Cafe Checocho Hardgrave Rd, Oct 2011
Box Vintage Wall, Vulture Street, Oct 2011
For me, street artists are the unsung heroes of urban environments.
I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill graffiti taggers. I mean the talented - mostly anonymous - people who create really great art on urban walls, roofs, posts, footpaths and more.
One day, you walk past a blank surface. Next morning - voila! Art has bloomed overnight. I just love seeing spaces transformed in this way.
Luckily for me, West End is full of fantastic street art - funny, beautiful, surprising, controversial - you name it, it's here somewhere. I love it so much that, over the last six months, I've started photographing what I find, trying to create a more permanent record of what are often ephemeral works.
Some of them are small, whimsical pieces that you need to look carefully to find (like the tiny winged creatures outside Cafe Checocho's door on Hardgrave Road).
Others are major artworks taking up whole walls (like the zombies on the vacant block on Ashington Street, or the murals on the walls of Box Vintage on Vulture Street and Noir Homewares on Princhester Street).
Some of this art lasts for years - like the massive roses on a besser block wall in Greet Street; one of West End's industrial back streets. Look beneath the roses for some installation art, which I suspect survives from when Flipbook Gallery occupied this site.
Fintan Magee mural, Hardgrave Rd, Oct 2011
Others are fleeting --
Fintan Magee regularly changes his mural on a private wall on Hardgrave Road, while the delicate doves that used to flutter up the wall of a building on the corner of Montague Road and Vulture Street have already been painted over.
Street&Garden Furniture, Mural by Simon, Sep 2011
Most are created for free, though a few of the things that I've included have been commissions paid for by local businesses (like the huge mural outside Street and Garden Furniture on Kurilpa Street).
Phone booth, Hardgrave Rd, Sep 2011
I've also included a couple of posters - one that popped up in a phone box on Hardgrave Road, and another that was used to advertise a garage sale. Both made me stop, look, think and feel, so I thought that they were worthy inclusions.
Some of the art makes a political point - like the slogans adorning a now-abandoned development site on Montague Road. This kind of street art was once very common in West End, but seems to make fewer appearances nowadays.
Cnr Vulture & Thomas Sts, Nov 2011
Others are intensely personal; a long mural in a car-park on the corner of Vulture and Thomas streets is a tribute by friends to a young local woman who was murdered. It's been there for years now, and is left respected and untouched by other artists.
The vast majority of these artworks are anonymous. Where I could see a name, I've given it here. As for the others, if you know who created an anonymous work - or you
are the person who created it - feel free to leave a comment below so that we can give credit where it's due. I've also given the dates that I took the photographs.
If you like what you see, I'd urge you to go for a walk and take a look at this art out in the wild - on the street, where it lives. Most of it is still there now, and chances are new stuff will have sprung up by the time this article is published. There also plenty of good pieces that I didn't have room to include.
Cnr Montague Rd & Vulture St, Oct 2011
Some of the best places to look are in the back streets between Montague Road and the river, especially around factories and industrial sites. Among long grass and concrete walls you can discover art of surprising power and delicacy.
Night Owl car-park, Boundary St, Aug 2011
If you're really keen, you can also buy a book entitled
West End Street Art, published in 2009 by another long-time West Ender, Paul Rollo.
Like me, Paul thought the art was beautiful and wanted to share it with a wider audience. Most of what he captured in that book is long gone now. You can buy it for $20 through
his website or from West End bookshop
Avid Reader.
One of the best places to visit to get a perspective on how street art and community connect in West End is Princhester Street.
There, on the wall outside Noir homewares, you can see not only a great piece of art but a whole dialogue and history of how the artwork came to be.
I understand that Noir is moving soon, and who knows what will happen to the building next, so you might need to get along and have a look quickly if you want to see what I'm talking about.
Box Vintage, Vulture St, Oct 2011
To all the street artists out there, thanks for making me laugh, gasp, cry and feel in 2011. Can't wait to see what you come up with this year.
