If you're a follower on instagram you may be aware that I like to snap pictures of street art in Melbourne. I've never lived anywhere before where street art is such a valued and celebrated part of the artistic culture of the place. Melbourne loves street art. In this area particularly (around Fitzroy) businesses actually go out of their way to have their buildings decorated as a kind of advertising: a woman with long flowing locks (naked) on the side of a hairdresser's building; a humanoid cat (again, naked) where once there was a cattery. Those are however two unusual examples because the art doesn't generally feature naked women/felines, but even in those cases, there's nothing graphic.
I've begun to collect images of some of my favourite pieces of art. Though I don't know who created most of them, there are two artists I'm familiar with - Kaffeine and Lucy Lucy - and I'll start with a gorgeous collaboration they did near here a few months ago.
This is another piece by Kaffeine discovered in the CBD. You can see how much she loves animals, and I personally love her style. We had the opportunity to meet her at her Berry Street charity book launch and we offered her the big white wall in our apartment! (If we are lucky enough to have her paint it, I will certainly share pictures.)
These two are from the CBD and Fitzroy respectively, and quite different in scale. The ballerina is just on a wall beside a cafe, not much bigger than your hand. My picture of the skeleton is quite old and I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was about knee-high and seems to be made of paper pasted onto the wall. It's so great to be doing something boring, like walking through the CBD, and just find yourself surprised by a bit of guerilla metropolitan decorating.
This is a selection of wall-size murals around Fitzroy and Collingwood. I couldn't do justice to the top image at the time of day I was photographing it, but there is an outline of a bird's skull and beak over the woman's face, and it is painted up the side of a multi-level building; quite a sight to behold. The next two were both found while wandering around industrial Collingwood. It's a quiet area with a lot of warehouses that doubles as a giant art gallery.
I've begun to collect images of some of my favourite pieces of art. Though I don't know who created most of them, there are two artists I'm familiar with - Kaffeine and Lucy Lucy - and I'll start with a gorgeous collaboration they did near here a few months ago.
This was all one continuous piece but it was hard to fit into one photo, so here's a collection of mine and Lachy's instagram photos of it. I'm not usually stuck in between the cow and the girl. In fact, this mural didn't last long before it was painted over by a piece I don't like at all and which hasn't been painted over since. I don't know what the ethics of painting over someone else's work is, but I'm sure it's the nature of the job and street artists know their work is temporary.
These two are from the CBD and Fitzroy respectively, and quite different in scale. The ballerina is just on a wall beside a cafe, not much bigger than your hand. My picture of the skeleton is quite old and I'm not sure if he's still there, but he was about knee-high and seems to be made of paper pasted onto the wall. It's so great to be doing something boring, like walking through the CBD, and just find yourself surprised by a bit of guerilla metropolitan decorating.
This is a selection of wall-size murals around Fitzroy and Collingwood. I couldn't do justice to the top image at the time of day I was photographing it, but there is an outline of a bird's skull and beak over the woman's face, and it is painted up the side of a multi-level building; quite a sight to behold. The next two were both found while wandering around industrial Collingwood. It's a quiet area with a lot of warehouses that doubles as a giant art gallery.
These images just give you an idea of how some areas of Melbourne are saturated with art; there's nothing like walking down a laneway lit up at night in an immersive haze of colour. The last image is of a building in Fitzroy which I believe to be the studio of a few artists.
I'm a country girl at heart, but as cities go, this one is pretty beautiful.
