In July 2009, I’d been living in Melbourne for over a year, in a small (now demolished), workers cottage on Highett street in Richmond. Across the road, a dilapidated warehouse (now turned into cruisey new apartments) sat. Every so often, Id sneak in through a wedged open piece of sheet metal, to see what was new. It wasn’t a huge space, but contained several rooms that cycled through a whole bunch of new graff. It was my personal go to space, and I’d sit there for hours at a time just hanging out with a beer, in the murky light – I fucking loved it in there.

Graffiti, and street art, was everywhere in Melbourne in 2009 – and after years of travelling around the world and then being back in the confines of Perth, where graffiti held on but street art had hardly even made a mark, I felt like Id found a home for the first time in over a decade. Id even started painting again, after a friend had passed me a crate full of cans and said “Hey, you used to paint, do you want these?” – it was then that I realised how shit I was at actual painting, and after those first few forays realised I had so much to learn that I had never bothered to before.

I was always a bomber, back then, not a painter. My skills with a can ran to throwies and tags, but my pieces sucked ass. Regardless, having grown up in the graffiti scene in Perth in the early 90s, graff has always been a huge part of my life. Abandos, midnight runups at McIver with my crewmates, hiphop parties, freights down in Freo, the old brewery, forays into Hell, passion pop and cheap goon down at Hillarys – all the fun things of youth. I had the absolute time of my life back then – until I forayed a little too far down into the darker side of things, and found myself in a lot more trouble than Id anticipated. I got out of Perth, and went as far away as one could and still remain int he country – all the way to Cairns, where, though there was no graffiti scene. It was there that I had my first exhibitions, and that my scope of what art was expanded out from purely my love of graffiti – and where I started seriously realising that even though my letters sucked, my creatures and characters where were I really fell in love with creating.

Fast forward to many years of travelling, living in the US and the UK, and then that eventual fortuitous abando across the road from my house in Richmond, and I began to fall in love with graffiti, and its somewhat new odd child-cousin street art, all over again. I started painting again, teaching myself all those skills that I hadn’t bothered to learn earlier in my youth, and, something new to me – I began attending exhibition, where graff and street artists were legitimately showing brilliant works, and actually selling them to people who also appreciated them. Places like Gorker Gallery, Andy Macs Until never in Hosier lane, and then For Walls, Per Square Meter, Blender studios and then a little later, early Backwoods shows, Thousand Pound Bend and Paradise hills were regular haunts on the Friday night exhibition run.

In 2009, however, probably my favourite and most influential gallery was At Large in Northcote, run by Sims and Mishap. I loved the shows there, many with early up and coming artists who have since made names for themselves, often with their very first solo shows. Its where I mad a shitload of new mates, and where, eventually, I also had my own very first solo show.

The problem was, week in and week out, Id have to trawl through a very early Facebook, and numerous blogs and word of mouth, to even find out where many of these shows were. Often, Id miss something I wish Id seen merely because I was out of the loop – and I wasn’t alone, others often said the same thing – “Shit, wish I’d known about that!”. On the other hand, also, it was a time when it felt like the graffiti and street art scene was absolutely pumping. New artists were emerging, or arriving, int he city at what seemed a handful each week, and new work was popping up on the walls everywhere – and I had absolutely no idea who any of them were, and didn’t know anything about them – and neither did anyone else.

So I figured, well, if no one else is doing it …. maybe Ill just do a few posts on my blog? I’d spent a good portion of my time between 2002 and 2009 working as a freelancer writer for numerous street magazines both here and overseas, mostly in the electronic music and Dnb realm. I’d interviewed hundreds of DJs, and written extensively on the Dnb scene in Perth for Xpress, Drum and Inpress, and quit a few articles for the UKs Knowledge magazine. Id lost a bit of interest in just talking to DJs by the time I moved to Melbourne, and when I transferred over here I found that the freelance rates most of the magazines were offering were absolutely shit – it was hardly worth the effort I went to doing the interview and prepping everything for the pissy amount of pay it earned. I was working full time anyways, and decided “well, if I’m going to write for basically nothing, I may as well write for absolutely nothing on something that I really, really love and want to know more about”.

That’s how Invurt was born.

I was, at the time, having come from Perth, a newbie in many peoples eyes here in Melbourne. Even though I had extensive connections and a long history within graff in Perth, it counted for next to nothing in Melbourne. I’d been in and out of the scene in the West, and it was as if I was starting all over again from scratch. Sometimes getting information on shows or cool spots where people were painting to write about was difficult. People were often hesitant to speak to me, until I reluctantly dropped a few names or mentioned certain things, or others mentioned me when people checked up about who the fuck I was. Slowly, over time people started realising that I wasn’t just some blow in cunt, and that I legitimately had a love for graff in my heart, and wanted to promote all the cool shit that was going on to as many people as I possibly could.

The first post to Invurt was the At Large gallery opening – and my first ever interview I posted up was with Tessa Yee, who, at the time, was driving BSG to great places by focusing a lot on street art and graffiti (Lamentably, I really wish they had continued her amazing work). Makatron, We Make Stuff Good, Dabs Myla and many others followed swiftly from that, as my curiosity kept leading me down so many different paths to new artists that it was incredibly hard to keep up.

Back then Invurt made its home at my studio in Prahran, at Rival Revolution studios. My friends Bonnie and Grace were helping out a lot in those early days, writing articles and generally trying to help me keep up with all the stuff that was happening. It was there that we started looking at all the empty walls around Chapel street, and started getting permission for big paintups in the area, and helped kick start the street art and painting wave in Prahran and South Yarra over the past ten years. One of my prouder moments was organising a shitload of artists for our regular Aerosol Alley paintups down at a laneway behind Chapel street. These became so successful that the council then decided to rename the laneway – and I’m still pissed about them calling it the politically correct fucking “Artists Lane”, instead of Aerosol Alley, which is what we had named it, and what it should have always been called. These days, the laneway still sees a lot of work going up, and council and Chapel street traders now monopolise it for a lot of their events, but it started with us.

Looking back on it, we accomplished a lot of shit over the years. I pushed all my space money into the site, and the painting events, often buying paint and food and drinks for artists out of my own pocket. I never needed nor asked for anything in return – I was just happy to see paint going up on walls, and people being happy at being surrounded by art from some of the most talented artists in the world.

All Your Walls was a huge high point. I’d met Dean Sunshine early on in the lifetime of Invurt, and we shared a lot of the same passions and goals for what we wanted to do with this love of ours. He has been a true guide and mate over these years, and all of that hard work really did culminate it that event. Together with Toby from Just Another, we curated over 150 artists and repainted the entirety of Hosier lane with new artwork with All Your Walls. Some people were a bit miffed when they saw the laneway turned all black, after the whole “Empty Nursery blue” intervention by Adrian Doyle, but when it was finished, and we put on a party in the laneway, everyone fucking loved it. It was the first time a huge proportion of both the graffiti and street art crew here in Melbourne had come together to work side by side to create something amazing – and they succeeded.

Dean, together with David RusseLl and his awesome photography, and Luke McManis, helped a lot over those times. We also put together galleries for Google for their Melbourne street art section on their Arts and Culture site, helped out with the Cutback documentary that was done for SBS and even managed to be instrumental in ridding Melbourne city of their ridiculous street art permit bullshit, opening up Hosier lane to allow anyone to paint, and stopping the councils shitty CCTVs going up in such a sensitive area.

Advocism was always a huge part of why I entered into all of this in the first place, I couldn’t have got through those times without that help, and I owe everyone who helped out over the years more than you can imagine. Over the years we moved base from Rival Revolution to a few different studios, first Safehouse, then Arts Hole, and now we’re at Vs in Richmond. Those were the high times for Invurt, when I was so “in” it that I couldn’t stop, and never wanted to – Ill keep doing this for the next ten, twenty, thirty years, I said.

Things change, however. Dave and Luke went on to pursue other things in life, and, besides Dean and his regular top 10, I was left to hold the fort. Around 2014 I started working up in Singapore for 6 months contract stints, and my posting to Invurt became slower in 2016. Putting up new interviews every week and keeping up with shows when I wasn’t actually in Melbourne was hard. I kept painting and then travelling around SE Asia, meeting new people and slowly finding other things. I wanted to focus more on my own art, and my own things, rather than constantly pushing myself to try and cover other artists and putting those needs before my own. I started making toys, and, to be honest, after having travelled a lot to places like Jakarta, KL, Manila and Vietnam, I, and this is hard to admit, I started to fall out of love with the Melbourne scene. Painting in Jakarta and KL felt like I had gone back in time, to when everyone loved the scene and people were doing what they did purely out of a joy to paint. Kids would save up a whole month just to buy a few cans to paint with, and it truly felt like it used to be back when Invurt first started out, and even earlier. In Indonesia and Malaysia, there were huge paint up sessions with many artists, something I haven’t seen in Melbourne for some time, and new exhibitions with newly emerging artists happening all the time. I missed that feeling in our city.

In Melbourne, a lot of galleries closed down. There were less shows from new artists, and new works up on the walls seemed to be the same artists month by month, with commissions comprised a lot of it. Many of those were dominating by “realistic” needs by the businesses and people who wanted them – which was great for all the artists to whom that was their style, but I started seeing the more creative, abstract or character based artwork falling to the wayside. Where I would see new artists popping up all the time, I started seeing the same names, over and over again. Which was also, in a way, great, as it meant that all those friends and people I knew who had struggled for so long pursuing their love now had the ability to actually make a decent living doing what it was that they loved. On the other hand, where were all the new artists doing great things on our walls?  Where were all the big freeform paintups where street artists and graff artists would get together and paint whatever they wanted? What had been a torrent, was now a trickle.

My stint in SE Asia lasted several years, and Invurt languished. I posted fuck all, being busy with my own shit, and with no one else contributing it became more of a reference point than an active place where people could find information. I still followed everything, I still got excited by new artists and really cool projects, but my need to post about it just… became a bit too apathetic. I had the passion, but I was lacking the drive – and I knew I just couldn’t possibly sustain it again all on my own, its just too big a job for one person, running this damn thing.

Things change. Scenes and artists ebb and flow. A persons passion for art is like the tide, it can come and go, but that ocean of love never disappears, and the waves will always return.