It’s all in the details…

…like a well-placed shoe.

Melbourne street art

  

Fitzroy street

  

  

Walls

  

Melbourne street art

Perhaps it was me, being older and getting jaded, but Melbourne’s street art – one of this blog’s great interests – seemed to me on this trip to have hit an impasse. The walls of the city’s alleyways are of course still colourfully emblazoned, and there are still good pieces. But nothing, I thought, that I had not seen before. Few pieces stopped me in my tracks.

Perhaps “installations” are the way to go, following the lead of pranksters who spray painted gold a crashed and abandoned car in the suburb of North Fitzroy, transforming it into a short-lived local statement piece.

It was the kind of opportunistic, authentic response to local conditions that reminded me of this witty diatribe from neighbouring Fitzroy the year before.

But there is still some life in the more traditional “mural” style street art yet, as shown by this work that popped up in Richmond near the river. It immortalises the viral vid of the “kangaroo puncher” which emerged on the world’s interwebs sometime around November this year.

  

Bleak city: Fifty shades of grey

Melbourne street

Richmond Rousseau

Dreamy, faded mural near Richmond station clearly inspired by one of my favourite French artists, Henri Rousseau.

Love locks

Ugly or beautiful?

Courage

Located on Napier Street near Fitzroy’s Town Hall is Melbourne’s first official gay monument (well, the second if you count the statue of Kylie Minogue at Docklands 😉 “Courage”, depicting the a man stepping out of a lion suit on a light-up LED dance floor – a nod to the iconic queer texts of Wizard of Oz and, err, disco – “contemplates what it means to have the courage to be yourself” according to the attached plaque which also name checks Ralph MacLean, Fitzory mayor and Australia’s first openly gay elected official.

Nice.

 

Back streets