Coming up this Thursday, 29th April, Crown Heights seeks to try to put to rest some of the controversy around the “gallery vs street” argument by bringing several luminous graffiti artists out from underground and onto the walls of the Highlander Gallery.

“Crown Heights is a group show – the tiresome quarrel of graffiti in galleries gets crushed by some of Melbourne’s leading letter mechanics and operationalists who are true to the game.

For the 1st time only, a collation of names, all in one space, one that
you would only ever find in the crevices and no-go zones of your own
city. Crown Heights is down with art. Crown Heights is down with crime … ”

Invurt had a chance to speak to Tom Gerrard, the curator of the upcoming exhibition, about what was involved in putting together the show …

Can you give us a bit of background on Crown Heights, and how you became involved in organising it?

I was relaxing at home one day and the thought to have a really good graffiti exhibition popped into my head. So I wrote down a wish list of all the artists I’d like to have in there. I thought the list was pretty far fetched, but one by one I started contacting the artists, and everyone said yes, except for two who I couldn’t get in contact with.

I wanted to put on a graffiti exhibition with writers who you wouldn’t expect to see in a gallery – some have exhibited in the past, but most of them you would only see on the streets, train lines and trains.

How were artists selected for the exhibition and what do you believe Crown Heights will bring to the table in terms of exposure for the artists?

I chose writers I like. It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately I couldn’t have a lot more artists feature in it. There just isn’t enough space.

No one seems to really care about breaking into the art world as a graffiti writer. As ironic as it is, graffiti doesn’t really belong in galleries. This is just a bit of fun.

Can you give me a general run down on the artists involved, and their mediums, and what you believe all they contribute to the overall theme of the exhibition?

I don’t know what a lot of the artists are doing for the show, I’ve just told them all to keep it graffiti related and stick to their styles. I don’t want photo realistic portraits of Biggie Smalls. It’s not what they are there for – but I haven’t seen most of the work. A few of them have told me that they don’t know what to do for it, but at least they are thinking about it. It’s going look great.

It seems that there is a new exhibition showcasing graffiti, street or urban artists almost every week here in Melbourne, do you believe too much is a good thing, or is it a case of not enough?

This is where Crown Heights is different. It’s not your run of the mill graffiti exhibition and it’s not street art. It’s big names in Australian graffiti and the only time you will see a lot of these artists ever exhibit.

Street vs gallery –  where do you think this exhibition weights in on the whole argument?

It’s always street over gallery. People can think what they want about this being a sell out or not, but most of the artists put in so much work in the graffiti scene that you could never call them a sell out.

What excites you the most about the coming show??

At the moment I’m just focusing on making this show work, there’s a great group of artists and I can’t wait to see all the work hanging on the walls.

Check out the Facebook event page and the Highlander fan page for more information on the event.