Images to Live By

Once again, it has been a long time between posts, and, once again, apologies for the delay. Same excuse: I’m (still) finishing a book, and am spending every minute I can trying to fix up references, check quotations, and, yes, write bits of chapters. Almost done: hopefully by the end of April, after which normal blogging will be resumed!

But even though I’m not posting as much as I should be here, I’m still looking at art, still living by certain images. In the last few months I’ve seen a lot of works around Melbourne by the same artist, and I have taken photographs of some of them. I keep coming across more: I spotted some more last night, and am hoping to go and photograph them soon.

Here’s one I kept seeing, in the hot days of the summer, since it’s in a laneway off a street that I drive past most days:

And if I don’t drive down that one (Elgin Street), I’m driving down Grattan Street, where I kept seeing this:

I also discovered one not far from the Law School at Melbourne University:

What really appeals to me about these images is not just their graphic, characterful humour and style, it’s the fact that the images work so well in the spaces they have been placed in. Whether it’s the boxy shape of the switching box on the corner opposite the Law School or the narrow space between a billboard and the corner of the wall on Grattan Street, the artist had made images which respond to the spaces they inhabit. The space enhances the image, and the image gives the space a buzz. Look closer, and from a different angle, at the one on the switching box near the Law School:

Here you can see how the artist is working with three-dimensional space, not just placing an image on a flat surface, but making the most of the possibilities offered by the box, extending the image around the corner and onto a second side, to make an image which works from different angles and which draws our attention not just to itself but to the space it occupies. Really satisfying to look at…

And if anyone knows who the artist is…..let me know!