Name: Caitlin Royse Student Number: 3290919
ARTEFACT #1 The Croft Alley This laneway has three sections or turns, lined with walls draped in some of the finest murals in Melbourne’s city. Most of the Alley’s renowned graffiti by artists like Debs and Drew Funk, were created during the ‘Croft Alley Project’ in 2009 when the Alley participated in Melbourne’s ‘Don’t Ban The Can’ campaign to support graffiti artists. Through donating its walls the Alley has giving a Melbourne’s strong subculture of street artists the freedom of speech through art, and the opportunity to take physical ownership of their urban environment. The Croft Alley embraces the artistic, underground culture of Melbourne. Croft Alley personifies three essential elements to the city of Melbourne; tourism, the laneways and Melbourne’s prominent street art. Melbourne is renowned for its underground art and music culture, and its alternative venues. Although Melbourne is not an iconic city of striking monuments, through the construction of the laneways we have developed a “truly iconic Melbourne experience,” (Fung, 2006). Thus, the Croft Alley is the prime artefact to establish the identity of Melbourne as a city and define Melbournians’ relationship to their urban environment. DRINK Bar Secrets-Melbourne City Guide Cards (Brownley, 2009), embody Melbourne’s innovative kind of tourism in which people can independently discover the city’s ‘hidden beauties’. These cards are designed for both the local and the tourist, and they capture the local’s pride of knowing the location of secret venues. This type of invigorating tourism differs largely from Sydney, and really emulates Melbourne’s culture, and this is what sells our tourism. Melbourne’s laneways are; “the epitome of urban sophistication,” (Fung, 2006). The romanticisation and European seduction of these secret venues, hidden in her laneways, constructs certain desires and identities within Melbourne’s people. Again, the laneways are seen to best represent Melbourne’s coffee, and intellectual, artistic culture. Particularly seen through; “the immediacy and transient nature of street art, which comments on political and social change,” (Dew, 2007). Graffiti is a medium primarily for Melbournians as a public space for voice and power. As seen on the Croft Alley’s walls, graffiti is where the social environment and the
built environment combine to create a visual identity for Melbournians. It has become a form of self-‐identity defined with an urban space. Like the Bar Secrets cards’ reviews, which show the collective opinions of real locals, creating identification and ownership of their city. The Croft Alley, hidden away in Melbourne’s China Town, is exploding with culture in which tourists can get fully absorbed in, which contrasts against other forms of traditional tourism that are known to degenerate culture. The question in how to keep Melbourne’s tourism and Melbourne’s culture thriving, is actually in the other. Through creating a truly cultural, independent kind of tourism, the tourist is not separated from the local nor the culture. Furthermore, by generating a new kind of cultural experience, we are forced to define ourselves as an urban culture through the impact of cultural art on the physical environment. Thus, the Croft Alley embodies the true nature of Melbourne’s culture. Name: Ivona Lonac Student Number: 3285115
ARTEFACT #2-‐ Degraves Laneway.
Degraves laneway is hidden between the notorious Flinders Street and café clustered Flinders Lane. This laneway forms a busy alternative thoroughfare for commuters disembarking from Flinders train station to the shopping areas on Collins and Bourke Street. The narrow lane is a unique exhibit of the diversity of Melbourne as a city. The lane features cafés, restaurants, bars, boutiques and street art. From the evident graffiti to the inconspicuous vintage boutiques or the peculiar objects fixed on the corner of a wall. In an article by Miletic (2009) he argues how the Melbourne’s laneway network which consists of more than 200 laneways, contributes to our city. The laneways are said to provide some of the most important and unique spaces within the city and can make a significant contribution to the enjoyment, identity and vitality of Melbourne. They provide; “pedestrian connectivity, serve as active frontages and provide aesthetic and spatial interests to the public realm and allow for significant views”, (Miletic, 2009). Degraves is what Melbournians make it to be. The cities creativities, diversities and cultures are spread across every wall and within every café, making it in active urban environment. The lane has developed through its dependence on Melbournians, for example; artists who extend their practice from galleries into the public realm. Through this, they contribute to the re-‐interpretation and recreation of the built urban environment. Urban exploration is significant to how Degrave’s may be viewed. For Melbournians it may be the individual’s discovery and creation of the ‘marvelous’ within the everyday. Artists and cultural practitioners are one group who have in recent years been using forms of urban exploration as a way of engaging and intervening with and within our cities (Pinder, 2005). Degraves Street allows people the ability to engage and intervene with the laneway rather than admiring it with disconnection and disassociation. By being able to use graffiti art to personalize the walls, thus adding the individual’s personality to the public place, it will await to connect to the next person passing by. Pinder’s article also discuses ‘psycho-‐geography,’ which is the notion of; ‘exploring or experiencing the landscape in new ways.’ Similarly Degraves as a laneway invites the individual to interact in the buzz and color of their surroundings within the lane and it
encourages public space to be used freely to express oneself through music or graffiti style art. Ben Barnet’s online journal mentions how it is vital to remember that cultural, political and business leaders have much to gain by selling Melbourne’s ‘unique’ bar culture. Likewise Degraves Street sells Melbourne, when photographed in a touristic brochure it sends the message that Melbourne is a city that embraces multiculturalism as it captures ‘scenes’ from different countries and intertwines them within the city of Melbourne. Laneways have historically been regarded as grimy, underground sewers, where crime, drug use and poverty lie. However, nowadays they are regarded as ‘escapism,’ they offer the city of Melbourne as a sanctuary of creative opportunity. People feel ‘removed’ from their social pressures, profit making anxieties and predictability of everyday urban life. Barnet argues that the success of a space is dependent upon its location. ‘Location intensifies the experience,’ (Barnet, 2006). This feeling of ‘escapism’ in one sense, is the result of the laneways location. Degraves is situated as an exit from a frenzied chaos of Flinders Street and is a turn-‐off into which one is taken away with the smells of coffee, the sound of a violin and the permanent street art exhibitions. Name: Charles (Ruixuan, Bai)
Student Number: 3254969 ARTEFACT #3-‐ Alexander The Great Statue. Urban public space and arts have always played a central role in the social life of cities. When pedestrians walk through the Heffernan Laneway, they may notice the monument of ‘Alexander The Great’ settling beside the street. The statue was donated by Thessaloniki in 1984, in recognition of the Melbourne-‐Thessaloniki sister city relationship. Alexander is one of the most celebrated emperors and military commander in ancient Greece, born in 365 BC in Pella and died at the age of 32, in Babylon, 323 BC, built up a great influence to posterity even nowadays. Arguably, A great city needs great public artworks to represent its distinctive character and spirit. Thessaloniki donated this sculpture to Melbourne as it emblematizes the courage and intelligence of this Greek city. Evidently, Thessaloniki would like to share this distinctive quality with Melbourne. Therefore, this particular piece of public art becomes one of the icons of Melbourne and conveys the city’s values and lifestyle. Public artworks build up the correlation between the city and the citizens; a portrait of Melbourne’s relationship with its people. In addition, those public artworks that color our urban lives might have the capacity to improve the tourism industry, attracting numbers of tourists who are seeking for wonderful artworks to visit Melbourne, potentially accelerate the economic growth of Melbourne. It is the Thessaloniki that endowed the monument with life and meaning, and it was Thessaloniki that delivered this right to Melbourne city. In 2006, Melbourne had a population of about 52,000 Greeks immigrants. Normally, according to Suzanne Lacy a; “new genre of public art is process-‐based, frequently ephemeral, often related to local rather than global narratives,” which manifests the public artwork as a symbol of the diversity of local cultural and urban life. However, the divergent of perspectives within the community is present: some pacifists may not accept this monument since Alexander The Greek symbolizes the violence. This monument is exposed to the public for all to enjoy and reclaim the feelings of social belonging. Madanipour’s work, he provides a similar illustration of the ancient Greek agora; the gathering people to celebrate events and share their lives in a harmonious and united community. As he mentioned in the book, “public spaces of a city have always had political significance, symbolizing the power of the state.” Thus, Melbourne requires many urban designers to create more public artworks, in order to establish the cohesion among city, society and people.
Apart from Thessaloniki, Melbourne has other five sister cities, which are Osaka, Japan, Tianjin, China, Boston, United States, Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Milan, Italy. Among all those cities, Tianjin and Melbourne is the first sister city (since 1980) between China and Australia. In recognition of this relationship, a garden, which designed by experts from Tianjin, was constructed at the gateway to Melbourne's Chinatown. (On the corner of Spring and Nicholson Street) The garden also has Gardens Lions, water feature with traditional Chinese rockery and a small pavilion. This particular public space also communicates with another different society group in Melbourne, Chinese immigrants. The monument of Alexander the great, the Tianjin Gardens, and many other public artworks and places are one of the crucial elements required in constructing Melbourne’s integrity and multicultural identity. It communicates through Melbourne and its residents, interpreting and symbolizing the city’s central values to the rest of the world. Public art will always be one of the most truthful representations and symbols of Melbourne and Melbournians. Bibliography ADVOCACY COMMITTEE, 2007, GREAT ART FOR A GREAT CITY Why Public Art Is Important For Philadelphia, Forum, Philadelphia Public Art Forum, 15 April, 2010, <http://www.fpaa.org/documents/GreatArtforaGreatCityMAYORALBRIEF.pdf>
BARNET, B. 2006, Contriving Authenticity: The Performance of St Jerome’s, Crossings, Vol. 11.2. BRANKO, M. 2009, Parks and Streetscapes: Reclaiming Our Forgotten Lanes, Government News, Vol. 29, No. 10, pg: 20-‐21, <http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/seacrch;action=doSearch> BROWNLEY, M. 2009. The Croft Institute, In: CITY, T. S. M. (ed.) DRINK-Bar Secrets Melbourne. 9th ed. Melbourne, Melbourne: Deck Of Secrets. DEW, C. 2007. Uncommissioned Art: An A-Z Of Australian Graffiti, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne. FUNG, R. 2006. The Seduction Of The Laneways: Making Melbourne A 'World City', Crossings, Vol. 11.2, pg: 1-‐12. MADANIPOUR, A. 2003, Why Are the Design and Development of Public Spaces Significant for Cities?, Designing Cities: Critical Readings in Urban Design, Alexander R. Cuthbert (ed.), Wiley-‐Blackwell, Australia, pp.139-‐152. MALES, M. 1997, Art As A Social Process, Art; Space And The City: Public Art And Urban Futures, Routledge, pg: 164-‐188. PINDER, D. 2005, Arts of Urban Exploration, Cultural Geographies, Vol. 12, No. 4, pg: 384-‐401.