Stencil Down Under
At the turn of the millennium, Melbourne was a city known for its bubbling music scene, laid-back way of life and cosmopolitan vibe. Then, just months into the new century, the walls started to change colour. Taggers and throw ups had always had a place on the city’s walls, but a new style of street art was making itself known. Stencilling eked out of the cracks and, starting off small and colourful, began to expand and spread across the entire inner city. Stencil graffiti – pioneered by Frenchman Blek Le Rat and brought reeling into the mainstream by England’s anonymous yet super famous Banksy – had arrived. And it was taking over. So much so that the Lonely Planet Guide notes stencil art as one of the number one attractions for visitors to the city.
At the heart of this burgeoning scene sit two artists: Civilian and Prism. For Civilian, an activist hailing from Newcastle, some 100 miles north of Sydney, art and politics are decidedly related. “I moved to Melbourne and there was this beautiful mess of graffiti everywhere and it’s definitely where I started my more creative stencilling,” says the softly spoken artist. “I was really drawn to it, with the political slogans and tags and stencils and paste-ups and everything.”
Queensland-born Prism started painting at a very early age, sneaking out and using model plane paint. But it wasn’t until a student exchange trip to Brazil in 1999 that he discovered the freedom of stencilling. “The speed of it really appealed to me, and it was something different,” says the self-proclaimed vandal. He soon turned political – famously bombing a stencil featuring the then Prime Minister John Howard with devil horns across Melbourne - before moving into more character-based stencilling.
Like so many breaking scenes, when things kicked off, they kicked off hard. “When we started in early 2002, it went ‘bang’! The whole city went nuts,” Prism recounts of his exploits with fellow painters Phibs, Rone, Wrecker, Sync, Macatron and The Tooth. “Then it infiltrated everything, from the media, to fashion and the music scene. I mean, you could not find one fucking band poster that didn’t have a paint drip coming off it from some graphic designer.”
Civilian also worked with other writers, including Psalm, arguably the first stencil artist in Melbourne. “There was a stage when there was a bunch of us who felt like when we went out we were going out against each other,” says the dreadlocked artist. “You got a really good buzz about doing stuff, because we were pushing each other and hitting as many spots as possible.”
The stencilling kept coming. Prism and his buddies famously set up the city’s first illegal ‘galleries’. Suitably gonzo, the ‘galleries’ consisted of painting large, white spaces in the cities labyrinthine alleys, such as Hosier and Canada Lanes, which within days would be filled with colour.
Although a visitor to the city would be forgiven for thinking that the Melbourne authorities are pretty slack, there are actually pretty stringent regulations in place. During the Commonwealth Games in 2006 a zero-tolerance policy on graffiti was brought in after a proposed consultation with criminologist Alison Young, Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne and unofficial spokesperson for the writers, was thrown out and denied. And most recently an even more controversial law has been passed statewide. “If you’re caught within something like 1,500 metres of any form of public transport with spray paint or marker pens, they can charge you on the spot just for having them,” Prism says with obvious frustration. “Then you have to prove that you need those pens or paint for a legitimate commercial purpose. It’s guilty until proven innocent. What the fuck?”
Civilian’s not a fan of Big Brother either: “It’s the classic thing that the people who will suffer most from this law will be the kids out in the suburbs who you never hear about,” he adds. “The taggers who aren’t as educated and don’t have as strong a community as stencil artists. This law will also lead to things like resisting arrest. And whatever else is found in the bag searches will only make it worse for the kids.”
These new laws, though, aren’t stopping more people from getting into the scene. Youth centres in the city even run stencil-making workshops, and new work appears week after week across the city. “I think there’s a lot more stencils with a lot lower quality now that there are so many kids involved,” Civilian says. “But don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing that so many young people are into it.”
Whether Melbourne is still the capital of stencilling, who knows? There’s always someplace else discovering their scalpel and cardboard skills. Even Indonesia’s got the bug now. “The stencil scene in Jakarta is really taking off at the moment, which is hardcore!” says Civilian. “You’ve got to have balls to do that! I have no idea what the penalties are there.” But for now, Melbourne is the tidemark against which all other stencils are measured. And that means it’s always gonna be somewhere near the top of the tree.
To read the full feature, check out Huck #012.
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