Melbourne Street Art

I wanted to continue my tradition of putting this up as a seperate post because the street art I found was spread throughout my time in the city, and it makes it easier to put it all in as one post instead of spreading it everywhere. Melbourne has an incredible amount of street art, possibly the highest concentration in the world. Although it does get a few international artists visiting, the vast majority of the art is done by locals. Unlike places like Berlin or London where it's easy for artists from neighboring countries to come over for a week and collaborate, Melbourne is pretty cut off, so they largely have to do things themselves. The city seems to take a much looser approach to street/graffiti art than a lot of places. They have dedicated areas for artists to paint freely, but a lot of restaurants, bars and other businesses also seem more willing to either hire artists to paint their buildings or to appreciate nice art that gets put on without permission, and leave it alone. I'm going to try include the artists where I can, since it'll be a good research project for me and add to my evergrowing mental database!

These three colourful pieces are all by artist Loadz (who I can't easily find any more information on) down Hosier Ln, across from Federation Square.

This large, patchwork mural is in Melbourne Chinatown, painted by a well-known french crew DMV (Da Mental Vaporz).

These two murals in the same little alley are done by prolific local artists Matt Adnate and Shida. I've actually come across artwork by both these artists (and posted both of them) earlier. Adnate does the almost photo-realistic faces, and I had a mural by him from Berlin (he likes the style where you have a piece of a face cut out from a larger design, which helps me recognize him!) and I had a collaboration from Shida and Knarf from Vienna. Shida in particular is all over the city (or at least most recognizably all over the city, since the style is very distinctive. Mostly Shida does these weird little creatures, and they seem to be down almost every alley with any sort of art all over the city.

Here's a couple more Adnate pieces from around the city as well. There aren't as many of them (but still lots) but you can tell they take quite a bit of time to put up.

Another Melbourne artist I really like is Japanese-born Hiroyasu Tsuri, aka TwoOne. The artwork I saw was all of human/animal hybrids, but they all have a dream-like quality to them, and the details in the features are gorgeous.

Much simpler, but equally distinctive is local artist Civil. He does murals (often large ones) of large crowds of stick figures. The ones I saw were pretty small compared to some of his other art I see posted online.

The final artist I have to mention is Ghost Patrol, since he's what got me interested in Melbourne street art in the first place. I first came across a sticker that he did in Berlin, then found more in Tokyo (which also gave me enough information to figure out who the stickers were by), and all through Melbourne I was keeping an eye out for his art. In the end, other than a few more stickers the same as the ones I'd already seen, the only street art of his I saw was this collaboration.

There is a very awesome art gallery / shop selling prints and books, primarily by street artists, in the city center called Outre (my stupid tablet won't let me put the accent on the e) which did have prints by ghost patrol, as well as a sketchbook by him, as well as a lot of amazing other artwork. I have enough to carry as it is and had to pass, but I might have to order some things online once I get back to Canada...

Here's a random assortment of a bit more artwork from around the city that I either haven't been able to figure out the artist of, or am just too lazy to keep looking for!