Comments on: Street Art: Melbourne’s unwanted attraction

By: Earthly beings indeed! | CROSSMEDIA ECOLOGY

Earthly beings indeed! | CROSSMEDIA ECOLOGY — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:37:17 +0000

[...] reformer, dreamer and visionary Marcus Westbury has claimed for the city’s street art that “At its best, Melbourne’s streets are full of smart, witty, funny, pretty, provocative, illuminatin…” But what, he asks, does the city and its fathers make of its gallery status, of its outlaw [...]

By: Earthly beings indeed! | Urban Codemakers

Earthly beings indeed! | Urban Codemakers — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:16:29 +0000

[...] mean for the city? Cultural reformer, dreamer and visionary Marcus Westbury has claimed for the “At its best, Melbourne’s streets are full of smart, witty, funny, pretty, provocative, illuminatin…” But what he asks does the city make of its outlaw art? There are 26 Space invaders in Melbourne. [...]

By: Google Ads: News.com.au buys Banksy | marcus westbury

Google Ads: News.com.au buys Banksy | marcus westbury — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:00:52 +0000

[...] As i wrote mid last year of Melbourne’s complex relationship with it’s own street art scene: [...]

By: Blender

Blender — Sun, 16 May 2010 23:25:55 +0000

Street art has made suburban people care about art. Art is for the people. As it should be. It is important to capitalize on this. Melbourne’s contempory art scene is so hot. And for the first time ever, people seem to care about it…Street art has been awesome for contempory artists. Gone are the dayz of snobby art critics and yuppy genralisations.

By: jacinta

jacinta — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:45:34 +0000

Enjoyed reading this. Mark Mordue has similar things to say about the commercialisation of music

By: Andrew Mac

Andrew Mac — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:44:11 +0000

Please note there is a lot of misinformation regrding Hosier Lane and legality.

Hosier Lane is NOT “legal”, and never has been and the City of Melbourne continues to have a bet each way by allowing incomplete and ill-defined language on their website, as referred to in the link posted below by Tim T.

Where it suits them, the City of Melbourne aim to imply that they support or even generate the conditions that have lead to street art proliferation.

The retrospective permits were forced on residents of Hosier Lane (who did not want nor need such permits) by the City of Melbourne under the insinuation of threat regarding fines for having ‘un-permitted art”.

The retrospective and unwanted permits do not mean that graffiti is legal in Hosier Lane, nor is it legal to do graffiti in Hosier Lane.

The permits and the general misinformation that Hosier Lane is “legal” has lead the decline in quality of art in this lane, as juvenile taggers and inexperienced public flock to the lane to add their own (oft ill-considered) marks, often over the better work.

Since 1998, to do art in Hosier has required invitation or commssion, or a high level of competence, knowledge and awareness of your environment and what you were doing in it. This community and peer based system has been destroyed by City of Melbourne meddling, and the street looks much worse for it.

The Hosier Lane community has requested that the City of Melbourne revoke these permits from Hosier Lane, and remove the misleading information from the website. They are yet to do so. As a community we are pissed off and feel that the City of Melbourne is disingenuous and exploitative in its approach to street art and Hosier Lane in general.

Hosier Lane is a highly contested and abused site.
Hosier Lane is and has always been a community-led street.

Andrew Mac
Citylights Projects and Until Never
Hosier Lane Melbourne

By: TimT

TimT — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:52:41 +0000

Ah, interesting to hear that about Hosier Lane and its retrospective legality. Wikipedia didn’t tell me anything, though it was a google search that bought up that Melbourne council page.

Here’s what I wrote a while ago about Melbourne graffiti:
http://willtypeforfood.blogspot.com/2007/02/multi-counter-cultural.html

By: Ben Farrelly

Ben Farrelly — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:16:14 +0000

your best article yet.

By: Jacek

Jacek — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:15:02 +0000

OOO there are so many ways to capitalise on the graffiti in Melbourne. I cannot believe premier Brumby cannot see how much money, he can possibly get out of it…

Why not appoint a graffiti committee to determine it a graffiti and its locations are artistic and if so offer the property owner a tax brake. Then hit Tourism Victoria for % of all the money they are making of the tourists that come to see the graffiti…

By: Marcus

Marcus — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:50:36 +0000

This column is from a couple of weeks ago. There is a delay between them appearing in the paper and appearing here due to a combination of wanting to give Fairfax a bit of exclusive time and my own laziness.

In relation to the city of Melbourne, the graffiti in Hosier lane was made retrospectively legal. After it had been there for a number of years and was attracting such a large number of people that it couldn’t be ignored, they decided to legalise it. There was the rather strange site (which we captured for series one of NQA but didn’t air) of DA notices appearing on the graffitied walls suggesting that they were the site of proposed legal walls. I probably should have mentioned that.