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.

Townsville Graffiti

In the last few years many regional towns have started to embrace graffiti and street art culture. Examples of these towns include Geelong & Benalla (Victoria), Lismore & Byron Bay (NSW) and Townsville (Queensland). Each town has a slightly different angle on how they promote urban art as a tourist attraction. 

Townsville city council has even gone as far to produce a street art brochure which provides a map and 16 different art pieces and separately includes illegal graffiti hot-spots.  

Townsville City Council has created a Street Art Activation Framework from which there is a solid philosophy, vision and purpose behind the art. 

The council unsuccessfully attempts to divide and separate the definition of street art and graffiti by simplification. It describes graffiti as illegal and street art legal. Whereas most artists, practitioners or vandals know some graffiti can be street art and most street art, if not all is not graffiti. So even the illegal works can be street art. 

Objectives 

(as stated and summarised to..)

• Cultural-Professional development, career opportunities, valuing public art, encouraging art diversity
• Economic-Increase activity in city, tourism, promoting diversity and innovation
• Recreational-Responding to youth needs, Building interest in community spaces
• Social-Encouraging collaboration, engaging with city youth, establishing civic pride
• Urban Planning-Urban transformation, community engagement, promoting public spaces

The council has mapped graffiti done through Townsville and has identified 6 priority activation sites based on their high levels of graffiti. 4 of which (where graffiti was aggregated) included the suggestion of Legal walls with Hosier Lane (Melbourne) and Morphett Bridge (Adelaide) used as successful examples.

It has also looked at mimicking the graffiti on trains with the "mobile canvas" concept to have the sides of council garbage trucks as a place to paint.

https://www.townsville.qld.gov.au/community-support/arts-and-culture/street-art

Sugar Glider by Roa

More info of Belgium artist Roa-http://www.streetartbio.com/roa 

More photos-http://allthoseshapes.com/roa_graffiti_street-art/

Fb-https://www.facebook.com/ROAStreetArt/

 Faces of Townsville, by Ha ha

Ha ha bio-http://regantamanui.com/bio.html

 Run Collective

Fb-https://www.facebook.com/Run-Collective-188834624491543/

 Props to Kelso most prominent Far North Queensland graffiti writer

 Crocodile and Turtle by Roa

"Illegal" graffiti out of Townsville 

Australia's Most Prolific and Notorious Stencil Artist

Regan Tamanui or Ha Ha as he is known, has been heavily involved in the Melbourne Graffiti scene. He has dedicated a significant amount of time to painting the streets. His works focuses on the power on mass media in Australian pop culture. Ha Ha features in 2005 film about Melbourne's Street Art, called "Rash" link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UovsPn4Dvg0.   

Ha Ha answers a series of questions about Graffiti and Melbourne.

Whats the difference between street art and graffiti?
Street art & graffiti are pretty much the same thing, all street art is, is a intellectual's term to legitimize graffiti so people & corporations can capitalise off it.

Ha Ha's iconic Ned Kelly a rebellious figure with anti-authority sentiment similar to a graffiti artist. 

What makes Melbourne a good city for graffiti?
Melbourne is a very creative city & the graffiti is very diverse & executed to a world class standard , its also embraced by the public as a major player in Melbourne culture, also the graf here is very clean in comparison to most cities on the planet.

Science fiction character

Should Melbourne have more legal walls to paint?
Yes there is not enough legal walls here, but the cool thing is that you can apply to paint walls in the CBD through the council its free you just have to full out a form & get permission from the owner

Ha Ha and his classic roller pieces often found along train lines

What made you want to paint on the streets?
I got into doing stencil from seeing other stencils on the streets mainly from 'Psalm', & activist anti war stencils , so I thought i'll try that.

For information on Ha Ha check out his website http://regantamanui.com/bio.html#