As it should be – the past week has seen so many announcements of new shows, artists getting up, new galleries and a crapload of events happening around Australia … and its great to see. Australia Street Art is some of the best in the world, hands down, and all the derivations of the “genre” that we love to cover is going fkn gangbusters – the more the better, and the better for the artists getting out there,  in our books.

Friday wraps we usually reserve for our miscellaneous bits and pieces and news, so here’s some from us, a rundown on what we’re up to lately, as well as some info on upcoming shows and such ..

Invurt Workshop & Rival Revolution Studios

We posted up a new page this week, with details on our new workshop space within the Rival Revolution complex in Prahran. We had a preview last night in conjunction with a new market night we will be running on a monthly basis with the guys from RR, and had a bunch of people come down to check out what we’re up to. Though we’re still very much under construction, its great to finally have a base of operations, an office and general workspace, and we’re keen to have  creatives involved with us at the space – everyone is free to come and visit, just drop us a line.

We’ve also had some amazing artists come in and paint the space as well, including Heesco, Sim2, Mishap, Katie Houghton-Ward, Enix, Props, Ex-robot & Heidi Philips – all of them putting a riot of colour into an inspirational space. Theres more to come though – and if you’re interested, theres still a few smaller spots left if you want to get something up – its running out quick though, so contact us asap.

Prahran in general, seems to be on the up again and theres some great things happening – after many years of gentrification, archaic and irrational Stonnington near zero urban art tolerance, The Great Millennial Ed Hardy Invasion, and the burgeoning underground arts culture towards the Northside of Melbourne, its pretty exciting to see all the new stuff seeping back into the Prahran/Southside area. With RTIST,Signed & Numbered, T-Squat, Obese, Surface POP, Artboy, Rival Revolution,our new workshop, oh, and Blue Bar (ha!) and a heap of other stuff now in the area, all within ultra short walking distance of each other, well, damn – its starting to look like Prahran is fast becoming a great new “old” place to check out all this stuff … or so we think, anyways haha.

We’ll be running a monthly market event in the space with RR,  called Nothing .. and if anyone is interested in selling wares, art, or whatever, just let us know. Next months market night, Thursday April 24th, will be the official “Invurt” launch, so to speak – its bout time we had one, and you’re all invited, we’ll be having a bit of live art, DJs, lots of cool stuff to buy …and we’ll put out more details on that soon. We’ll also be running a bunch of other events in the future, from live art to screenings, the markets of course and a bunch of other events planned – its a great space, so if you’re interested in working on something with us there, let us know.

We also put up a new submissions and participations page, and we’d love it if anyone wanted to send stuff through stuff for consideration for publishing, guest blogging, or whatever – we’d like to open our doors to include the community around Australia, so feel free to send us stuff! 

Lastly, we finally, after much testing and frustration with freakin wordpress 3.1, have an event calendar up and running! Now you’ve got an easier way of seeing whats on, where, and when, without having to always scroll through the posts to find the info – we hope you find it handy!

To get more regular updates on what we are up to (we try to keep it to the Friday wraps here on the blog) just go like our Facebook Page – we often do updates there during the week.

So, that’s whats been happening in our neck of the woods – it’s been a really busy last two months or getting it all set up, but we’re all pretty damn excited about it – but for now, yeah, yeah, I’ll shut the fsk up and get on with the wrap …

Melbourne Shows

• Surface POP has a group show opening tonight, and theres some great work in it, so head to St Kilda and checkit.
• Reka has his show opening tonight at Backwoods! Can’t wait to see it, the teaser bits and pieces really were pretty teasing and we love his shit.
• Heesco still has his amazing show, Mongo Hustle, portraying Mongolian street artists, on at At Large gallery in Northcote – it was a really great opening, and the work is exquisite. Cool shit.
• Rancho Notorius has Up The Bend running, there grand opening group show –  if you’re in the city, go see.
• Drewfunk, who we talked to earlier in the week  ma-n, we went and saw the preview of it Wednesday, and the opening was reportedly amazing, but all that all nothing compared to the work in the show – some gorgeous ink work, so head to No Vacancy and see it.
• Sean Whelan still has his show on until Sunday at the No Vacancy project space as well
• Enix has work up for showing at Lounge in the city as well – his work is fkn great!
• Finders Keepers Markets is on this weekend!! It looks great! Sunday is the day we’ll be heading down to check it out, but its on all weekend …

Sydney Shows

• Kelly Thompson opened up her show last week, Pyjama Party – such gorgeous illustrative work of some hot as girls to boot.
• Tom Ferson opened up his first solo show this week, so head to Oh Really and see what its all about.

Queensland Shows

• Theres a great group show on in Redcliffe at the moment, with Unleashed: The Rise of Australian Street Art, a cool collection of work.

Miscellaneous bits & pieces ..

• You may have already seen it, but check out all the broo-ha going on over in NZ about the wall that Askew did that was recently buffed, and all the idiocy surrounding it. Go sign the petition as well.
• If you haven’t taken a look at Land of Sunshine yet, do so – Dean has some great coverage of art around Melbourne. With his site, Melbourne Street Art, Don’t Sleep, Kompound and others, we always get our correct dosage.
• We can’t forget as well, Miss Blimey Pirate has put out a new comic drawn up by the talented hands of Pierre Lloga – get yourself a copy, and a copy of Nothing To Nobody while you’re at it!

Thats it for the event wrap, go check out the calendar if you want more details on everything running at the moment. It’s been a big wrap this week, but thanks again for reading, and see you Monday!