In my totally hung over state and after a busy afternoon (I may have possibly had one too many the night before whilst watching my friends band the Freak Technique), I headed down on the tram on Sunday evening to check out the inaugural Melbourne Tiger Translate event.

So I decided to put a few of my thoughts down into a small review – again, excuse my point and shoot pics – I’m not exactly what you’d call the worlds best photographer haha … enjoy …

I got there right on around 7:30pm, and on first walking in – I saw the main feature wall still being working on by a number of artists. Does, Urban Cake Lady, Sofles had pieces right at the entrance – and I loved the whole colour scheme that they all had going  on the main feature wall – brilliant blues, scarlets and azures all through – a favourite combination of mine. Nice to see a montage of stuff by UCL as well, that probably took a bit more time to do  – yeh, again, we love her stuff. Sofles character work is also second to none  – his girls rock.

 
There was already a line of people waiting to get in – the crew on the door from ummpr, the PR company who handled the event, looked to be handling it really well – and they were really friendly, and helpful. As it was an invitation event, it was just a quick check of the name on the door, then inside pretty quickly, free drink cards in hand.

 
Walked in, handed over a free drink card to the girls at the table that was covered in beer, took a swig (thanks, Tiger!) and looked around. Off to the right there was a small feature area with prints of all the finalists in the competition – some really, really nice work there.

They’d also put up a bunch of pens and such so that people could bomb or write on the walls around the prints – and, well, put pens into the hands of that kind of crowd and you’ll get some fun bits and pieces, sketches and such – of course, throughout the night, it got pretty messy after a while.

Meggs was working on a pretty cool stencil based piece just on the other side of the prints – great mix of colours as well, with the tiger emerging out from the darkness.

Next to that some of the international artists, Song Yang and Tran Trung Linh, were creating some mad ass murals as well – the buddha with the ipod in hand was funky as, and there was a hell of a lot of detail and work put into it – what happens to these pieces after the show, I wonder?

 
A whole bunch of food came out during the night, and I followed the scent of it back outside and looking down the alleyway it looked like they’d converted a whole section into a street style eatery – nice touch, and thanks for the stirfry, yo. The whole outside was a hive of activity, people, art, food …

 
Whilst outside smoking a cig (sans beer – hmm, I swear I was drinking beer outside earlier in the night), I watched Itch laying down a bunch of paint on another one of his characters – I’m more and more impressed by Itch’s work all the time, he’s got some great style going on. This is one he did earlier in the day –

 
At this point, I cant really go past mentioning the tiger girls, who were walking around the event, handing out food, generally being friendly – and, I mean, reeoowl. Its too bad that they couldn’t put their cute little hoods on, I guess doing so may have posed a slight circulation issue …

As for the music – all in all, it was pretty solid. The Faders put on a good warm-up-start-up show, nice mixes, a few little cheesy-party moments here and there but it kind of fit with the diversity of people in the room – they’re a hot little pair of rocking girls too – but, moreso, they do have some skills. Have to say, however, that the night was completely rocked by Hermitude. Damn, I’ve seen them before, but its been a good two or three years, and they’ve really taken it up a notch – some really banging and well put together new tunes in with the old.

 
Dexter and Nick Fleming (did he play?) were also on the line up, but I didn’t stay that late  … there was probably a bit of extra room for another DJ or two, maybe MAFIA, Hans DC or Kodiak Kid would have been great in the mix – a little more additional local talent wouldn’t have gone astray.

One of the small things I noted about the event, was that, funnily, over each print that was on display was a bit of a slogan decrying the corporate whorage of the event, and you know, they kind of had a bit of an point – to be honest, when I first saw the event I was a little “eh” on the whole Tiger corporate angle.

Three things during the night made me think of this in a positive light – one, I talked to some of the people at ummpr – and they seemed genuinely excited and supportive of the artists in the show, as well as the event itself – so that was kudos point one. Secondly, Tiger Translate was a well executed event. It was quite large (I’m figuring over 500-600 people, if not more), very diverse crowd, and as we all know that with these kinds of mixes, if that kind of event environment isn’t properly managed, a cool idea can quickly turn into a shitty gig – this didn’t happen, and everything was pretty damn smooth. Third, and most importantly, it was obvious that the artists involved were all really enjoying the entire thing, even if they were working their asses off throughout it, and the people attending were pretty much in awe of the talent surrounding them – and that right there is the most important thing. 

Sure, Tiger are using street and urban art to help promote their product, but who these days isn’t? There are still a lot of people that take that whole corporate angle and go “meh” – but by the same token, who doesn’t want to be able to make a living off the shit they love? Thus, in turn, corporations like Tiger are promoting street and urban art, and giving both established and up and coming artists access to larger, more global, and more mainstream audience – and to be honest, there just aint nothing fkn wrong with that – Tiger Translate did it in style, and I’m looking forward to the next time it comes around.

You should check out this amazing panorama of the wall that Blacklodge did, that we saw over at Everfresh. The rest of our photos are here on Facebook. Also check out the official Tiger Translate photos here, and a whole crapload more on the ummpr album.