Last Friday night was the opening of Sweet Streets, the 2010 Melbourne street art festival.

I was there most of the night at the Awards exhibition helping out with the show (as semi-official red-dotter and general run-around-er), and got a glimpse into all the hard work that was done in the background for both the opening, and the next two weeks of the festival. The committee really needs to be congratulated for putting it all together – it was packed out and there were so many unique and amazing pieces in it. A special yo also has to go out to the other volunteers, who all did a great job too.

As a pretty shitty critic (You may have noticed that I tend to love anyone who puts anything up on walls!) I wont comment too much on the content, but suffice to say there wasn’t anything there that I didnt like, I picked up a piece from a favorite artist, loved another massive four panel work that had awesome robotech-ish spacecraft across it (that was a little out of my price range), that Junky Projects rules, that the music was great, the crew doing the live drawing was amazing, and that all the winners of the prizes were well deserving of their kudos – as were all of the artists involved.

Theres some more on the opening over at Melbourne Art and Culture Critic – I had the chance to meet and chat to the affable and friendly Mark, whose blog I’ve been a big fan of for a while, and we took a good look at the show together before the opening, and he sums it up nicely. I’m looking forward to the next installments over the coming fortnight, starting with both the show at the BSG on Wednesday as well as the film night on Thursday … not to mention all the other events and workshops happening!

So heres photos from Friday pre-show as well as the opening, with my oh so ultra awesome camera skills haha .. its on at 1000 pound Bend for the next two weeks, so get in there and take a look!

The layout …

Toy Mountain with the panel I mentioned in the background ..

The Hand!

Some of the awesome work up for auction at the charity event!

Crowded room …

Live art!

One of my favorite urban sculptors, hands down.

Finished live art product, up for auction (excuse the crappy photo!)…

Sick night, sick art, sick festival.

Download a copy of the entire festival guide and get to it!