MELBOURNE, Australia — Earlier this week, fifteen months after police raided and destroyed artist Paul Yore’s installation “Everything is Fucked” (2013), magistrate Amanda Chambers dismissed all charges against the artist and ordered the police to pay the costs of shutting down his exhibition.
Mark S. Holsworth
Mark S. Holsworth is a writer, art critic and artist who lives in Melbourne, Australia. He has written plays, short stories, and a long running blog Black Mark - Melbourne Art & Culture Critic.
Posted inArt
Melbourne’s Selfie Mecca
MELBOURNE, Australia — Cycling around the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, I noticed a small shop entirely covered in photographs: the shop-front, the door, the lintel, everything. I stopped. Was it the work of someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder? Was it some kind of art installation? When I met Vittorio, the proprietor, I learned that this was a work of self-portraiture on an incredible scale.
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What the Hell Are We Going to Do With All This Junk?
MELBOURNE, Australia — Empty cans, bits of plastic, wire and wood are common sights in city streets. Some of it is very familiar, like the bottle cap embedded in the tarmac out the front of my neighbor’s house that has been there for years. Graffiti, wheat-pasting, and stencils are a common sights in the inner city streets in Melbourne, Australia. Then one day I walked into a little street in Melbourne’s inner city suburb of Fitzroy and saw the two combined staring at me — street art sculpture made of junk with the tag: Junky Projects.
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Beware Street Artists Bearing Thought-provoking Gifts
MELBOURNE, Australia — Melbourne-based street artist CDH specializes in presenting audacious and difficult challenges to institutions that explore the illicit nature of street art. Disguised in a bright safety vest, he is well-spoken and calm and on one occasion his demeanor has even been able to convince a few Melbourne police officers to help him install a street art work. He believes in giving art to the city if they want it or not and that art can be created even if permission is not granted. He dares people to destroy what is clearly art and so traps them in participating in his project.