caught up (actually, “catch up” seems like such a relative word …) – and what better way to catch up than with the first Top 10 selection from that rad Melbourne street art blogger, Arty Graffarti!

We’re happy to have him on board with our Top 10s – its turning into a mad little battle between these guys, we love seeing what’s coming next … click the images for full size!

Check out the Arty Graffarti blog for more snaps and flicks from the ‘burn.

Theres always time on a Thursday lunchbreak to take a few minutes out and check out some cool assed videos from around Oz and NZ, and thats what the Transmissions are for! Watch on, viewers, as we compile this weeks videos we’ve seen around the traps …

 (image via The Conspiracies of Ha-Ha by Kieran Mangan)

Kieran Mangan has been doing a whole series of comics based on The Conspiracies of Ha-Ha lately, they’re fkn hilarious, and they want to turn it into a book – go and check it out, and donate to this more than worthy cause!! You should also check out this great video of Ha-Ha as he talks about his work, street art in Melbourne … and his theories on several conspiracies … but, seriously, if you haven’t seen the comic yet, you should!

Drypnz has a show coming up on Friday night, and he did this ultra cool preview trailer for it – take a look, its kinda fantastic as hell.

We missed this one a few weeks ago, but we wanted to put it up in light of his upcoming show – Drypnz does some silos. Nice

Michael Pecks show "The Landing" opened last night, and it was simply incredible. This is a really great short feature documentary on the artist and his work – also, check out the first part of our two aprt feature on Mr Peck here.

Just when we think we’ve seen everything that D*Face has been up to, Artygraffarti posts up some fun filled hotel room pasteup adventures from the man – very cool.

Prizm, Ben Frost and Anthony Lister teamed up recently for some tattoo mayhem. Mad!

Ben Frost Ghetto Ink from The Institute of Excellent on Vimeo.

"Acclaim Magazine sat down with Sydney born and bred, Tokyo based, Graphic Artist and co-founder of China Heights gallery Mark Drew to get the lowdown on his hat design for New Era" – he also has a show coming up in December, which we’ll let you know more about soon. Great collab this one!

I think that’s all we have for this week, apologies if we missed anything! You can send links through to any cool videos you may have or that you have seen here.Rockin!

Not only do those cool crew over at Dangerfork have a mad popup shop running at the moment, but they also have a few shows here and there in the space. This one, however – well, we LOVE robots (yeah, we do have a slight obsession with them, we must admit), so how can we not post up about this show? This is TONIGHT!

We’ve seen Roman around the streets, and now there’s a chance to check him out as his creator, Andrea Prosciutti unleashes him at the popup shop.

"Andrea was born and raised in Rome, Italy but now lives in Melbourne, Australia. A self-taught designer, he has been drawing since childhood he drew influence from 80′s skateboard art and European/American underground art . His passion for art has lead to experimentation in many mediums and many kinds of communications such as storytelling (comics/graphic novels/picture books), paintings and illustrations. He has also worked in the fashion and commercial art industries in Europe, the US and Australia.

Andrea is also the man behind Roman Skateboards, a company that he established in 1996. He does all the design and illustrations for the boards and t-shirts and is also responsible for the guerilla advertising campaign you can see in the streets on Melbourne."

Check out some of the setup and preview images (Pics borrowed from over at Dangerfork!)

We’ll just say it once more for good measure … ROBOTS <3

Who: Andrea Prosciutti
What: Roman The Green Robot
Where: Dangerfork Popup shop – 143 Johnston St, Collingwood, Melbourne, VIC
When: Thursday 17th November, 6pm and runs til Sunday 20th November! Gallery opens 10am til 5pm.

Check out the Dangerfork website, Roman Skateboards and the facebook event page for more details!

Invurt went to Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange last night to see Pierre Lloga and Heesco do some live art for the event at Melbournes Docklands. It was a pretty interesting night, as Smirnoff went all out in creating a unique nightlife experience.

With four differently themed rooms, we found ourselves mostly in the “urban streets” with Heesco and Pierre scribbling their wall of ghouls, heros and ladies over a dancefloor blasting some of the freshest house tracks, all as people pedalled away through the streets of Italy on a virtual bike ride. The Paris/Milan room, with some of the hottest models strutting their stuff across a catwalk headed by some great DJ’s at the front was also fun. This room then led through to the Arctic wonderland,complete with industrial sized fans, snow machine from Dean Sunshines Snowmasters, and video games (Ah, theres just something about chicks and fans!).

Finally through a long corridor into the main massive Smirnoff rave, it seemed. With a big stage, swirling visuals, thumping sound system and impressive light show. Once Heesco and Pierre finished off their piece, the scafolding was removed and we got to see the piece in all its glory – theres just something about the combination of these two artists work that pops off the page, it was an amazing collaboration!

Smirnoff pulled all the stops to make this a massive night, and the Invurt crew enjoyed themselves immensely – so please enjoy the photos from the event … for more photos from the night, check out the Facebook Gallery on our page.

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For more photos from the night, check out the Facebook Gallery.

Cocoa Jackson studios in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick will be having an elevenses shindig this Friday, with eleven artists and eleven DJs.

If you haven’t heard of Cocoa Jackson just yet, you should have – this newly minted studio up Brunswick way is set to start moving and shaking into 2012, and its on our definite list of places to make sure we check out over the coming months.

“Cocoa Jackson Studios is a creative space in Brunswick, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. We specialise in street art: street art workshops, tours, sales, exhibitions, repairs, walls and production. Yes. Repairs. If you’ve got a piece and it’s been tagged, we can sort it for you.

The studios are for working artists to use flexibly. Check out the photos on our wall or refer to Creative Spaces.

Cocoa Jackson Lane was named as a tribute to respected local identity, West Indian Fred James, who lived in Edward Street, Brunswick from 1930 to 1979.”

Definitely big things ahead, and it’s already happening – if you’re up north of the river way, head over to CJ this Friday night and see whats what with this grand new studio space.

Who: Heesco, E.L.K. and Junky Projects confirmed thus far ..
What: 11.11.11 group show – free event
Where: Cocoa Jackson Lane, Brunswick, VIC
When: Show opens 6:30pm (the vinyl fair was postponed) Friday 11th November, and runs til late.

Check out the Cocoa Jackson website, the Cocoa Jackson Facebook page and the facebook event page for more info.

After we interviewed him a month or two ago, prior to his solo show "House Of Giants", we heard rumour that Fintan Magee would be heading down to the ‘burn for a little while – well, he arrived, and in the time since his extraordinary work has been showing up all over the place.

As part of his trip down here to Melbourne, he will be doing a showing over at the superb RTIST Gallery with his next body of work "Paper Plains" – and if his pieces on the streets and the canvases from his last show is any indication – wow, this one is going to be off the hook!

"The Paper Plains collection of paintings, drawings and installation works add an unexpected magic to the mundane and forgotten objects of everyday life. The world may be round, but a box can still provide hours of entertainment to those with a little imagination.

Born in Lismore NSW, and growing up in Brisbane, Fintan Magee began drawing as a young child. Exposed to Brisbane’s graffiti culture in his teens, Magee began to scrawl his name across the city in large vibrant letter forms. Moving away from traditional graffiti in recent years, Magee has started to explore new ideas and imagery within his painting. In the last year he has created some of the largest and most striking street pieces in Australia.

His bold guerilla mural works often combine still life painting of found objects with installation elements. Magee’s works explore themes of waste, consumption, loss and transition. They contain a sentimentality and softness influenced by children’s books. While many artists sustain their lifestyles with day jobs unrelated to their creative practice, Magee hones his skills regularly in gainful employment as one of Brisbane’s premier muralists. He has been responsible for many of Brisbane’s progressive new large scale public artworks, which frequently pop up around Brisbane’s inner-city suburbs.

Magee’s work can also be seen gilding the interior of many local restaurants, clubs and hip clothing stores. More recently in the lead up to his first Melbourne solo show, Magee has coloured the city with various murals and paste-ups, including a 3 story mural in West Melbourne. 

The diligence, technical skill and progressive approach Magee employs in his work has already received acclaim across the country. Magee has been a finalist of the Prometheus, Lethbridge and Churchie art awards and this year won the Cliftons Art Prize ‘People’s Choice’ Award. He has painted across Australia, Europe and the USA and his work adorns the walls of many discerning art collectors."

Who: Fintan Magee
What: Paper Plains solo show
Where: RTIST Gallery, 29 St Edmonds Road, Prahran, VIC
When: Show opens Friday 18th November 6pm til 9pm, and runs til Sunday 4th December

Check out RTIST Gallery as well as Fintans website for more info on this upcoming show. Also check out a special preview video (we’ll have this one up in this weeks Transmissions also).

Over the last few days, D*FACE has been traversing the streets, pasting up and leaving his mark on the ‘burn in the leadup to his show at Metro Gallery tomorrow night. Accordingly, much of it was documented along the way … the team at Bright Things TV caught up with him on Saturday and sent us through some great shots …

That man about town, who seems to capture everything and anything thats happening, Dean Sunshine, also got a whole slew of great images from his visit.

You can check out the rest of Deans shots over at his website. Theres also a whole bunch of preview shots from his show up.

If you have any photos you’d like us to post up, just send them through to us for our Snapshots!

Buckle up all – we’ll be taking a small hiatus next Thursday from our Thursday Transmissions, but, never fear – we’ll have something even better for you; live blogging, photos, video and much more goodness all from the wonderful Cockatoo Island in Sydney.

For today though, check out some of the goodness that is in video land this week …

This new documentary about Melbourne Street Art will be showing at ACMI over the next few weeks. The documentary focuses on one of the pivotal cities amongst the Australian graffiti and street art scenes, and traverses its scene over twenty one years – it looks amazing, and we can’t wait to check it out

This video from Peter Drew and Ronnie Chin that we had sent to us is damn cool – outlaws pasted up across Adelaide …

Sofles and Vans The Omega hit up Boardshop not so long ago, checkit!

Brisbane Heat? No worries!

Ahh… yeah, its been quite this week, we tried! Hope you enjoyed these ones though, and see you in Sydney next week …