Painting the town
By Michael Quin
Down Melbourne’s city laneways, behind the burst bin bags and collapsed cardboard boxes, amid the rotten laneway smells, there are whispers of a renaissance.
One artist, under the nom de plume KAB 101, says it’s a secretive art movement the public doesn’t know much about.
Another artist, the UK’s famous Banksy, says it’s “Australia’s most significant contribution to the arts since they stole all the Aborigines’ pencils”.
All this talk about what the bold colours and cheeky stencils have themselves already announced: Melbourne’s arrival on the world stage of street art.
Gallery owner, Andrew Mac, says the graffiti, stencil and sticker art scenes here are more alive than ever, and have begun turning heads near and far.
“The depth of talent in the scene here has led to worldwide acknowledgment of Melbourne,” he says.
While some might prefer the street art scene to fade, international recognition is flooding in, savvy operators are cashing in, and authorities are even chipping in. For anyone still doubting its arrival as a major force in Melbourne – the writing, as they say, is on the wall.
On one such wall in 2007, near the Flinders Lane police station, Banksy stenciled his trademark character of a deep-sea diver in a duffel coat. Melbourne City Council, with backing from Heritage Victoria, rewarded his cheek by protecting the work, resulting in the strange sight of an illegal stencil, defined as vandalism, protected from vandalism behind a clear Perspex screen.
While government policy may endeavor to be black and white, with street art it rarely is. In recent months the State Government has attracted criticism for championing two, apparently opposing, approaches. One is the official promotion of street art, the other is the criminalisation of that same art through the new Graffiti Prevention Act.
Heritage Victoria and Australia’s National Trust are leading official calls for the protection of some street art sites. The Trust’s cultural heritage manager, Tracey Avery, says this is in line with the idea of graffiti as an art form gaining more general acceptance.
“Graffiti is a unique part of Melbourne’s urban fabric,” she says. “Particularly in our laneways, which attract a huge amount of visitors and contribute to the city’s vibrancy.”
And attract visitors it does. Lonely Planet recently announced the results of an online survey in which Melbourne’s laneway art was voted the most popular Australian tourist attraction, while operators catering for the new market in laneway tours have begun springing up.
The State Government’s statutory authority, Tourism Victoria, is capitalising on this wave of interest with its latest interstate ad campaign, which features graffiti murals from Centre Place arcade. Internationally too, at Florida’s Epcot Food and Wine Festival last month, graffiti murals were included in the Tourism Victoria display.
Tourism Victoria’s Don Richter says street art has added to the laneway culture of our city in a unique way that is increasingly popular with visitors and locals alike.
“People decorating the city streets have made them really interesting places to explore, and I think visitors really connect with that,” he says.
But State Government support for “people decorating the city streets” seems forgotten in the face of the Graffiti Prevention Act, which came into effect last June and was billed by Police minister, Bob Cameron. as a zero-tolerance crackdown.
“The community is fed up with the graffiti scourge,” Mr Cameron said. “This new legislation makes it clear graffiti vandalism is a serious crime that carries tough penalties.”
Graffiti Hurts Australia CEO, Scott Hilditch, said zero-tolerance was the only way to send a signal that graffiti, with its clean-up cost of $260,000 a year for local government, was unacceptable.
The legislation allows spot searches of minors as young as 14 and penalties for possessing graffiti implements or being caught in the act, ranging from on-the-spot fines of $550 to maximum penalties of two years in prison.
YouthLaw CEO, Ariel Couchman, has raised concerns about the laws, particularly their reversal of onus for possessing graffiti implements.
“Such fundamental changes in the law are usually only flagged for serious adult crimes such as rape, murder and drug dealing,” she says. “The penalties are excessive and particularly inappropriate given many offenders will be young people.”
YouthLaw’s Tiffany Overall adds the policy is not just heavy handed, but also contradictory – something young people have a hard time accepting.
“It’s sending very confusing signals, if on the one hand they’re trying to get people to come and check out our graffiti – and we’re still seeing whole laneways in the city being dedicated to street art – but then at the same time kids are going to have cops coming after them if they’re carrying a spray can. And I don’t know how young people deal with that,” Ms Overall says.
Meanwhile, YouthLaw are reporting a rise in spot searches of young people since the Act began. They say this reflects the policy’s floor in dragging more young people into the criminal justice system for what are essentially minor property offences.
Georgie Ferrari, CEO of the youth services peak body, YECvic, says there is no evidence to suggest one-off incidents of graffiti lead to a life of crime, meaning the harsh criminalisation of one-off offenses is unjustified. Nor is she convinced that a zero-tolerance approach will work.
“In consultations we have run with young people who graffiti, we have been told that tougher penalties will not be an effective deterrent,” Ms Ferrari says. “The harsh response is not in the long term interests of the community.”
Andrew Mac, who works closely with young street artists in his Hosier Lane gallery, believes an obstacle to more constructive policy is the Government’s refusal to accept that people have always made graffiti, and always will.
“People say prostitution is the oldest industry, well I actually think it’s graffiti. People have always done graffiti. I think zero tolerance towards anything people are drawn to is a waste of time,” he says.
Mr Mac says for the thousands of young people he sees, eager for a creative outlet, the way forward has to focus more on education, specifically with regards to property and street art etiquette.
“A lot of the kids I see getting into the scene, and they are kids, are disenfranchised. But they don’t see themselves as criminals, they’re just on an adventure. The laws aren’t going to change their behavior, education will. It’s all about property. So how about mentoring to encourage responsible street art in the streets for these kids?” Mr Mac says.
Essentially, different eyes will always see different things in the same street, he says. What’s needed is education about where those views impact on others in unacceptable ways.
As Melbourne’s street art revival gains momentum, the logic of simple punitive measures may get left behind.
“I don’t want to live in a city that’s really bland and covered in grey and brown advertising,” says one of Melbourne’s young stencil artists, Vexta. “I never said it was OK to put a billboard on the top of Brunswick Street, so who’s to say that I can’t put up a small A4-size image in a back laneway?”
Labels: graffiti, melbourne laneways, stencil art
posted by Michael Quin at 11:33 PM
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