Of the many reasons to visit Melbourne, the city’s street art is pretty high. Hosier Lane, a constantly evolving graffiti and paint-covered laneway in the CBD, has become a common background in Instagram posts from visitors around the world.
But for all the colourful portraits, characters, abstract designs, anti-capitalist stencils and tags on display around the city, you’re also likely to spot government-commissioned murals, or walls spruiking well-known brands.
“A lot of us make a living off of murals,” says Adrian Doyle, the director of the Blender Studios, one of the oldest street art studios in Melbourne.
Doyle says he doesn’t regard the work his studio does as advertising.
“These days all the murals that we do tend to be commissioned either by corporations or councils. It’s not dissimilar to what it would have been in the 1600s and 1700s in Florence, where it was the rich people getting artists to paint their families, or churches.”
“[Street art] is not the youth movement that it once was. A lot of fine artists have come in, and people are starting to realise there’s big money in murals.”
“All the guys who originally set up the scene, luckily they are all still making art and most of them are making a living off it, which is pretty awesome.”
‘I enjoy being in the moment’
On a sidestreet in South Yarra, an affluent inner suburb south-east of the CBD, artists Stephanie Mannerheim and Claudio Mantuano have just started on an advertising mural for a large liquor chain.
They also allude to the Renaissance. Pouncing, the technique to transfer the outline on to the wall, is similar to what Leonardo da Vinci would have done when painting a mural, Mantuano says. Traditional sign writers also do something similar.
Before they arrived on site, a machine had punched a bunch of tiny holes into a sheet of paper, creating an outline of the design. With the paper now stuck to the wall, and using spray paint and cloth, they create what Mannerheim calls a “giant colouring book”.
Da Vinci’s assistants probably would have used a quill on plaster, but the idea is the same.
The two will spend the next couple of days bringing the dotted outline to life, using regular house paint. They mix colours in little cardboard cups and work quickly to create depth and form before the layers dry in the summer heat. Some of the larger walls they’ve painted have taken even longer to complete, and require a variety of techniques and materials, like spray paint.
But this South Yarra spot was last painted on about a month before, and it’s likely they will be back soon to paint over it again.
“It’s beautiful in a way,” Mannerheim says. “I used to be so precious. But I don’t feel attached to it. I don’t feel bad painting over it.”
“I enjoy being in the moment.”
Mannerheim and Mantuano say painting these murals lets them earn as working artists, something that is increasingly challenging in the highly competitive Melbourne art world.
But there’s also something special about making art outside, in public.
As we chat, passersby regularly stop in the middle of the lane to take it all in. Some come back over several days to check out the progress, Mannerheim says.
Mannerheim recently painted a mural of a paralympian on a nearby wall, as part of a different campaign.
“His mum saw, and came and took a picture in front of it.”
