Why
would one artist SPOIL another’s successful artwork?
Why would an established artist offer their artwork to be graffitied?
In a dedicated
art space at Republic Tower Melbourne art making is taking a turn. The
polite gallery system is being challenged and interrupted by the spontaneous
eruption of street art. Is this the next thing for refined art?
Have someone mess with it!
Location
The corner of Queens and Latrobe Sts Melbourne is the site of the Visible
Art Foundations billboard, which is eight metres high by seven metres
wide.
Action
Julie Rraps piece FLESHTONES: a mural photograph of a morphing male nude
figure on a beach has been defaced! Nicholas Hansen has gone over FLESHTONES,
painting on the photograph with thick black lines and and postering over
Julie Rraps’ artists’ statement.
This action has obscured
and altered the message of the original work which has adorned this site
for the last seven months. This stunt brings into question the cultural
value of unsanctioned public art and the ways that ‘art’ and
‘graffiti art’ contribute to a very public dialogue. Julie
Rrap has offered her work to be ‘bombed’ in this graffiti
action!
Nicholas Hansen is
a Melbourne artist and filmmaker with a particular interest in the debate
around graffiti and public space.
Collaboration
This unusual artistic collaboration occurred in Melbourne City on the
evening of Sunday the 1st August. Nicholas has extended on Julies themes
of refugees and place by painting long OIL drips that defy gravity and
swarm up the eight metre facade. The contemporary oil curse has become
an inverted oil slick, oil drips up the picture! Gravity like reason is
something we can take for granted. This painted overlay on the landscape
photograph comments on how manoeuvrings for the control of OIL supplies
has drawn nations into recent conflict in IRAQ and continues with political
exchanges in our region with East Timor.
The work
is accompanied by wheat paste postering that yells a Hip Hop Haiku:
ROBOTS
BEHEAD
RIGHTS
SYSTEM
Nicholas
and Julie’s collaboration is a stunt in the agitprop vein and seeks
to extend the idea through the conversations that spring up around it.
So join in!
The SPOILS show was completed on 25th September 2004.
The
site is now host to a new exhibition by Barbara Kruger
'Untitled' billboard, especially commissioned by Australian Centre For
Contemporary Art for the Visible Art Foundation for the Republic Tower.
'Blind
Eye, Brain Drained, Shattered Skin'
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