Citylights
January 1, 2009
Laneway aesthetics? Hey, the writing's on the wall, and it's all a matter of taste! According to a poll conducted by the Lonely Planet guide, Melbourne's laneways are some of the most popular cultural attractions in te country, ahead of Kakadu and Federation Square.
Melbourne's laneways, once home to a thriving rag trade, now the domain of a vibrant urban art scene. Watching from his Hosier Lane gallery, Andy Mac, founder of the Citylights project, explains just why Melbourne's laneways are an outdoor canvas for Melbourne's graffiti and stencil artists and sheds some light on the crossover between the street and the gallery.
You only have to stroll down Hosier Lane in the heart of the city's grid pattern to appreciate the transformation of the streetscape from thoroughfare to public gallery, and how intrinsic Melbourne's public art spaces are to the city's street culture.
Layers upon layers of work, small and large, overlap and jostle for your attention as you walk from the prestigious Federation Square, west along Hosier Lane. A kaleidoscope and frenzied amount of work surrounds every wall space ‑ stencils of pop stars, cartoon characters reaching up several stories and protruding light boxes exhibiting familiar images of cars, strolling pedestrians and appropriated examples of the street around you. Looking ahead, recognition of the architectural masterpiece not far behind is stylistically around one of the cafe doors in the lane, adding to the chaotic patterning of the graffiti slogans. The combined effect of this outdoor palette is somewhat overwhelming, but also fabulously engaging.
Art raconteur Andy Mac fondly, enthusiastically and historically explains the importance and visual impact of Hosier Lane and feels proud of the public displays he has been involved with since 1996. Mac has a strong sense of history and attributes his activism, perhaps his motivation and love of this transient art form to his upbringing. His parents moved many times during his early adolescence. Mac was always fascinated by the commercial images he saw in his youth and feels his skateboarding background helped pave the way for his current vision of the urban landscape.
After returning home from a campervan expedition, Mac was faced with the reality that the old ways of learning a craft through the artist‑apprentice framework were long gone, so he decided to take up the challenge and study his passion ‑ photography at the VCA. It was here technique and skill were mastered and the ultimate shaping of his identity and future career path were formulated.
"What you're seeing out there is a community of artists. We began this type of public display back in the original Citylights space in Centre Place. I guess the light boxes have created a context for other street artists to feel justified, even accepted in their quest to express themselves, in a medium often misrepresented by our society at large. It's a difficult vernacular graffiti, but that's what makes it so appealing to the majority of artists who choose to walk the thin line.'
Although Mac is not solely responsible for the transformation of Melbourne's laneways into public art spaces, his sense of history and social justice has certainly helped pave the way for a younger generation of artists looking to express themselves in a new language.
"Graffiti art created the space for other urban art forms to flourish. It was the taggers and renegade street artists who, through their illegal undertakings, created an atmosphere and a desire for younger artists to undertake this form of public art. In some ways, the fact graffiti is not a visceral comprehended language means the art form has maintained its edgy credentials."
Citylights project was conceived with multiple outcomes in mind. Designed firstly as a counter‑cultural expression of public dismay at the gentrification of the CBD's laneways, the project has grown in scale and philosophy. Moving from its original Centre Place location to its current location in Hosier Lane, the project aims to present art to a wider audience, outside the restrictions and established forms of display in commercial galleries, and recognises the way visual language is utilised and presented through various forms of advertising and the mass media.
"Everyone seems so exhausted by the amount of information we are bombarded with daily. We don't seem to have time to really engage or adequately comprehend all of this information. The light boxes therefore seem familiar to us, yet in their public context in the laneways, provide us with ad‑hoc images, somewhat disconnected and bizarre in content. They also question how information is visually presented to a wider audience in a non-structured, less‑bureaucratic environment. This allows for an open audience and stops the intergenerational divisions that can occur in the commercial gallery scene."
Artworks can be clarified under different brandings throughout Melbourne's laneways, from traditional tags (calligraphic‑based letter forms) to large‑scale appropriated political spray images to street poster works borrowing catchphrases and jingoistic points of difference. Mac's favourite pieces inspire many a passerby. The large portrait‑style graffiti piece is of Hunter S. Thomson in his early 20s. The artist who created this work was a young Korean guy who was here for six months or so as a foreign exchange student.
"The young Korean guy dropped around to the gallery a few times, painted a few portraits and a few pieces on a girl he was keen on" Mac points out. "This kind of graffiti has its roots in portraiture, a tradition from NYC and LA commemorating heroes and fallen friends. In particular, it's a Latino style."
Another piece which has a prime location in the laneway is below the current Citylights box exhibition by Ash Nolan, who works in a digital drawings style looking at various locations around Melbourne's laneways. It's by Adnate of Awol I crew. This style or type of graffiti is characterised by 3‑D perspective and abstracted letterforms overlapping and running behind each other. The AWOL crew seems to draw on angular, jagged calligraphic styles.
Melbourne's urban art scene, like any form of artistic expression, has evolved and metamorphosed in recent years. The breadth of the medium has matured and some may say a more sophisticated form of graffiti, called 'stencilling' has emerged. Notorious internationally acclaimed artists such as Banksy have created a somewhat cult status among their fraternity, using political satire, familiar images and emotionally charged and targeted slogans to entice the audience.
With the emergence of a more commercialised and recognised counter-cultural scene and the promotion of festivals such as the Fitzroy‑based Melbourne Stencil festival, the growing demand for artists to express themselves in this format is growing. A crossover between the gallery‑based environment and the street seems to be narrowing.
"Heaps of street art is being ripped off and absorbed into T‑shirts, magazines and the music industry," laments Mac. "Like everything else that comes from the counter‑cultural movements, the fashion and advertising industries feed and absorb it into their products. This creates both positives and negatives for artists, who need to survive by perhaps making money from the sale of art, but the reverse effect is the environments they work in become fashionable, rents go up and the artists get moved on."
Soho in New York has faced the same perils in the past. Jean‑Michel Basquiat roamed the streets of Soho, inspired by the language and fluidity of his environment, frowned upon as a vagabond and was eventually absorbed and celebrated as the one of the rising stars of the commercial art scene some years later.
The Citylights project can be visited in Hosier Lane, between Flinders Street and Flinders Lane, just opposite Federation Square. For current public art displays it's all a matter of chance. We wouldn't have it any other way when visiting Melbourne's famous laneways.
Writer: Simon Carver
Photograpy: Andrew Lecky