A Change of Art: Melbourne's Art Scene
June 1, 2011
The lifeblood of Melbourne’s art scene pumps through the veins of its CBD laneways and groovy galleries. Navigating this particular Victorian secret requires insider knowledge.
Deep in the labyrinth of Melbourne’s CBD, art appears in the most unexpected places. It pops up in a row of 19 glass-fronted mailboxes – surely Australia’s tiniest art gallery – in the tiled foyer of an art nouveau building in Flinders Lane. It lurks at the top of the stairs in a Georgian building where colonial artist Eugene von Guérard once lived in the 1850s (sarahscoutpresents.com). There is art in a pedestrian underpass, in pubs, in basement car parks and, most famously, lacquered all over laneway walls.
The Victorian capital’s artistic reawakening can be traced back to the early 1990s when a severe recession emptied city office blocks and slashed rents – ideal conditions for creativity to bloom. A small army of artists colonised empty buildings, transforming corporate cubes into vibrant studios or gallery spaces. One of the pioneers of the ’90s putsch was Andrew Mac, a Victorian College of the Arts graduate who captured the city’s new mood and the public’s imagination by turning abandoned shopfronts in Centre Place into a laneway art gallery. For the past 15 years, Mac has run Citylights (www.citylightsprojects.com), showcasing the work of more than 400 local and international artists in a series of permanent light boxes in Hosier Lane, the renowned street-art alley of which he is unofficial guardian.
“There were several thousand artists living and working out of the CBD,” says Mac. “In Flinders Lane, there were 25 or 30 buildings with artists’ studios in them.” Some of them went on to open businesses in the city – the first laneway bars, boutiques such as Alice Euphemia, and cafes and clubs that lent Melbourne its distinctive spirit. “Some of those businesses have been really influential in terms of the aesthetic and outlook of the city,” says Mac. “That’s what set the tone for the character of the CBD.”
Economic boom times and rising rents have forced many city-based artists to the suburbs or country in search of cheaper living, but Melbourne remains Australia’s most imaginative capital. Just how long the creative and the commercial can coexist is a matter for debate. Mac, for one, is pessimistic about art’s chances of survival in an ever more expensive city. “Artists make use of areas that no-one else wants,” he says. “While no-one was watching or cared about the city, artists came in and breathed new life [into it]. But I think we are on the cusp of losing a lot of that character.”
For now, Melbourne’s bluestone heart still beats with creativity, though it helps to know where to look. That’s where the knowledge of a passionate local comes in handy. Luckily, there are various tours that unlock the secrets of the city’s cryptic network of studios, galleries and street art, shedding light on the cultural life of the CBD.
Writer: Kendall Hill