Shake can, will spray: Canberra’s street art creates a buzz about town

Posted on 18 September, 2014

Canberra’s nouveau-cool status seems to have partly bloomed from a cross-pollination between local artists and new cafes and eateries. But it’s creating more than  just chatter among locals. 

“There’s a little bit of a buzz about Canberra now and it’s nice to see,” Kacy Grainger tells me on a sunny afternoon at Braddon’s hip new bar and eatery, Hopscotch.

Of course, Kacy and her 16-year-old son Solomon are partly responsible for this buzz, having teamed up to create the vibrant artwork adorning the bar.

Kacy, with a background in still-life and portraits, turned her hand to large-scale stencils for the first time, creating whimsical monochrome figures of retro firemen and lollypop-clutching girls playing hopscotch.

[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-RZF9p5zFj-Y/VBliMiSEG4I/AAAAAAAAJC4/g6wocn-L2kc/s144-c-o/IMG_8521.JPG” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/108454826374315674707/CanberraSGraffiti#6059982741104237442″ caption=”Kacy Grainger’s Fireman stencil art takes pride of place at Hopscotch” type=”image” alt=”IMG_8521.JPG” pe2_single_image_size=”w614″ pe2_caption=”1″ pe2_img_align=”center” ]

[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-jk036ZAbQvQ/VBlctAx248I/AAAAAAAAJAg/zcxpcWWLBXM/s144-c-o/kacy.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/108454826374315674707/CanberraSGraffiti#6059976701976699842″ caption=”You wouldn’t think an artist with a background in still-life and portraits would be responsible for Hopscotch’s way cool stencil art.” type=”image” alt=”kacy.jpg” pe2_single_image_size=”w614″ pe2_caption=”1″ pe2_img_align=”center” ]

Solomon’s mural extends the length of the entire outdoor area, an irreverent take on The Last Supper featuring gleeful cows and pigs tucking into beer and roast meat.

[pe2-image src=”http://lh4.ggpht.com/-sH2_Kd1RKHM/VBldTcGZyCI/AAAAAAAAJBM/LcBqfCmLP6k/s144-c-o/DSC_0013.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/108454826374315674707/CanberraSGraffiti#6059977362145658914″ caption=”The feature mural of Braddon’s new eatery. Artist: Solomon Grainger” type=”image” alt=”DSC_0013.jpg” pe2_single_image_size=”w614″ pe2_caption=”1″ pe2_img_align=”center” ]

Angus Comyns, another Canberra-based stencil artist, created the artwork (yep, all of it!) at The Cupping Room in Civic and Manuka’s ONA Coffee, even adorning the coffee machines with his colourful, cartoonish figures.

“Everything’s a new experience,” Angus says, having only started experimenting with stencils in the past few years.

“I tried Googling how to paint onto a coffee machine and no one seems to do it and I figured out why; because it’s quite difficult to do…working on stainless steel.  It’s designed not to hold paint.”

[pe2-image src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/-bUQtpV4kiZY/VBlc-IfMdfI/AAAAAAAAJBA/clLT4mYWz68/s144-c-o/DSC03739.jpg” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/108454826374315674707/CanberraSGraffiti#6059976996103681522″ caption=”Street artist Angus Comsyn is a finalist in the Stencil Art Prize” type=”image” alt=”DSC03739.jpg” pe2_single_image_size=”w307″ pe2_img_align=”center” pe2_gal_align=”none” pe2_caption=”1″ ]

Angus was recently announced as a finalist in Sydney’s prestigious Stencil Art Prize, along with other Canberra-grown artists such as E.L.K. and Byrd.  Our locals will be competing against artists from 18 other countries, including street art heavyweights Germany and Argentina.

“He does some really quite amazing large and small scale stencil,” Angus says of E.L.K., aka Luke Cornish.

“He’s kind of spreading his wings – I think he left Canberra a couple of years ago, but you’ll notice his stuff around.”

Luke has indeed spread his wings. In 2012, he became the first stencil artist to reach the finals of the Archibald Prize with his detailed portrait of Father Bob Maguire.  His entry into the Stencil Art Prize this year is called Trickle Down Effect and features a balaclava-clad man with a machine gun slung over his shoulder.  Angus’s piece is slightly less confronting but no less meaningful, with a toddler in a hoodie clutching a spray can, surrounded by the words be free.

I can’t help but wonder if Angus’s entry is a commentary on the apparent oppression of local street and graffiti art?

Many budding artists leave Canberra to join the more inclusive environments of Sydney and Melbourne and yet while artists are allowed to experiment on designated locations around Canberra, such as toilet blocks, much of the art remains hidden or curtailed by bureaucratic red tape. Just like the recent planning controversy which delayed the opening of Braddon’s street culture hub, Chop Shop.

“You look at the alleyways in Melbourne, they’re just disused areas and people go there and express themselves and it draws a crowd, draws people, draws activity to the area,” Angus says.

“It’s good for the city and good for the culture. Canberra needs more of it.”

Meanwhile a younger generation of artists, (enter Solomon) are paving the way for a more inclusive art culture in Canberra.

Mum Kacy went to art school at ANU and while she now focuses on more traditional alla prima painting, Solomon is following in her artistic footsteps, and has started to experiment with large-scale spray-paint works and commissions for new venues around town.

While sitting at Hopscotch, someone tells Solomon of a customer’s dislike of his mural, but he just shrugs and says, “That’s the thing about public art—there’s no way you can’t look at it.  So even if you make up your mind that you don’t like it, you’re still being exposed to it and it still makes you think.”

“If you were looking at Canberra from an outside perspective, you wouldn’t think there was much art and street art going on.  When you start to look out for it, it changes your perspective, and you start to see it everywhere.”