Australians love an argument. Walk into any local pub and you’ll find someone squabbling about something, somewhere. A healthy debate is part of our heritage – certainly not uniquely Australian, but nevertheless a comfortable past-time: akin, for some people, to exercise. And there’s one favourite that’s held our attention indefinitely, eternally – and we’re speaking about in pubs, right now.
‘Which city’s better: Melbourne versus Sydney?’ is Australia’s very own civil war, liable to incite verbal violence and sully otherwise sensible occasions.
As a Melburnian I’ve tried to understand it myself. Of course Melbourne is better than Sydney – but why? Naturally, the enemy pins itself on its environmental beauty – spectacular crystalline harbour waters joust with the picture-perfect white sands of Bondi within postcard stands – but we’re not bad-looking, too. Indeed, when Mark Twain travelled through Australia he summarized our rivals perfectly: ‘God made the Harbor … but Satan made Sydney’.
Melbourne’s a different town; we have no Opera House, no Harbour Bridge, but something different, something intangible and pulsing – a palpable energy you can’t see or touch, but feel.
In the midst of fierce debate we Melburnians attempt to quantify this intangibility, blustering over beers and spluttering over the indefinables as we defend the city we love.
In the end, it comes down to a word: culture.
This word is inevitably ineffective – the argument is perpetual, obviously – so we nobly try and realise the unrealisable and do what any stoic-city-defender would do: look for evidence.
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“Street art isn’t for anyone. It’s for everyone,” is low-budget documentary Melbourne INK‘s official credo – doubly serving as an apt summation of the film. It’s an easily accessible, briskly edited short that invites us to spend some time with artists have played their part in constructing Melbourne’s street art culture.
I’ll confess that aside from walking past it almost every other day, I pay little attention to street art. It’s not that I’m ignoring it specifically, it’s just that I’ve grown accustomed to seeing a piece of graffiti inscribed on a wall on my way to catch a train or grab a bite to eat.
Melbourne INK‘s genuine strength is in how this world – unknown to me – seems quickly real. Within seconds you understand that the individuals frantically scrawling on walls by moonlight are real people – not fictitious fly-by-night ‘artistes’. They demand from their surroundings a space to create – a place where art can breathe and reach an audience. The walls we walk past everyday are the ultimate canvas.
These artists are an eclectic group, too. It’s the first time many of them have shown their faces on film, but the payoff is immediate. We see the expressions of the different creators and understand the breadth of the film’s characters: some serious, some playful, some enjoying the infamy.
Essentially a collection of interviews – intercut with some timelapse ‘creation’ scenes – Melbourne INK ‘s twenty minute running time surprisingly doesn’t feel long; in fact, as the credits roll, there’s almost a need to know more – perhaps to understand the artists’ motivations, or their current undertakings. As a short documentary it’s made well - but it could have so easily failed. What’s missing is narrative; there’s nothing that binds these colourful characters beyond their need to create, no genuine external force that impedes their progress, no event that umbrellas the film as a whole.
What it is a snapshot: this is what street art in Melbourne is now – but not where it’s going. Focus to this end would have helped avoid the contradictions that lay between the interviewees; points of view collide without reaching a resolution, especially when they talk about the perceived relevancy of street art to galleries.
There are some interesting snippets on the city’s reaction to all of this. If it’s marketable it’ll be marketed – obviously – but the council’s position on the movement is entirely paradoxical. On the one hand the artists are outlaws, on the other, a major tourist attraction.
This illegality, too, is treated with both gravitas and a wry smile. For some, it’s constrictive and limiting, for others the urgency at which to create means slap-dash passion. And, in one of the more entertaining interview snippets, it means talented artist Ha Ha is the modern equivalent of Ned Kelly: a fiery, law-defying bushranger working for the greater good. It’s confusing, historically-mangled, mixed-metaphor stuff, but the bravado at which it’s delivered is genuinely appealing.
Ultimately, these are people indulging in what humans have done for centuries: drawn on walls. Sure, the surfaces are smoother and the tools more sophisticated, but the need to splash an image on a wall – cave or building – is universal and everlasting. And Melbourne, by its very design, is the perfect place for this controversial art form to grow and evolve.
Our celebrated system of laneways are indeed, the ideal studio - hidden away from the authorities at night, but bustling enough during the day for the work to find an audience. As creators converge on our city for this very reason, Melbourne’s vibrant arts community builds, strengthens and advances – and so the culture cycle continues.
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So I’m still blustering with beers and defining the indefinables. But my words are sharply realised: I’ve found an element of physical evidence of that one word that may just help settle that great debate. Street art is part of Melbourne’s culture; ingrained in and fostered on the very walls that comprise it.
