Seminar
on Street Art 5: Underground. It is unclear why they risked their lives, dark
in fact, descending into the wide drains below Melbourne. The Cave Clan left
little trace underground, graffiti being contrary to their secret code of
exploration. Anonymity was essential once they crossed the entrance to hell,
somewhere near an effluent creek. They were torchlight crews, down there to
discover the last frontier. Their cavernous concrete caverns were a hard day’s
night, measureless to man where sunless they ran, tiptoed, stumbled, forged new
memories. Speleologists of the sewers, their aim was discovering new reaches of
the depths, only staying away for obvious reasons on rainy days. Now the
explorers rise above the surface, whether rain or clear, scaling above the
grids of lit windows, ducking down calligrammed bluestone lanes, finding
forlorn fences beneath a sterling moon, their purpose to leave traces over
every wall. Their purpose being to discover the next unknown nook that by hook crook
they will hook with good looks. Just take a Captain Cook! And well that was one
particular rabbit-hole. Another entertains Alice as she enters upon her
adventures underground. There small becomes large, elephant becomes mouse
again, and mirror-writing turns the alphabet inside out. Obtuse interactions,
empirical impossibilities. the nightmare of the subconscious meet Alice whether
she is opening doors, falling through space, or sitting down to tea. She’s
frank. She’s grace. She’s prudence. But ask her to compose a response and we
find she has risen to the occasion with seven-foot high mirror signatures that
she’s good-naturedly choreographed across the entire neighbourhood. It might be
a kingly Lear limerick in her head, a mock heroic palindrome, but across the
waste deep urban landscape her names are pure concrete poetry. Which is not a
poetry spoken into open mike at the seedy slam, or recited to a hush of
introspective literati. Concrete poetry was everyone’s personal advertising in
the heyday of the Velvet Underground. Cut-and-paste edged up the blocks of
letters page upon blank page, their tumbledown graphix, their typewriter sprays
in the days before personal computers. Newsprint turned a Cubist yellow, juxtaposition
looked almost random, the capital letters awry the pride of their compositors.
Now the Nicos and Alices draw their signature poetry from the earth below,
where all paint is ultimately sourced in its myriad shades: vermilion earth,
obsidian earth, sunburst earth, viridian earth, even skyblue earth, rising in
wondrous oceanic earth waves over the reinforced blocks that uphold apartments,
warehouses, flyover stations and hangars alike. Flourishes optional and
noticeably frequent.
