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!

Days 293: Brunswick & Smith

I'd spent a lot of my first couple of days in Melbourne wandering around the main rectangle of the city center, and felt it was time to venture to a different part of the city. Another of my Melbourne friends had recommended a particular part of the city, Fitzroy, around Smith Street and Brunswick Street (as well as many, many other suggestions) as being a particularily cultural part of the city full of interesting little shops, galleries, restaurants and bars. Not surprisingly this artistic and cultural influence also caused it to be another area full of street art. I didn't have a map figured out for this part, but there was enough around that it didn't require too much effort to find lots of art and I'm sure I missed huge amounts of it.

I don't really have too much else to say about the day. It was the first day of any real heat in Melbourne, but it was still a nice day to be out. I'm going to save most of the art for the next post summarizing all the street art, but here's one of the more iconic pieces of the area - the Fitzroy Everfresh mural.

Day 292: Treasure Hunting

In the morning my host was going to visit a friend and gave me a ride to Chapel Street, which is one of the major commercial areas and was between the neighborhood I was staying and the city center. I had an early lunch at a noodle restaurant and checked out a few shops in the area that caught my eye as I slowly worked my way north up the street, but I didn't spend too long in the area. Once I reached the Yarra River I followed along a path beside it until I got into the city near Federation Square.

My first stop in the city core was to visit the other half of the National Victoria Gallery - the international collection. I enjoyed it more than the Australia collection, which isn't a huge surprise since it obviously had a wider variety covering a longer period of history.

After the gallery my true hunt of the day began. Melbourne is another of the great street art cities of the world, and I set out to find the best places for it I could. Early on in my exploring I noticed some art down a covered alley and popped into it to look around, and was followed by a curious girl. She was also a traveller, from Switzerland, and was surprised because she had walked by this alley 4 or 5 times before and never noticed the art. My secret, I explained, was that I had a treasure map! I had spent the previous evening researching things to check out in town, both for street art and restaurants, galleries, shops and other little bits of interest. I had marked these on a city map and worked out a general route to go through everything. This specific alley wasn't actually one of the ones marked on my map, but when your mind is set on exploring and discovering interesting out of the way places it becomes much easier to notice things like that. My Swiss companion, having nothing better to do, joined me in my hunt and we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring streets and alleyways. Sometimes we'd wander off my marked trail as something caught our eye, and often led to something else, but we'd always work our way back and continue on.

I'm going to leave the collection of actual art for a post or two later, since there's so much of it, but suffice to say there was a lot of it, and some of it in pretty out of the way places.

After dinner it was already getting dark. I wandered back along the river to where all the stadiums are, and watched a bit of the Australian Open qualifiers (where people try to earn a place in the tournament) from afar.

Day 291: Killing Time

With the delay in leaving Jakarta I didn't get into Melbourne until sometime around noon. I'd heard from the first person I was planning on staying with that she was busy for the day so I agreed to come find her house at 8pm, leaving me with quite a bit of time before heading over. The only public transportation from the airport to the city is by bus that costs $17, which seems pretty extreme after having spent the last few months paying a couple of dollars for 4 or 5 hour bus rides. The weather was very cool compared to what I had been expecting, but I still didn't want to carry around all my bags while I waited so I stored them in a locker at one of the central train stations and explored town on foot.

I planned to save the street art hunting for later in the week, but it's impossible to miss entirely because there's so much of it everywhere. The central public space in Melbourne, Federation Square, has an alley full of street art almost directly across from it, and is surrounded by some of the major arts buildings in the city.

I popped into the central tourist information office in the square to look for ideas of what to do while in town, then went to the National Gallery of Victoria for a couple hours. The NGV is split into two different buildings, and I only visited the Australian artist building which is right next to Federation Square.

Getting access to wifi proved to be a bit of a problem and I was having a hard time figuring out what exactly was going on for meeting up with the person I was planning to stay with. In the end I had to retrieve my bags from the train station and just hope the last I had heard about meeting around 8pm was still in effect. Between the directions I'd been given earlier and my tablet's GPS I took the train to the right neighborhood and walked until I got to the apartment. There was no answer at the door, and I wasn't really quite sure what to do from there. Luckily while I sat on the curb trying to decide what to do next my host's roommate showed up and explained that things were going to be running really late, but that she'd been asked to let me in and get me settled - so in the end everything worked out.

Day 290: Cutting It Close

The previous day I had returned to the bus station as part of my city explorations to see about booking a bus ticket to Singapore for my flight out of Asia. At the office they told me that there were lots of free seats, and that if I just showed up the next day I could just get on one of the buses that left every hour. When I actually got to the bus station to do that though, I found out that the next two buses had been cancelled because nobody/not enough people had booked it. This meant that I had to take the 1pm bus for what was supposed to be about a 5 hour ride (including going through customs) to Singapore, and my flight left at 8:20pm. I wasn't sure how long it would take for me to get from the bus stop to the airport, or exactly how long before the flight the check-in counter closed, but I knew it would be tight.

I'm pretty good at planning out contigencies and figuring out how to streamline the events in my control as much as I can, and then not stressing out about the things outside of my control. I used the extra time I had at the bus station waiting for the later bus to eat and to convert the last of my leftover Malaysian currency into Singapore dollars so I'd have money for a metro ticket to the station, and once on the bus couldn't do much but sit and wait. It took just over 4 hours to get to the border, and with the two border stops and driving through to the city it took almost exactly the expected 5 hours. The stop was pretty close to the metro line, and I was lucky in that it was on the same line as the airport, and on the same side of the city. In the end I got to the airport with almost an hour and a half before my flight, which is plenty of time. In the end, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have worried as much as I did, because I find a lot of other people tend to plan things according to the best case scenario, which is basically what happened. I just know that there can be a lot of delays in a long bus trip crossing between countries, and only feel comfortable with a large buffer. In the end though, everything worked out this time.

My flight took me from Singapore to Jakarta where I was supposed to have a 1.5 hour layover. That turned into a 4.5 hour layover as there was an equipment problem with the plane and takeoff kept getting pushed back. Eventually they got things fingured out and we took off for the overnight flight to Melbourne.

Day 289: A Day in Malacca

I got to the city of Malacca (or Melaka) late in the morning and did my usual stubborn habit of walking from the bus station the few kilometers to my hostel. Malacca was made into a UNESCO site jointly with Georgetown, and they both have that architectural and cultural mix of a complicated colonial past. Malacca grew from a Malay fishing village to a major trading city for the Chinese before being captured and passing hands between the Portugese, Dutch, British and Japanese. Since I only had the single afternoon to explore the city I skipped having a nap despite being pretty exhausted by this point, and headed out to explore the city.

The central river though town that passed near the hostel was lined with buildings painted in colourful murals, mostly showing off aspects of local culture and history.

I followed the river down to the town center which contains a cluster of buildings that make up the local museum. The museum was quite varied and had a lot in it, but most of the information was just describing what things were, and there wasn't much historical / narrative information to really put any of it context.

Finally I walked back towards the hostel down Jonker Street. It's the major shopping street that has a lot of antique and artsy shops, and I had a good time browsing through things. I bought a new t-shirt and a pair of Thai fisherman pants to supplement my constantly evolving wardrobe.

Day 288: Travelling and Waiting

I got up early in the morning to take the first ferry off the island. Since we were on the far edge of town, I was the first on board and got to enjoy a nice ride seeing all the buildings along the island as we picked more people up.

Once on the mainland I had to squeeze into a van with 7 other people, none of whom spoke english fluently and 3 of whom were really argumentative about everything for the ride back to Medan. Luckily the ride that took about 7 hours getting in only took about 4 getting back, but this meant that I got to the airport about 8 hours before my flight. The Medan airport isn't exactly full of amenities, so it was a long wait. I mostly just worked through more of the book I'm reading.

The Kuala Lumpur LCCT airport is south of the city, in the direction I was going anyway. Once I got to the airport it was around 1am, and the bus I wanted to take south to Melacca didn't leave until 9am, so it was time for some more waiting. There were more things open here at least, and room to wander around a bit and to try to sleep, but it was a long day and night.