West Side Place Artcade

West Side Place is a new residential, retail and hotel high rise development being built on Spencer Street in the Melbourne CBD. While their retail arcade is currently vacant they have handed over the shops to a variety of contemporary Australian artists to do an "Artcade" of installations for the next six months. Ebony and I headed over there this afternoon to check out the space and see this public art gallery.

 

Artists that are featured include John Aslandis & Mayonaize, George Rose, Adnate, Rone, Meggs, and Reko Rennie. It is a kalidescope of colors with the murals and installations, but unfortunately you can't go inside the spaces to get a closer look. 

 

My favorite was by Rone as his piece was a nod to his Empire exhibition at Burnham Beeches. If you are around Southern Cross Train Station, go check out Artcade before the retail stores move in.

Expat Observations: Street Art

Melbourne is known globally for its street art and it is a huge tourist attraction for the city. All of those laneways around town are the perfect canvas for street artists, with Hosier Lane probably the best known spot (and one that is constantly evolving). There are some very talented artists here and these are some of my favorites.

Baby Guerrilla is best known for her large scale stencil paste-ups, which often have people floating in the air. Some of her more recent work can be found on buildings around the Victoria University Footscray Park campus.

Be Free is best known for her stencils of a little girl doing various things depending on the space that has been chosen. There is a lightness and sense of fun in her work that is very appealing to a wide audience.

Rone paints the most amazingly detailed portraits of women you will ever see. He also did the four Aussie muses for last year's Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition in Melbourne. His latest work is a mural at Etihad Stadium of two female AFL fans in the crowd cheering on their team.

Adnate is another artist who does very detailed portrait work, and is probably best known for his beautiful paintings of the faces of Indigenous children.