Sunday May 31, 2009

Art walkabout of Melbourne's alleyways

Stories by JUNE H.L. WONG

Melbourne has made an art out of turning alleys into tourist attractions.

BACK lanes and alleyways aren’t supposed to be tourist attractions so what was I doing wandering down one with walls and trash cans covered in graffiti? Because I was in Melbourne, Australia, and somehow this city has managed to turn what most people consider as a nuisance and vandalism into a vibrant art form.

In the last five years, the city has become internationally recognised for providing council-approved public space for such free-spirited artists whose works are out in the open for everyone to see.

It was with this in mind – reinforced by my daughter’s interest as a fine art student – that I decided to go off the beaten shopping track in search of street art when we visited Melbourne last month.

Art and trashcans co-exist in selected Melbourne alleys where people come out for a chat or a smoke.

Our guide was Fiona Sweetman, who runs the award-winning Hidden Secrets Tours. We met her at Federation Square, very much the meeting place in Melbourne these days.

Opened in October 2002, Fed Square, a mix of boxy buildings housing museums, restaurants and open spaces, has become the cultural and civic centre of the city.

The Square is impressive with its multi-million dollar carefully orchestrated development like the Atrium, a environmentally friendly building that is a hanging cantilever with no pillars. But under Sweetman’s breezy tutelage, a visitor quickly begins to see art in the most unlikely of places.

An early stop in the tour is Mailbox 141, an alternative art space that is so unexpected it makes you smile.

Its name explains its genesis: this is a row of old wooden letter boxes on a wall on the landing of a staircase in a building at 141, Finders Lane, in the heart of the city’s arts precinct.

Since November 2006, the boxes have housed original art that use the little spaces in clever and highly creative ways. As we peered at Louise Blyton’s Kobold Cave it was almost like looking at art created for a dollhouse.

If not for Sweetman and guides like her, the visitor, and apparently even many Melburnians, wouldn’t know of quirky public art spaces like Mailbox 141, where the exhibits change every two months.

If Mailbox 141 presented a small space for art, a different kind of “canvas” awaited us out in the alleys.

Sweetman led us to Hosier Lane (the street name recalls its early days as a garment-making district), opposite Fed Square, and came face-to-face with walls bursting with colour. What ignoramuses like me would consider as graffiti has been transformed into legit visual communication, sanctioned by the authorities and building owners.

Hosier Lane plays host to artists who go by their “street cred” names like Happy, Ha Ha, Miso, Al Stark, Phibs and Debs. As Sweetman explains, these people are street artists by choice; most have “day jobs” such as graphic designers, who show their works at respected art galleries.

Ha Ha, whose real name is Regan Tamanui and describes himself on his website as “Australia’s most prolific and notorious stencil artist”, is famed for his take on pop culture and personalities. On Hosier Lane is a drug dealer character from the popular TV series, Underbelly, which Ha Ha artfully stencilled behind grilles on the wall, to mimic prison bars.

Melbourne’s Hosier Lane, with its murals, stencils and Citylights box installations, offers some of the best examples of a vibrant street art culture supported by the authorities.

Debs’ style reminded me very much of Bratz dolls and as our tour progressed, I found I could pick out her work in other laneways.

An amazing thing about such street art is that no one – not even the artist – knows how long a work will last. Ha Ha’s Underbelly tribute is pretty old at about five or six years, according to Sweetman, but others last just months or even weeks.

My daughter was completely smitten and took numerous photos – for reference, she insisted – and it was hard to pull her away.

“It makes the city so much more interesting and the art on the walls is so authentic and so from the heart, it’s great,” she mused enthusiastically.

We learned from Sweetman that such street art is, in a way, graffiti grown up. The movement started about a decade ago and matured within five years. Among the earliest proponents was Andrew MacDonald, who set up the Citylights project comprising boxed-up installations on alley walls that were lit up. The earliest set of light boxes is in Hosier Lane. After 10 years, they are showing signs of age.

“Most street artists in Melbourne are in their mid-20s to 30s. They are not homeless nor in gangs. But they were artists who couldn’t get into the art galleries and this city, which has a very cultural, philanthropic environment, provided the public space for them to put up their work,” explained Sweetman.

Now galleries sell them but some of the artists haven’t forgotten their street roots and remain faithful to, and even enjoy the freedom of, their al fresco canvases.

The range of techniques displayed is unexpected: mural, stencil, paste-up, freehand spray-can and right at the bottom, tagging (mainly words sprayed over other people’s work, which is often viewed as vandalism).

But as Sweetman added, “Street art can be confusing – some cities embrace it, others don’t.”

She shows off other streets that are filled with art, including Rutledge Lane and Union Lane. Along the way, she took quick detours to places of interest such as the City Library to show us yet more art spaces.

At the library is a wall for budding video artists to project their films or pictures and a piano, which anyone can play “as long as it’s not Chopsticks”, quipped Sweetman.

We also had lightning visits to small, dinky die Melburnian retailers located in heritage buildings like the Royal Arcade, the Block and the Nicholas Building and strolled through connecting alleys bursting with cafes and bars that are full of character.

One downright quirky cafe is Pushka on Presgrave Place, which is a hole-in-a-wall that reputedly serves great coffee and bagels. It has been described as “uber grunge” for its well-decorated walls, supplemented with little framed prints of paintings that the owners presumably like, and wheeled trashcans. Seating is limited to a few tables out in the open next to the bins but no one seems to mind.

Intricate stencilled art of two women drinking by street artist Miso on a wall in Little Bourke Street.

By the end of our two-hour tour, I was amazed to find that we were very close to where we had started: the Federal Coffee Palace located on the covered walkway of the refurbished old GPO building, a short distance from Fed Square. According to Sweetman, we had walked some 2.4km covering just two-and-half blocks.

Two days later, we took another art tour, this time with the pixie-like Bernadette Alibrando, who runs Walk to Art tours.

But first, we had to find her. My instructions were to meet at Brother Baba Budan on Little Burke Street. After some anxious moments, we found it – a cafe so cool that it doesn’t bother with a signboard.

It was crowded with people queuing for coffee or sitting in the tight little space drinking the brew. We found Alibrando holding court with others who had signed up for the tour.

While Sweetman is a savvy generalist who knows the city inside out, Alibrando is a passionate art maven. An artist who also works as a consultant, she shows where artists work and display.

From Brother Baba Budan, our group comprising visitors and Melburnians, walked to Niagara Lane. It looked like any other back alley with nothing to distinguish it, not even a decorated brick or dustbin, until Alibrando told us to look up.

Suspended high on one wall was a white steel staircase that led to nowhere. A plaque says it’s by Raafat Ishak, an Egyptian-born artist who arrived in Melbourne in 1982. The installation, called Organisation for Future Good Steps, was missing several steps and railings.

I read later that the dodgy staircase cramped between the walls of the narrow alley is to “amplify the aesthetics of proximity while expounding the rigours of anxiety, distance and delirium.”

Alibrando had a simpler explanation: “It represents the corporate ladder and those who get on it should beware of the pitfalls – you can lose your health, friends and family on the way up.” And, I would like to add, it can be a long way down, too.

Steps was one of several artworks by the Laneways Commissions Project at six lanes that are on display from about five to nine months. The project gives space and licence to artists who love a challenge because what the commission is looking for are works that can “generate multiple layers of interaction, ranging from a casual glance to prolonged intimate engagement.”

Suitably engaged, Ailbrando herded us towards Nicholas Building and up to the sixth floor to an artist’s studio.

Stephen Giblett, 29, is a struggling artist. At least that’s the impression we got. Alibrando told us he had been at his craft for about seven years. And he looked the part in his blond Ah Beng haircut and paint-stained jacket.

His bare studio is dominated by a worn-out sofa against one wall and a huge painting on the other. It’s his masterpiece, which he had just finished after labouring over it for one-and-a-half years, and it’s brilliant.

It’s a painting of a beach where the blinding white sand is offset by a vivid blue sky. Sandwiched between the two is a cliff that serves as the backdrop for beach boxes and boats. A gorgeous bikini-clad girl seems to be walking past. Hence its title, Walk On By.

It is so startlingly realistic that it’s surreal. But that’s not a term Giblett is comfortable with as he thinks it’s passe. He describes himself as a “hyper-real artist”.

Walk On By was a commissioned work. Giblett sold another piece in Adelaide recently but he doesn’t know who bought it. It was my Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man moment.

We made stops at two art galleries – one that showed budding artists and the other, an exhibition by established sculptor and painter Anne-Marie May.

The climax of our tour, however, was visiting Rosslynd Piggott, a highly regarded Australian artist who has had 25 exhibitions and whose work hangs in the Australian National Gallery. Piggott has been described as shy and private; it was thanks to Alibrando’s good contacts that we were allowed up to her studio on Brunswick Street.

Piggott, 50, works in a studio that is a far cry from Giblett’s. Bright, clean and soothing, it has excellent natural light and leads up to a roof garden.

She is currently working on a series of sculptures and very zen-like paintings that seek to capture the shades of colours of the magnolia flower for an exhibition in Brisbane in July.

For my artist-in-training daughter, both Sweetman and Alibrando’s tours provided an incredible insight into the work spaces of artists and an appreciation of Melbourne’s generosity of spirit towards them. I don’t know if she’ll end up with a spray can in hand or powerful installations at our own National Art Gallery, but it’s gratifying to know the possibilities before her are endless.

For more information on walking tours in Melbourne, visit www.hiddensecretstours.com and www.walktoart.com.au

Related Story:
Foodies’ paradise