The Adelaide connection

Tense piece representing old school graffiti crew 73A with shout outs with local Crime Wave crew in Brunswick.  

YouTube video

Brunswick walls

Brunswick trackside walls are hot property in Melbourne. Its a balancing act of don't cap what you can't burn or try finding a new wall or if there's no wall space go up. Multi-storey graffiti is a sign of healthy and thriving graffiti scene. Its good to track change. Brunswick like most inner-city places has gone through a huge change in the last 10, 20, 30 years. Even since the 2013 visit I noticed lots has changed. More built up, more green space and graffiti is flourishing. 

2013

The roll-up days of Ha ha and Sync. Ha ha featured in the Melbourne street art documentary Rash from 2005. Ha Ha was Melbourne's answer to Banksy. His passion and productivity for street art, was hugely influential. In contrast to his big bold roll-ups along train lines his main icon was his stencil work. Without artists like him its hard to imagine what the stencil scene would have been. In 2005 the stencil graffiti capital book was released. This boom in street art lead to laneways dedicated to stencil work like Canada Lane Carlton and Blender Lane in Melbourne. Interview with Ha Ha. We all but lost Canada Lane, fortunately it was immortalised somewhat in the book Uncommissioned Art an A to Z of Australian Graffiti. More on that later.  

2024

Golfa appearing seemingly everywhere.

2013 Artists below

Retayner

Bailer

Bailer and Retayner famously put Melbourne on the map with their album Hedge Burners. Over Spray stands strong as one of Melbourne's best graffiti themed hip hop songs released in 2012. These two artists traversed the medium of lyrical abilities back to back with visual artforms. They've done it beyond most artists lifetime dreams. On one hand Retayner has released burners on walls across Melbourne and united the Oz hip hop scene to bring together to bring best unrivalled cyphers. Bailer's book Wall Stories was published, showcasing a comprehensive take on the Melbourne graffiti scene. Probably the biggest Melbourne graffiti book since the likes of Kings Way. Publishing anything on this scale in the graffiti scene is fraught with challenges where the legality of artwork can make writers run the other way. Between them a solid combination that's influenced the likes of many Melbourne and Australian artists.

2013

2024

To go back to the same walls 10 years later and see the same artists holding the yard, what a sight to behold. Especially in a trackside environment where the space is premium. Resume and Bailer piece holding ground. The new emergent generation pieces above of Kewl and Cola. There's consistently and increasingly a range of artists that get the highest and best spots, includes the likes of Uzi, Cola, World, Smel, Getting Up, Golfa and of course Nost and even Porke from New Zealand was notorious for it.

Solfes-Brisbane best export

 

Seeking abandoned building addresses

 Seeking abandoned buildings email me australiagraff@gmail.com

Adjacent to where you're standing

Somewhere in Northern Territory

 

Tags, Throws and Pieces

Neat and clean

 

Abandoned Bridgestone Preston

Half of Melbourne has likely funnelled past the old empty Bridgestone shop. Cars race along the east-west connect of Bell st to avoid notorious peak hour traffic jams. Much has changed in 10 years as the shop lays silent, stagnant and empty. Trains fly through the sky and their stations float along the Mernda line after the city wide level crossing removal. Public housing of Heidelberg West was flattened to make way for a major housing re-development project. The old Conga Foods building is a distant memory and now home to Bunnings, with its newfound fame of hosting a Peking Duk rave. The concrete and gravel pit of the new North-east link looks like some sort of post-apocalyptic dystopian future. Whatever the future holds inevitably change will be a part of it. Demolition, construction, production and so called progress. 

Prix, AFP crew, always pushing style boundaries and keeping it fresh in the process.

Props to the prolific Cola and World appearing on a rooftop in a city near you