East West Magazine
Exiting Flinders St Station through the underground Campbell Arcade, I walk every morning with fellow commuters, past the 19 display cases that form one of Platform[i] gallery’s public art spaces. I notice that most people don’t notice the art, but this never surprises me. In a city that has a public holiday for a horse race[ii], artists understand that Melbourne’s cultural god is sport. Art is not popular and it suffers from broad public ambivalence. Yet despite this, Melbourne is gloriously saturated with creativity and art blooms from every nook and cranny in the city.
Ascending from the arcade I emerge into Degraves St - the start of the famous laneways[iii] that web their way throughout Melbourne. These alleys are full of tiny coffee shops, galleries, studios, local fashion designers, contemporary jewellers, doorways to secret bars and the occasional dumpster. They are wallpapered with some of the world’s best stencil, sticker and poster art[iv], so every morning there is new, controversial, humorous, poetic or curious images to see on my way to work.
I usually stop in at Café 5 to get a latte from Sam, who is a fellow artist and proud café owner. Historically, art school graduates washed dishes or waited tables at cafes like Sam’s. Now, artists are commonly found working part-time jobs in the corporate world of call centres. In my 8 years of working in a bank call centre, I have worked alongside opera singers, screenwriters, songwriters, authors, filmmakers, textile designers, cabaret stars and actors from TV, film and stage. For most it’s a daily compromise to be there, but it’s a compromise I choose. My artwork is ephemeral, often using materials like dust to create temporary decorative carpets[v], so I can’t sell what I make. Working at the bank gives me financial security, and total artistic freedom in my art practice.
When I escape the office at 12:30 I go straight to my studio. Situated on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Collins St’s, its neo-gothic architecture draws attention from locals and visitors alike. Its turreted roof, decorative wrought ironwork, arched windows and fairytale balconies are uncommon in a city, which is only a couple of hundred years old. For most of this year, the walls of the stairwell have been lined with a golden sticky substance. An impromptu meeting of artists in the hallway one afternoon confirmed that each of us, out of curiosity, had smelt and tasted it and agreed it was honey. Upon further exploration we discovered hives built between the walls of our studios. There is something charming and poetic about having our studio walls bleed honey, so none of us complain.
Unlike the Nicholas Building[vi] in Swanston st, which houses hundreds of creative Melbournites, our building houses not just artists and bees but hundreds of pigeons and mice. I’m sure that these feral pests are only slightly less welcomed by the landlord than us artists. On the 3rd floor, street artists Miso and Ghostpatrol, painters Deborah Klein and Kathryn Ryan, graphic designer Louise Kellerman and lighting designer Jenny Hector, have all managed to escape eviction for several years now. As more of the inner city is redeveloped and deteriorating buildings are gentrified into expensive apartments, we regularly hear of artists being tossed out of their studios. We therefore adopt the ways of the mice and bees, working seriously and busily in our studios and remaining quiet about leaking roofs and broken toilets, in the hope that they might forget we’re there.
Like most artists around the world, making art is for me a solitary and serious activity. My afternoons are mostly spent alone drawing or cutting stencils to a soundtrack of trams passing on the street below. It may not sound too interesting, but essentially being an artist means shutting the door to the world and working for 6, 8, 10 hours a day, every day of the week. Many artists now have postgraduate degrees, 5-year business plans, corporate approaches to self-promotion and see themselves as ‘professional’ artists. Inside our studio Lou Jen and I still like to occasionally behave like mythical bohemian artists – we drink beer in the afternoons, do crazy art events like the 24 Hour Drawing project, hold parties to show experimental artworks and have local musicians like JJ Symon and Lyndon Wesley play, and we talk long into the night about truth, freedom, beauty, love and above all art.
