CDH, a Melbourne street artist, recently sat down with well known Melbourne artist and street art advocate Adrian Doyle, to talk about the past, present, and future of street art in Australia …
 
Adrian Doyle is an artist, the director Blender studios, an arts grad student and a former employee of an inner city council – he has his finger in a lot of pies. He’s also someone who is working hard to create opportunities for street artists; and is someone with many considered and insightful ideas about the urban art movement. Like most veteran street artists I know, he tends to view street art history through the prism of his own experience – so he’s keen to push the Blender and its influence on Melbourne’s street art. The real truth of the story is that he’s someone who has, does and will continue to facilitate street artists. He creates opportunities, and he brought a lot of people with him. He’s incredibly important to Melbourne’s street art community and his heart is unquestionably in the right place.

At the top of the Dark Horse Experiment gallery we sit down in his studio space to discuss future directions of street art. A projector is set up to exhibit video art on the windows of this gallery, into the outside world beyond the studio. ‘It gets pretty trippy working in here late at night’ Doyle tells me.

So, what do you usually project on the windows here?

We show video art. All different kinds of video art.  I see that as an extension of the urban art scene. It works quite well because it’s directly from the artist to the viewer. The viewers could be people driving along in their cars that get to see these for a moment but in that moment you’re connecting with no filtration. It becomes a medium that’s free of contamination. That’s what street art is essentially too.

You mean there’s no curatorial control…

Yeah I mean it just is. Obviously we choose who it is but in the end you go into a gallery and every aspect of it is completely curated or manipulated for certain kinds of ends, whether it be for cash or for art or whatever. But then when you see a stencil just on the street, in a way it’s more intimate. It’s not filtered at all. It could be bad. It could be good. In a way I think projection has that potential. There’s a lot of bad people doing projection now, so it’s become this new thing where people just run out and do illegal projection on buildings. I like it. This and the urban gardening; I think they’re both really cool. I think it’s all part of the same movement, that started in 2001 or 2002 here at the Blender. And from that then came Everfresh and all of these things happened. But then there’s been different sections and the urban art movement has become a really big art movement. Probably the largest art movement in Australian history since the Aboriginal art movement. Obviously it’s very different.

So you think it’s more important than the Heidelberg school for example?

Well yeah, it’s spread really big. I mean it’s a different time because we have Facebook and we have the internet. But if you look at the influence on Australian culture that street art’s had, it’s infected all parts of graphic design, advertising and fashion. It’s become this thing because of the internet that everyone can access. I can go and do a piece and within 20 seconds 2000 people will have looked at it. That really changed the ball game. It might not be as important as the Heidelberg school aesthetically, for what it will achieve through art history, but it’s as huge. And it has brought art to the people. So my brother who lives out in hidden valley, living the suburban dream, out the back of Cragieburn. He knows who Banksy is and he knows who HaHa is, but he wouldn’t know who Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons are. And that’s where street art has brought art to the people. It’s broken down a lot of barriers that art snobbery from the ‘80s and ‘90s introduced. The Blender here really tries to encapsulate that. As long as you’re not bothering people while they’re trying to work, most people are welcome. That means we get all sorts of crazy people coming through. It’s a pain in the ass for me as the person who has to manage it, but overall it’s part of the beauty of the place. Blender has this amazing atmosphere and it only tries to do good within the community and the art world, both as our vision and as a support for artists.

In the end we’ve got a great network – everyone respects everyone else.

You talked about breaking down art snobbery and street art being egalitarian. Does that add to the meaning in some way? It’s part of the medium, not the content but is that making it better?

I think when it first started out street art was purely egalitarian. It was just for the people. It was political. The movement really took hold just after 9/11. There was the invading of Iraq and Afghanistan and so it was very political. There was no ego in a way. It was just put on the streets for white middle class kids that didn’t really have a voice, to have a voice. It worked very very well.

Then came the fame and the laws changed. In 2004 the Commonwealth Games came. All these things culminated to change street art. We’ve moved through many different periods. When someone finally writes up the PhD on just street art and talks about Melbourne, there will be a lot of sections to it and it will take a lot of time, because you’ve got your art fags section that’s really helped to isolate Melbourne’s street art and made it unique. That’s partly because of Blender putting people who had just finished their masters next to street art punks. Street artists were like ‘we can put this in a gallery’ and fine artists were like ‘we can just put this up on the street’. It’s completely worked and we haven’t followed the New York style. New York has finally finished now since that Mayor dude Giuliani has totally cleaned up that place. Moved all the bums out and what not.

Street art isn’t necessarily better as an art form. In the end art is about concept, design, composition and an understanding of the history of art but street artists don’t have any of that stuff. In the end can you really compare street art to fine artists? Here in Melbourne we do and on heaps of levels they don’t add up. They don’t really meet their mark. But on heaps of levels they do and that’s what makes street art unique. There’s so much bad street art out there and it’s awesome. You walk along and you just see shit everywhere. In the end I think it adds a lot to our city.

I’ve heard it described as folk art. In that it’s just done by people as a cultural practice without necessarily having a broader awareness of art history. That’s definitely changing. Is this change a good thing?

We’ve ended up with a lot of snakes hanging around The Blender. These are people that for the last 20 years have dealt in Aboriginal art and now the economy has dropped very heavily in that kind of art and so now they realize that street art is the next big thing. They’re running around just trying to scam whatever they can and hold auctions. This is something we need to watch because we need to make sure we keep control over the prices of our works. I’m always telling the artists, it’s not necessarily about selling your work: you need to know who you’re selling to. Heaps of people will come to The Blender and they’ll find stuff on the floor, they’ll pick it up and put it in their pocket. Or they’ll offer a slab of beer for something and put it in a big art auction in Melbourne or Sydney. It’s ruined street art.

Everybody’s making sure they’re not doing it – it fucks up the street art economy.

How so?

Say my work is selling at $4000 and it gets put in the auction and only sells for $800 then people will think my work’s no good. Then on the other hand, if you buy someone’s work for $50 or a slab of beer because they’re poor and then put it in an auction and it sells for $1000, then you’re totally ripping that artist off.

But that’s a weird kind of art branding. If I sell art through a big gallery, then that’s a big stamp of approval, but if I sell it from the back of a car there’s no stamp of validation- in the end the art is the same.

The older you get as an artist all of that matters less because you’ve already accumulated so many stamps. These days I’d rather sell my work out the back of my car. I’ve represented myself as an artist for a long time. Now I’m showing at a gallery I’m director of, but I haven’t been represented by a gallery in a long time. It’s a very different experience. Even though it’s my gallery I forgot how hard core it is.

That whole folk art thing; In a way folk art, comic art, basic graphic design, is all linked together to create the urban art movement. Now it’s got projection and performance. It’s starting to infiltrate fine art in a positive way. When we were doing the stencils early on, me and HaHa, one of the first stencils we put up was this friend of ours, who’s really funny called Basil Cavalis – we just wanted to make him famous. So we grabbed his stencil and we fucked the town up with his face. We loved it, man. Even when we started this wall at the side of the studio, it was just a place for people to practice. We never realized that the movement would become this big huge thing, that we’d all be part of. Whether we like it or not now, it’s certainly going to be part of Australian art history. I think that’s a fabulous thing to have been a part of. I hope that I get to be part of another movement before I die.

Regan (HaHa) is now part of two movements. He was a part of the Stuckist movement. He got to curate the international Stuckist show here in Melbourne. But it was some of the worst art I’d seen in a long time. It was at Fad gallery. But it was funny. Regan organized it all. Famous Stuckists from all over the world sent shit. We just put all the funny guys here. That was all about doing art with no concepts – it was total trash. Art with no concept is design I guess.

I was looking at the Pastemodernism 3 line up the other day and I felt the same way about it. It will be this huge collectivist collage, but no complete concept.

It’ll look cool. It can’t fail. It’s already pre-determined. It will look just like it did last year. Maybe they’ll have slightly different artists but the idea is so similar. What they really need to be thinking about is what they can do that on. How far can they push this conceptually? What will add to it? It would be cool if they could do one of the hubs of the opera house for like one day. Sydney is really conservative when it comes to that sort of shit. I try and do projects up there all the time, it’s a pain in the ass.

Lets talk about that more; you’re heavily involved in street art but you also worked at an inner city council. Local councils are becoming more tolerant of street art, but is this a genuine recognition of the cultural value of street art, a response to public pressure (after the Banksy removal for example) or a recognition of the commercial value of street art (in terms of tourism)?

I would say that’s not true. That was the case after the Banksy removal but that was 2 or 3 years ago now. I was part of a big literature review where we did a study with heritage Victoria on whether street art should be heritage listed. At the end we came up with the conclusion that it needs to be well documented and perhaps there should be a street art website set up. Which strangely enough was just put in the library and ended up on the front page of the Herald Sun (in a strongly negative story) – but that was our recommendation; it is an ephemeral art form and needs to remain so.

We’ve got this conservative government at state level at the moment. They’re making very heavy and swift changes to graffiti laws at the moment. Since the new graffiti laws came in 2 or 3 years ago, tagging has increased hugely. It’s creating a lot of problems for us as street artists. A lot of the young people I work with are hardcore graffers. They’re not necessarily interested in the street art movement. That’s ultimately what will be the end of this movement. They’re going back to graffing but it hasn’t come yet because they’re just kids. But they are some of the best kids coming up. They look to artists like Puzle and other artists that I look to. They’re told ‘if you want to get paid for this gig you better give the people what they want. What they want is characters and shit.’ But for now the government and inner city councils they’re working with the police and engineering department and me (who represents the young people) to create a holistic approach to graffiti with community. It’s a big problem. I’ve had ladies crying. People really hate tagging but they really love street art. So I spend half my time trying to explain to people the difference. I’m really understanding that we need to create a division otherwise we’ll end up losing both.

At the moment there’s an increased amount of complaints for tagging – it’s increased over 100%. So the council has a real fight on its hands. That’s not helping the cause because at the moment Melbourne street tours are doing fabulously. Schools are coming. Youth groups are coming. It’s getting bigger and bigger. It’s interesting because it’s all based on this street art that’s so derisive. It’s interesting because it’s voted as the number one tourist attraction for Melbourne. I think it was voted the #1 free tourist attraction in Australia by Lonely Planet. That says how seriously it’s taken by tourism. It’s also now becoming part of our heritage. Like this wall outside of Blender; it’s the only wall that has stencils of that era – so these things start to become very important.

 

You talked about the division between street art and tagging. Many people consider it to be a continuous spectrum. To quote Junky Projects, he said ‘Saying you like street art but hate tagging is a bit like saying you love sandwiches but hate bread.’

It’s true. I think they’re closely linked. Even if I’m doing an art fag mural I might also run over and do a tag. It’s something I’ve done since I was a kid on Milkbars etc. But at the same time in order to maintain street art and the big murals, like Everfresh, The Napier Crew and The Blender Crew, this needs to be protected. I know some councils are in the process of established new graffiti management strategies and if they can define a distinction between street art and graffiti on a bureaucratic level that will help street art a lot. At the moment the police just say that everything that is illegal is graffiti. I had a cop say to me ‘Do you support Banksy?’ I told him I thought it was pretty cool what he’d achieved. The cop told me ‘Well you support illegal graffiti’. I thought, well I guess that’s the case. Basically there’s no difference between him and kids in the suburbs that are getting caught for doing the same thing. Just that he puts more content in it or he’s more famous. This is an irony that Australia loves to celebrate; Ned Kelly and a bad boy thing. It’s a very interesting argument.

The councils are trying their hardest to sort it. If the issue isn’t resolved soon the laws will get harder and the cops will get tougher.

There’s a $550 fine at the moment if you’re caught with a spray can ‘without lawful excuse’ near public transport. It reverses the burden of proof because there’s a presumption of guilt. It’s interesting that they’re so against graffiti that they’re willing to reverse this pillar of our legal system. The only other laws that I could find that reverse this burden of proof are anti-terror laws.

It goes against the Geneva convention. You can be searched without reason.

I think the problem with these types of zero tolerance laws is they don’t stop tagging but they wipe out street art. They don’t stop cheap graffiti but they really hurt art that requires time, resources and consideration. What can you and I and other street artists do to stop these laws?

Well what I’ve done in council is argue that whenever they do new parks or projects that there should be legal graffiti areas. The City of Melbourne has a number of lanes where they turn a blind eye. They have one lane (Union lane) where they specifically use it as a curated lane. But it’s a bit too thin to be a successful project. Everyone just ends up slashing everyone else. I have worked closely with councils in their youth departments. It’s pretty funny.

People are starting to realize that the people who complain against graffiti are also the people who are most likely to complain; old biddies and old Mrs Jones. But graffiti kids are the least likely to represent themselves. So it’s a completely unrepresented argument. On the one hand you’ve got all these old people that are writing lettes to the council. On the other hand you’ve got complete silence. We’re trying to change that by giving kids a voice. But then they’ve got to meet Mrs Jones. And Mrs Jones has got to tell them how scared she was when she saw this graffiti. But it has to go both ways. Mrs Jones has to hear about how they just want to express themselves.

When you were saying old biddies complain and street artists and young kids don’t complain, it reminded me of something; I actually complained once. An Urban Cake Lady got removed by council cleaners and I rang up to complain. I got transferred through to Engineering at the City of Melbourne and this guy told me ‘Street artists want their art to be ephemeral, so we’re just doing what street artists want’ – that’s the level of misunderstanding.

Yeah that’s not right. But the City of Melbourne are generally doing the right thing. They’ve been meeting with me. I’ve gotten to know their Engineering department quite well. In a way I think I’ll be working with them from the exterior as a consultant. There are big issues and there is a lot of miscommunication between street artists and the rest of the world. It goes both ways. I think street artists are pretty inconsiderate sometimes too. People have the right not to get this stuff graffed on. If I’ve worked hard my whole life and I’ve finally bought my house I have a right not to have graffiti on it. It goes both ways and I think kids need to learn where and what to graffiti on.

Like graffing over the Banksy in Fitzroy wasn’t a great idea.

I think there’s another issue here too. Street artists can often get really territorial; I put that there, that’s my space and no one can go over it. There’s an obvious hypocrisy.

It goes even bigger. We had an artist who did a residency here a few years ago – Sixten. His piece got photographed off a wall and used in a Playstation game. He took them to court. They argued he’d done it illegally. He ended up saying it was a legal picture and he got 10 grand.

What’s your opinion on that outcome?

I think the artist should have got the money. In the end these guys are purely using it for something to make money from. They’re stealing his intellectual property. If it was just someone who was stealing it for something lame it would be fine but when it’s a big corporation it isn’t.  If they want those something done it’s not hard to make a phone call. They’re fucking loaded. They make so much money. All these artists need as much work as they can get – they’re just getting by.

It’s easy to look at the rich evil corporation and then look at the starving artist and say ‘that isn’t fair’ but I don’t see it in the same terms as you. When you put something on the street illegally I see it as a gift to the community.

Yeah I agree with that.

Trash it, someone might take it down and sell it in a big commercial art fair. I might not agree with those outcomes but I don’t think I have any more right than anyone else in the community to say that’s wrong. I don’t own it anymore. It belongs to everyone now.

I think the actual image belongs to the artist. They might want to put that image in a gallery and sell it. You’d get a hiding if you were an artist stealing someone’s art. You can’t give a corporation a hiding. It’s changed now that it’s become so big. The sociology has changed. I believe that it is a gift when I do it. I see it as a gift to the people. But at some point it’s still mine, I did it. It’s my piece. With the understanding that it is ephemeral.

The more people that photograph it and put it on Facebook, I think that’s awesome, but once someone starts using it for financial gain I think that’s wrong. It’s just morally wrong. I know it’s probably legally wrong now. I’ve recently been involved in this project where a company wanted me to design a big mural for them and they wanted to own the intellectual property of the mural. That made me design it very differently. Intellectual property is an interesting debate and I think the artists need to be looked after in this one, most of the time they get taken advantage of.

The City of Melbourne has commissioned a report into ‘significant’ graffiti, which acts as a kind of endorsement for street art. They’re starting to adopt a softer approach. But the State Government is still very hard line. I feel these 2 policies are starting to come into conflict.

This is what’s interesting. The City of Melbourne have actually increased their graffiti removal. They have 2 permanent vans that cost them $1 million/year that are on 24 hour call. They’ve increased their policing. But they’ve also decided that certain areas and certain pieces are allowed to remain. It ends up that the graffiti removalists become the curators of the street. What happens then is someone at a council puts together a book of important artworks that are protected.

Ultimately they’ll have a palm pilot with a given direction, but you end up with this situation where three houses want it gone, 1 house is completely trashed and several others like it. It becomes hard to have clean streets because everyone has a different opinion on it. The guys who remove the graffiti need to be brought into the argument a lot more. They are now. Certainly the City of Melbourne aren’t getting soft but they’re trying to find that balance between the tagging and street art. The new government at state level is certainly anti-graffiti and it shows at a municipal level. The City of Melbourne have more room to breathe. City of Melbourne, City of Yarra and maybe Stonnington- these are cities that are transient. They’re different to say Dandenong or Boronia.

So there has to be different laws for different municipalities.

What would you do if the world ended tomorrow?

If the world ended tomorrow I’d keep painting. If everyone was gone, I’d go out and just tip paint on everything. Make it all nice and colourful. I think people need to tip paint on more shit. I don’t think there’s enough tipping going one. Maybe that’s something we should do; get a car and a fuckload of paint and just tip it down the sides of buildings. You’d get a team of kids and just keep pouring it down the edges of everything. What do you reckon?

If the world ended. Everyone was gone? I’d start fires.

Oh yeah that’d be cool. Something with fire would be fun. I’d get shit to run into each other as well. Fire is cool. You could burn the Rialto to see what would happen. You’re never going to need it. You’re the last dude on earth.

The tallest building might be useful for looking around. But the second tallest…

[Laughter]

 

Most of the ‘fine’ arts in Melbourne are pretty mediocre on the world stage (MSO, Australian Ballet, Melbourne Opera). No one is coming from overseas to see those things or the NGV, when they have the Louvre or the Guggenheim down the road. But Melbourne’s street art is world class- among the top 5 cities in the world. The fine arts are elitist while street art is inherently egalitarian. The fine arts receive these huge tax payer subsidies while street art gets nothing (for example murals for legal walls to enhance the culture). What can street art do to redress this imbalance?

Having people like me working on a number of different fronts helps. Having people who can advocate the rights of street artists who might not be as articulate. I can speak to the Mayor or politicians or the police and explain how important this stuff is. As part of my PhD I plan on doing Australia’s largest mural. Melbourne should be helping make this happen. The side of a sky scraper would be fucking werd! This is happening with advertising but not with street art.

I guess at the end people can’t see a money value with street art unless they’re stealing from it or trying to change it. In its purest form it’s got no monetary interest and it’s incorruptible – there’s no big money to be made from street art. Obviously there’s heaps of famous artists that are making big money but on a community level there’s no money.

I don’t see it in those terms. I mean the Australian Ballet is a huge sink for tax payer fund. There’s no money to be made from it but they still get these huge tax payer subsidies. Why is street art shunned? I know it’s low brow culture…

I think it’s partly because of the elicit edge – people really care that it’s illegal. For me, I don’t care. I find it really interesting that people automatically assume that graffiti artists are these really punk dudes who takes drugs in laneways. I don’t think that’s happened, ever. I think street artists are mostly middle class kids who feel they don’t have a voice. I think they feel street art gives them a voice and a place in a community (whether it be the street art community).

I think it’s a shame the councils and state government haven’t realized how important it’s become for Australia. They should give it funding. These are things I’d like to do: Get a skyscraper that’s ready to be demolished, make it safe and let everyone paint it. We’d get people from all over the world and then it would be the number one city in the world. People would fly in to do it – it wouldn’t be too hard to do. I could do it in 6 months as long as I had funding. I could probably do it for 100 grand. I just need funding or some corporate sponsorship.

These things are really achievable.

I think that’s a good way of framing the argument; Australia has always been a bit mediocre when it comes to art movements. Now we have the opportunity to be at the head of something – why aren’t we number one? Give it the funding and we can be number one.

It just gets back to this argument ‘but they write on my fence’ and you can’t argue with someone like that. It’s such a derisive argument that people won’t compromise. To have a full understanding of both sides of the argument has taken me a long time and it’s taken maturity. I don’t think this issue will ever be resolved because kids will always do graffiti and adults will always get angry about it. I guess I’m an adult that does a bit of graffiti myself and most of my buddies are but we’re old art fags now.

We’re far from the graffers we once were. Had I been caught doing trains when I was a kid a) I wouldn’t have the job I have, b) I wouldn’t have been able to travel. It would have dramatically changed my life. So I’m trying to make sure these kids are safe when they come out of this phase. They don’t hurt themselves too much. People need to remember that at the heart of this problem are just normal good kids. They happen to do graffiti but most of them don’t have many issue. Nobody ever talks about the kids and in the end it’s the kids that count. They’re the ones who truly stand to lose. Culturally that’s a big deal. But for them it’s such a police state.

That’s a good question: why isn’t there money for street art when you compare it to these other thing?

It’s a weird situation because Melbourne bills itself as a cultural city. But where does this culture come from? 99% of people never go to a ballet production, so how can it come from these fine art institutions. It comes from the street art and the live music scene; the low brow culture.

It’s funny because the same thing has happened to the Blender. The fine arts have always denied the Blender and now they’re all jumping on board – but they see street art as low brow.

It’s a big movement. It’s not all of what’s happening in Melbourne. It’s a poor economy and I’d say that some of the best fine art is happening now. Because it’s been overlooked and that’s when fine artists work the hardest. That’s when the Angry Penguin period happened …

Check out Adrian Doyles Facebook page, the Blender Studios website, Melbourne Street Art Tours and the Darkhorse Experiment website for more info.