UK street artist D*Face is in Melbourne right now to sculpt and paint it up for what Lifelounge call the
Big Mouth Project. He's the guy who placed those concrete spray cans around London. The man loves a sculpture, and Honey loves a bit of literal, so what we've got in the mouth of Luna Park right now is literally another big, screaming yelling a work safety message.
The jetlagged gent, who started painting in 1999, runs Stolen Space Gallery and has a studio in the east end's Truman Brewery, pretty much the hub of creative London, and certainly the scene for much of my cider drinking*. He has access to the caernous Truman site and held a Shepard Fairy exhibition there in a 20,000ft sq space last November.
But it's not the stencil work he's excited about, it's taking 2D work to 3D, making the most of the enviornment and forcing passersby to question whether a piece belongs in the space.
"What I'm really into is making people question the idea of public art and street art. I want people to look at something and wonder whether it's meant to be there."
I mentioned space invader, one of my favs.
"Yeah, they're done by a guy form Paris, Frank. He's got this genius way to creating the space invaders and applying them to the wall. I think he uses some kind of grout that lasts a hundred years. it's so simple, but people love his work, they paint around it."
Painting over work is a danger that comes with the territory. "It's part of the risk, which is what makes it woth doing. But you want as many people to see it as possible while it's up. You also want the layers of dirt and texture. Patina! If you've already made something that looks like it's meant to be there, then that just adds to it."
I mention that we lost the Banksy down Flinders Lane to a bucket of silver paint and ask whether the value of art can ever be judged by its permanency and ownership. "The semi-permanency is part of the value of street art. I mean, you loose ownership as soon as you put soemthing up. But you never lose authorship. Which is where the internet comes in." D*Face photogrpahs every piece, and all his work is up on his site.
Our in-depth discussion about whether the internet makes us dumber or smarter is a subject for another time, but I will share some of our discussion about fixies.
"I think there's a lot of snobbery around fixed gear bikes," he says. It's like 'oh that's a courier's thing so you're ripping off someone's culture'. But actually it's a track riding thing, so who owns it anyway? I really enjoy riding and I don't really give a shit about whether other people slam it or not. They can look really great and the tricks you can reminds me the early days of skateboarding and BMX."
Some nice bloke has hooked D*Face up with a bike to tour around while he's here. Hope they've hooked him up with a helmet, just for safety you know.
*makes me want pie-mash-mushie peas just thinking about it.
By Melanie Hick from
thevine.com.au.