So COVID-19 has certainly impacted the creative industries yet there are a number of artist opportunities and events arising. Here’s a list of projects on our radar which may be of interest.
Burwood Council invites Sydney artists or collectives to submit an application for the Hornsey Lane Murals project. This opportunity is for three selected artists or collectives to create a painted mural along Hornsey Lane. https://www.burwood.nsw.gov.au/public_art.html
Big Picture Festival Newcastle – Newcastle, New South Wales during October 2-4 2020 http://thebigpicturefest.com/
ACT Creative Endeavour Grants
GRANTS OF UP TO $10,000 AVAILABLE FOR STREET ARTISTS//GRAFFITI ARTISTS via Transport Canberra and City Services to undertake professional research and development and/or sustain their creative practice while facing pressures during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Nullawil Silo Art Precinct Grand Opening Postponed
Postponed due to COVID – Follow online for updates.
https://www.facebook.com/siloarttrail/
QLD
Brisbane Street Art Festival BSAF 2020 will include 41 new mural artworks across Brisbane and Ipswich, with dates for many of the artworks to be moved later into the year. As a first for 2020, BSAF is expanding to Ipswich to produce a series of large scale public artworks with renowned local and international street artists. We’re working hard to keep providing opportunities to artists and creatives throughout this crisis, while adhering to all health directions from the Federal Government and QLD Health. Keep an eye on our website for updates, and subscribe to our social media to watch artists at work as the altered program evolves!
Through the generous support of the Australian Federal Government, Salamanca Arts Centre has been awarded a Commonwealth Regional Grant of $200,000 towards the redevelopment of the Salamanca Arts Centre Courtyard.
Salamanca Arts Centre has engaged PlayStreet to develop plans for the Courtyard landscaping project, and as part of the overall redevelopment. This will also include a commissioned artwork as well as new furniture, both to be designed by a Tasmanian-based artist and designer/maker.
The Courtyard redevelopment will also include additional sound and lighting equipment and a redesigned performance stage. We expect that the Courtyard redevelopment project will be completed by November 2020 and ready to be opened to the public at that time.
NT Darwin Street Art Festival 2020 Due to current global circumstances, this year’s festival will showcase some of Darwin’s finest artists. Starting in May, a new artist will complete a mural every fortnight up until September. https://www.darwinstreetartfestival.com.au/
SA Wonderwalls Port Adelaide
Held from 6-8 March 2020 and hosted International street artists alongside South Australia’s emerging and professional artists.
On Friday 1 December I was lucky enough to take the Strategic Planning Team from Port Stephen’s Council out on a city adventure from Newcastle East to (nearly) Cooks Hill. It was positively rejuvenating to meet such an outgoing and vivacious team who had so many questions around the process of engaging artists and commissioning creative projects.
Newcastle East
Starting in Newcastle East at The Grain Store, which was The View Factory when This Is Not Art Festival used it as a canvas for walkARTbout, to show the energetic team some of the best creative projects in The City of Newcastle. Our walk revealed DIY gardens that residents share with those who walk by on the street, showing how residents taking pride in the public spaces has such a profound impact of creating a unique identity for places, including ground murals and bunting down secluded laneways.
Beach Street Newcastle East
The Newcastle Beach Tunnel is an example of a public artwork commissioned by The City of Newcastle as part of their Graffiti Management Program. The artwork by Trevor Dickinson (who first created Newcastle street art as part of walkARTbout in paste-up form) was commissioned in 2011 to rejuvenate wall which had the historic Time Tunnel mural by Birgitte Hansen which was painted in 1990. Twenty-one years had resulted in a great deal of wear and tear so a new commission was made. Respectfully, Trevor pays homage to the former artist on the wall by leaving a section of Hansen’s work to peek through his new design. Trevor’s work has become highly well-known since these two projects were completed and Newcastle is a key subject for his designs – one attendee on the tour even had a deck of his Newcastle Productions playing cards!
Estabar provided the perfect rest stop as we picked up our coffee for the journey from the start of Hunter Street through to a range of hidden locations to reveal artworks by Adnate, BMD, Mike Watt, Jumbo & Bafcat.
Hunter Street Mall by Umpel and Ben Foster
Artwork by Umpel (left) and Chehehe (right)
Nosferatu stencil by Enak
Port Stephen’s Council Team from Strategic Planning in front of BMD Is your friend mural
Today a lucky wall near High Street in Swansea, Wales will be pasted up with Palace Posters as part of the Gŵyl Troublemakers’ Festival which is happening from July 13 – July 16.
Street Art Walking received over 35 posters to be part of the Paste Up project and today the amazing people at Volcano Theatre will begin pasting them to feature over the next few days – be sure to walk down High Street and find them!
If you are lucky enough to live near Swansea I hope you can share some photos of what you see at the Troublemakers festival, the full festival program, looks brilliant and it is an honour to be aligned with such interesting, inspiring artworks.
Based in Australia, SAW has collected posters from artists in UK and Australia for this temporary “pop-up” exhibition and shared some how-to tips for the festival team who will be getting pasted. Here are some mock up photos of what the artwork might look like.
This year Street Art Walking (and interested artists/designers) have the very exciting opportunity of recreating the Theatre Lane Project in Swansea, Wales, UK for the Troublemakers’ Festival held from Thursday 13 to Sunday 16 July.
A number of people within our Newcastle, Australia audience might remember the paste-up project held in Theatre Lane Newcastle which involved a global call out for posters to be made. The posters needed to feature The Victoria Theatre, which has been sitting closed for a number of years. The project resulted in many posters being printed in a variety of sizes and I would paste them up over a number of weeks which helped to create activity in what was a rather sad looking lane – see the photos below.
Whilst this project was still (barely) pasted up in March 2013, Dan Thompson of Revolutionary Arts and the Empty Shops Network was visiting Newcastle, Australia for the Renew Australia Creating Spaces Conference. To my absolute honour, this temporary street art project has resonated in Dan’s mind since. Fast forward to now and we will be re-creating the concept for a very special theatre in Swansea, Wales, UK.
To call Dan’s keynote speech as inspiring would be an understatement. I recall leaving his presentation being gifted a calico bag because I tweeted the #wewillgather whilst he discussed the riot clean up project initiated via a Twitter hashtag to bring people together to clean up the London streets in 2012 . Dan said it was about “place shaking, not place making” and this really resonated with me.
Making posters for the empty theatre drew attention, in a subtle way, to the cultural importance of the building and gave people a chance to reinterpret the history and future. It was so much fun to put art up in a place that was blank before, whilst also drawing attention to the building’s significance.
This week are excited to be launching the Swansea, Wales, UK version of this project and we will be calling for artists to imagine up their own theatre show for the currently empty Palace Theatre on High Street – see it on Google Maps here.
Photo taken by Gareth Lovering Photography
Over the coming months we will be sharing history, images and anything we can find to help inspire you to create your very own theatre poster. Our friends at Volcano Theatre in the UK will be pasting them up for the Troublemakers Festival from 13-16 July.
Look out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more details to come this week!
Many of those in Newcastle would know there has been a huge community response to the painting over of the Guido Van Helten mural this week. This has raised a number of questions from a range of people, such as, what rights do the community have in privately owned spaces that face and impact the public domain and what exactly is the nature of street art; temporary or permanent?
2010 – Umpel (mural) and Ben Foster (stencils) on back of The Former View Factory (Now The Grain Store).
As a person whom has worked in the arts community in Newcastle for a number of years, focusing on murals and street art style works, when I worked as This Is Not Art Festival Director in 2010 I identified an opportunity to engage businesses (and venues) working with the festival to create a public art walk. This project was funded by Copyright Agency Limited and provided the opportunity to hire a curator, Carli Hyland. Carli and myself worked on doing a call-out and we had a great response. Carli worked with artists from a range of locations. The project saw many artists including Ears, Damien Mitchell, Umpel, Ben Foster and Trevor Dickinson who have all continued to increase their portfolios since this project.
Notably, this public art project was actually Newcastle’s Trevor Dickinson’s first ‘street art’ work which was a series of letterbox illustrations as temporary paste ups, after this I was contacted by Council’s then Graffiti Team Leader, Saul Standerwick, who saw a vision for Trevor’s iconic work on the then boarded up Lucky Country Hotel after seeing the pasteups as part of walkARTbout. The Renew Newcastle shop Little Papercup did a blog about it here.
The graffiti team management team and the placemaking department have been vigrously contributing to the beautification of place with murals. Really, I had to pitch to owners with graffiti problems for them to consider paying for art. After all, they were already paying for repairs. Luckily, the art did slow done the tags.
Trevor’s murals have since become iconic in Newcastle with securing a number of commissions in Civic near the Newcastle Museum, Newcastle Beach tunnel, Mayfield pool and the Merewether Tunnel. It is my belief that the open-call out process by Octapod and TiNA Curator allowed for artists of all background to apply and this is one of many reasons that cultural projects require some kind of governance and ongoing management.
When I was working on walkARTbout with Carli, one of the challenges was convincing owners that the street art works would not start a graffiti war on their wall. Owners were reluctant because the perception is that ‘graffiti’ sends a bad message. Yet, one thing people didn’t know is that the community love seeing the art and this kudos can bring all kinds of positive benefits to a place.
2010 walkARTbout – Trevor Dickinson
Before 2010 walkARTbout – Trevor Dickinson
As the founder of Street Art Walking (SAW) in 2011, I saw a chance to link artists with businesses, mainly because all those businesses and property owners I had spent time convincing that the art would be positive, were now keen for more art.
Launch of Street Art Walking
I was lucky enough to have the support of the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme (NEIS) helping me set up a business that would seek walls and commission art for proactive businesses, local government and community groups. It was vital for me to try and create a map of these works, a marker on them so that people could find the artist and the story of the art. This has always been important, the artist recognition and telling the story so that projects are not exclusive and that art is accessible to as many as possible.
Theatre Lane Project 2012
An example of a project which was actually conceived by Newcastle Council’s Graffiti Team Leader, at the time, Saul Standerwick is the The Theatre Lane Project in 2012. Without the vision of Saul to allow a temporary, pasteup artwork, which was funded completely by Council this project would not have happened with the vigour and consistency that it did. I was able to do a call-out, which drew artist submissions all over the world, and continually change the posters over a three month period. This project is proof that governance does not have to taint fun street art projects. I even got in a real life graffiti feud doing this project! Shout out to KAYE ONE!
Some artists out there might say, but street art is for fun. Of course, go and make it! No one forces artists to work within governed or managed art programs. Yet, the benefit of having inclusive programs that are funded are immense. I have seen artists come forward to SAW that have never made large scale murals and they leave with huge smiles at the new opportunity that a call out has provided.
Before 2011 SAW mural by Umpel for Lost at E Minor
2011 SAW mural by Umpel for Lost at E Minor
SAW projects often asked artists to quote their fee, not offering a set sum of money, rather giving artists a chance to truly value and cost their work – on their terms. Sometimes, owners couldn’t afford works and they would say ‘I will just get my mate to paint it’. My response to this was always ‘Great. Just so you know, artists need to be paid for their work’ It is a passion of mine that artists can, at least, cover their costs and that businesses do not exploit the artists desire to create by offering them a ‘free wall’. I believe artists’ rights are important and is one reason why it was a mission to get artists decent fees for their work. I would be lying if I said we never did freebies. We did. We spent our own time and money on a number of works. Because, yes we love it!
Stencil by Damien Mitchell for wakARTbout
Finished design by Umpel and Ben Foster
The flipside of being an independent and doing call outs is that it is so much work! For years I have been fielding questions about how can I get walls for artists, how much does art cost for owners, how much should artists quote for projects and so on. It’s complex and each to their own with quoting their time. National Association for Visuals Arts (NAVA) have some guides and I use these when working with, or representing, artists.
When you are a sole trader working in a unique domain of being an art consultant it can be overwhelming to manage the interest that comes in various forms of communication. From other arts workers sending you project details to promote, artists asking for help on grants, getting information from artists for grants, keeping an up-to-date register of all the artists expression of interest which comes via facebook messages, instagram, twitter, website and email. There are so many artists that wanting to make art, especially in Newcastle.
Have you heard the statistic that Newcastle has more artists per capita than anywhere else in NSW? I don’t even know if it is true anymore but that little fact was well touted when I was at The University of Newcastle in 2004 until 2009. This is why it bewilders me so that the arts and cultural department of council is lacking the resources to support the creative community.
Today, I am lucky enough to get requests for walking tours to find some of the amazing projects out there and I make a point of including all kind of projects from publicly funded ones like the murals near the museum and beach to the illegal graffiti and community gardens.
Yesterday I received an email from one of my Newcastle street art tours who stated;
“This destruction of Guido van HELTEN’s mural on the corner at Stewart Avenue shows two things.
(a) The Phillistines are many; and (b) judging by the outrage – the project has succeeded in raising awareness of street art to the level where it is part of the identity of Newcastle – for many of us.”
Now, if a guest from one of my tours can see that street art has become part of the Newcastle story, when will it become part of the cultural action plan beyond being a beautification box ticker and be recognised as the value art form that it is. Remember, Guido Van Helten is currently a finalist for The Sulman Prize for The Brim Silo Project. I feel it is time for these street art works to be recognised in the arts and cultural domain.
Whilst there have been numerous set backs for the creative community, from a council perspective with a defunct public art program, two roles lost (public art officer and gallery director) and the revitalization of the gallery halted the cultural identity has been growing, DIY style, with organisations like Renew Newcastle, This Is Not Art festival and events hosted by Idea Bombing Newcastle.
An exciting street art and pubic art movement has been growing from strength to strength with projects like Hit The Bricks and graffiti events which have been concieved by independent businesses. Artists are ready to take the initiative and it is due time that artists locally were given the opportunity to be involved in the ‘revitalisation’ of the city.
Before walkARTbout
EARS walkARTbout 2010
Thomas Jackson
In terms of responding to Newcastle Mirage’s question of ‘Is Street Art Temporary or Fixed?’. Of course, the very nature of street art is ephemeral, often political stencils, pasteups and protest imagery are all part of street art. Are these legally commissioned works ‘street art’, when considering ephemeral work? Perhaps not. They are akin to a big outdoor gallery, a series of gifts bestowed upon our city, made possible by the tenacity of creative people whom live and invest their art, passion and time there. The pace of change is slow and I am hoping this is an opportune time to create a dialogue around how to better support more art changing, as clearly the community values these works as proven by the response to losing a work in a prominent location.
‘Does the community have a right to complain?’ My answer, passion from community is not complaining. This is one of the best opportunities for community engagement around the cultural identity of The City of Newcastle, yet most people want to argue about who is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Is there a duty of care that needs to be taken when curating private commissions in the public domain? Yes. As a curator of murals in public spaces, thought and sensitivity are taken into consideration, balanced with a cultural understanding of the area and the artist selected for the wall. Owners of buildings are reassured the subject matters of the works will be respectful and sometimes there are even vetting processes through committees like strata boards. Does this happen in ‘street art’ in Hosier Lane? Not exactly.
If there is one thing I have learned from this week is that the culture of street art is still growing in Newcastle. For a truly evolving scene of ephemeral artworks, artists have to be brave enough to be vandals or councils have to have rigorous cultural policies and visionary staff that include street art – not just community murals.
I haven’t even had a chance to mention the importance of graffiti to this conversation and how graffiti is not the enemy of street art. All of the projects; graffiti festivals, the artworks and pieces, connect to contribute to a culture that has been growing (albeit slowly) since before I was born in 1983.
Failure:Lab the USA founded event focused on crushing the stigma associated with failure is coming to Sydney on 28 May 2016. With the theme of ‘The Highs & Lows of the Creative Journey’ this night is filled with successful creative professionals whom are going to erase the negativity associated with the F word – Failure, that is.
Seven creative professionals each share a story of failure, joining Failure:Lab’s global mission to eliminate the fear, stigma, and isolation around failure which, in turn, helps remove roadblocks to communication, innovation, and community.
Failure:Lab is a raw and intimate event showcasing personal stories of failure. With a refreshing environment of openness, it helps pave the way for change by crushing the isolation and stigma around failure. Failure then takes its rightful place as the crucial first step to the next big thing.
Our storytellers share memories of failure in a safe space for mistakes – no lessons learned or talk of who’s to blame! The audience can reflect on Twitter using #failurelab during the moment of reflection between stories.
Performances follow each story to recharge the audience. Electro poetry, spoken word, ‘gyp-hop’, acoustic melodies and oscillating guitar strings will lift the air between stories.
Don’t let the name fool you – while the stories may be about failure, the event is really about courage, determination, and the strength to get back up.
Crush the stigma around failure. Embrace it, learn from it, build on it.
Storytellers (who will have 9 minutes to share their failure story before dropping the mic and exiting the stage!)
Storyteller, Marcus Westbury
Marcus Westbury Marcus Westbury is the CEO of Contemporary Arts Precincts Ltd that is leading the development of the Collingwood Arts Precinct in Melbourne and the founder of the multi award winning Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia. Marcus has been a writer, media maker and festival director and is the author of Creating Cities (Niche Press, 2015) and has been the writer and presenter of the ABC TV series Bespoke and Not Quite Art.
Storyteller, Somaya Langley
Somaya Langley Somaya Langley has a built a career at the nexus between the arts and technology. She has worked for multiple government cultural institutions, broadcasters, festivals and not-for-profit arts organisations as a curator, director, producer and technical specialist. As a creative practitioner, her work primarily focuses on embodied and immersive audiovisual experiences. Her life is equal parts failure and success. Somaya is the Digital Curation Specialist at the State Library of New South Wales.
Storyteller, Jeremy Staples
Jeremy Staples Jeremy Staples’ work is all about creating spaces for community engagement and providing a platform for people to be heard and share their skills. He enjoys questioning, documenting, reading, writing and travel. He’s passionate about inspiring people to think and helping them along their own journeys. Over the past five years, he has been researching the future of radical print media abroad and worked alongside with and met with everyone from Maximum Rock and Roll to Tokyo’s largest English print magazine.
Storyteller, Annetta Mallon
Dr Annetta Mallon PhD Annetta was awarded her PhD in Social Science in 2016, and she specialises in feminism, identity, personal stories, sociology and professional practice. She is currently employed as a lecturer and tutor, with Western Sydney University in the areas of Social Science, Sociology, and qualitative research methods. In addition to her academic pursuits and teaching, Annetta is also a freelance writer & editor, and is currently involved in developing works in both the academic and fiction arenas. Her previous career was as a practising counsellor, advisor, and psychotherapist for over twenty years working in Australia, Italy, and the USA in the fields of injury and trauma recovery, grief and loss, mental health, and personal growth and development.
Storyteller, Chloe Beevers
Chloe Beevers Chloe has over 15 years experience as a creative strategist, collaboration broker, program producer and keynote presenter. As the founder of the consultancy firm Strategic Artistry, Chloe builds the capacity of governments, organisations, industries and communities to deliver creative outcomes.
Storyteller, Adam Monaghan
Adam Monaghan Intermittent breaks from nursing to work in office jobs (not his thing) as well as dabbling in photography. Never quite believed in himself as photographer. Made redundant in 2013 and took another leap into video production. Taught himself to shoot, script, edit, produce and direct. Has grown the business into a six figure turnover enterprise in under three years.
DA Carter DA Carter is a musician & lyricist who’s toured globally on streets and stages from Berlin to Burning Man to the Sydney Theatre, National Young Writers, Subsonic, Regrowth, Crack Theatre & Fringe Festivals.
DA performs his heady mix of beatbox, spoken word & freestyle with a microphone & loop machines.
Performers (who will shift your mood with a 4 minute entertainment piece!)
Performer, Casio Gloria
Casio Gloria “The Kook, The Keys and the Curious. You decide who’s which.” From the grottos of Newcastle to the far reaches of the imagination, this eclectic/ electro performance-poetry explosion will have you sidestepping and your sides splitting. Launching the newest version of their bespoke music software MusicFox for Vivid Ideas Sydney 2016.
The Tinderbox Lullabies The Tinderbox Lullabies are Blue mountains singer /Song writer Nic Alexander, and Sydney soul poet Brent Clarke, also known as B.C. They perform a mongrel breed of roots music and rap delivery, creating the affectionate term on which they’ve grown from, ‘Gyp-Hop’.
Structured on acoustic guitar, sweeping vocal melodies and rhyming poetry, The Tinderbox Lullabies tell their stories through a truly honest dialogue using humour, hindsight, tongues in cheeks and big, dumb hearts on sleeves.
Performer, Spindles
Spindles Spindles is a Sydney-living musician who spins songs about the two things she thinks are most important: love and revolution. Sometimes her feelings about these things become so strong that they demand physical space – for guitar strings to oscillate, vocal cords to vibrate, stereocilia to reverberate. Spindles has spent the summer adorning these spaces with sea glass and cicada shells and midnights and Blue, and you are invited in.
Performers, Ebb Tides
Ebb Tides A tiny town musical duo comprising the abilities of multi talented writer, director, choreographer Erin Brookhouse and childhood friend, poet and rap artist Brent Francis Clarke, also known by the stage name B.C.
Ebb-Tides take their name in reference of the river they both grew up by on the mid North Coast of N.S.W. before moving to Sydney and meeting again later as fans of each other’s work.
Beginning from beautiful melodies Erin would draw from the sounds and songs Brent was creating as B.C, a series of collaborations turned into a project that both agreed to continue, taking shape as the colourful duo. Two friends who truly love creating art together.
Get tickets now whilst you can to this Australian first!
Street Art Walking is excited to announce our first Sydney project working with Place Partners and Urbanistas Sydney to develop a mural for a building located at the very start of Oxford Street.
Artwork to be located here
The project has been approved as part of Place Partner’s Oxford Street Activators project and will revitalise a currently tired (and tagged) wall facing the famous, Oxford Street.
Come and add to the mural with stencils provided. There will be birds, leaves and more!
The mural will have a nature theme and anyone who can come to the paint day is welcome to participate!
It has been many months (nearly a year!) since I had the opportunity to visit Detroit, Michigan. But as anyone who has spent thirty minutes with me will tell you, Detroit has not been out of my mind (or heart) for a moment. Today, I will start my series of blogs, highlighting my journey from departure to return. With so much time passed since I have returned back to Newcastle, Australia, there has been an interesting chance for reflection upon my visit. The distance from the Detroit moments has helped me identify things that I may not have appreciated whilst in the moment.
So many people asked me, ‘What was the best part?’
My answer has immediately been, the people.
My journey began with the generosity of people and this theme ran through my entire stay. So this post is dedicated to all the hearts and hands that went into making my Detroit visit the wholesome, rich and amazing experience that it was.
First off, are the forty supporters from my Pozible campaign. The feeling of having people believe in your work gave me such a sense of purpose, a very nice way to start a journey like this.
If it weren’t for the campaign (and this local paper article) I would not have had the fortune of crossing paths with Alan and Loraine Stear. Alan and Loraine were visiting Newcastle (from Detroit, MI) whilst I was promoting the campaign to travel to Detroit. Loraine took the time to get in touch via the website, offering to help whilst I was in Detroit. The help from Alan and Loraine was overwhelmingly inspiring and gracious. I was hosted by them, introduced to their friends and family as guest of honour.It was such an honour to be a guest of theirs and I know it helped me see a loving, community driven, side of Detroit.
Loraine and Alan Stear
Their friends Harriet and Alvin extended so much support in helping me see the best sides of Detroit. I was able to stay in downtown Detroit with Harriet and Al, allowing me to walk (although their start of Spring weather is certainly a little different to ours!) to the Project for Public Spaces Global Placemaking Council Meeting.
Al and Harriet
I cannot thank both families enough for the support and generosity they extended to help me feel at home, in their homes. I was able to see and meet so many amazing people through them, which you will all meet in the upcoming posts.
Here is the last photo I took in Newcastle (Cardiff views from the train to Sydney) and the first image I took in Detroit (Michigan Central Station).
Leaving Newcastle – Cardiff, NSW
Arriving in Detroit – Michigan Central Station
Part II – Project for Public Spaces Meeting – Next
Last year we found out that some of our art and placemaking friends were working on an exciting project for the stairs at Wickham train station. Mark Aylward (who has been a key driver in some great placemaking projects in Newcastle West), had sparked a project online with artists Lu Quade and Erynwithawhy. As we are all pals online, we had seen each other commenting on a photo featuring a brilliantly coloured mural over the face of a long set of stairs. Mark, being the proactive and ambitious artist that he is, decided to find some stairs so that Newcastle could have it’s own version.
Mark sought permission to paint the stairs, sourced sponsorship for paint from Dulux (special thanks to representative Steve Kiem) and mustered up artists Lu Quade, Erynwithawhy and myself to join in. This project was probably the most fun (aside from the somewhat awkward posture posed when painting stairs – it’s hard work!) painting project that I have been involved with.
It was great seeing people smile as we painted the bright colours over the dull concrete. Some people asked, ‘Why?’. To which we would say, ‘Why not?’ or ‘Because we can!’.
The stairs have since been featured in an article by The Herald which you can see here. I would like to personally give a shout out to Shrek for his comment. We agree, this is a first class piece of art, indeed. Oh and my favourite part of the day was when the popo turned up to see if we were vandals. No, sorry. We sought permission.
Unfortunately, most of the photos I took of the two days of painting have been lost after having my phone stolen (boo!). Yet, here are some photos which we shared on Instagram (lucky we have those, I guess).
You know it has been a busy when you log into your website to find your last post was calling for volunteers for a street art festival that happened over three months ago. So, what has happened in Newcastle Street Art since November? Plenty!
Hit The Bricks Festival, produced by Look Hear, was a great success with over fifteen new artworks being produced across the Newcastle CBD during 22-24 November 2013. The program began with a Street Art Panel featuring Askew One, Shida, Phibs and Numskull which was hosted by Jonathan Boonzaaier. If I took notes, they would have probably said something about the great discourse addressing what is means to be an artist in a gallery and on the street, what is means to work in both realms of (high and low) art and why graffiti should not be seen as something to battle against.
My favourite part of this talk was when Askew made a correlation between Newcastle, Australia and Detroit, Michigan based on the urban landscape. The two cities that have experienced a post-industrial shift, affecting their urban environment, resulting in empty shopfronts and development lots. Whilst Newcastle may not have the extreme population decline of Detroit, the closure of steel magnate BHP certainly had economical impacts to the city. I have personally been making connections between to the two cities since my visit last year, so it was rewarding to see that I may not be the only ones who sees potential for connections between the two places. Art based interventions are doing fabulous things for both cities, as I type. I am looking forward to seeing the video of this talk which was documented by Look Hear.
I will be doing some posts on each site soon but to give you a taste of all the cool new art in Newcastle here is a selection of photos taken on the weekend of HTB. All in all, it was an epic weekend for our city and it was feel the city buzzing with excitement.
