As I had never been on one of these tours I had no idea what to expect but hey bring it on…. Matt asked people to assemble outside the Newtown train station and that’s what we did….

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what the above shot doesn’t show is the sheer volume of people who turned up for this… I did a quick head count while waiting and there were close to 50 people on the tour… with a second tour booked for the same day with as many people and another 45 on a waiting list…. blimey! please don’t ever tell me that people don’t like street art….. anyway after collecting us all at the train station we all ambled up Enmore Road to begin….and this is Matt at our first stop of the tour…

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he was explaining how many shop owners in the area are happy for a big mural to be done as long as the crew somehow incorporate the name of the buisness in the artwork like here above…..and if you look really really closely at the sign post in the background behind Matt you will see some evidence of guerrilla knitting which has to be one of the most whimsical ways to break the law of the land I’ve ever come across…….anyway  then we meandered off down the laneway to our next stop … how cute is this young lad in the very cool tee shirt walking next to his idol hey……

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as we reached the laneways behind Enmore road we discovered that a local yokel didn’t like the graffitti and had taken a spray can to about a dozen large peices and vented his spleen… tosser… there has been graf going down in these laneways for decades and council doesn’t mind it …. anyway

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anyway not to worry there be lots more to look at besides curmudgeonly comments by the artchalleged…in this shot of happy snappers in an alleyway there is one of the tour volenteers… that is the older lady in white… she and another older lady both had large tags on their shirts that that proclaimed their status and they had the unenviable task of keeping 40 odd meandering graf tourists all going in vaguely the right direction… which to my mind is a little like herding cats but they seemed to have a very good time of it so what can I say…..

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anyway on we went and there is some truely spectacular graffitti in the backstreets of Enmore… here is Matt again explaining some of the finer points of wall art….

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there was so much to see and talk about that we really didn’t spend a lot of time with any one peice but just kept strolling the back streets taking it all in with Matt stopping to chat every so often….

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Newtown is such a happening and creative place that not all the street art is graffitti by any means and there are often little hidden gems tucked around in the back streets … like this lovely little mural outside the front of a small design house…

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a lot of bigger graf murals are designed to be homages to popular culture like these this one which is based on the cult movie ‘The Warriors’….

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and everywhere we when we saw lots and lots of really cool and fun stencils ….

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so here’s an interesting question… are Australians really Aliens in disguise?

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well Aliens or not there were some seriously happy snappers in the group and there was plenty of fabulous artworks available to take photo’s of…. it seems like every available bit of wall in parts of Newtown are dedicated to artworks of some type or the other…..and that TV infront of the stencil wall is actually also street art… it’s been created and very firmly fixed to the footpath…

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Enmore and Newtown are bisected by a major railway line so we had to go through some pretty grotty and narrow tunnels to get to the next part of the tour….. still I love tunnels and find them way fun to photograph in….

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some of the larger peices in the back of Enmore are truely astounding in both the excecution as well as the stories they tell and people were thrilled to listen to Matt explain them……

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then we came to something a little special that was one of Matt’s own pet project that he has been painting on and off for three years now… a whole lane way dedicated to cult action movie posters… not only is an awesome painter but also a rapper and breakdancer who also teaches martial arts and this whole lane is dedicated to these parts of his persona….

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This really truly is something majorly special and it looks fantastic up close… all the people who come and help him from time to time….. and this includes a lot of internationals who come especially to paint with Matt and do a bit on this ongoing project…..anyway the guest artists all do a signature tag at streetlevel so you can see who helped where…..

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having Matt there to talk about the history of graffitti in the area was just so fantastic as he is funny and smart and easy with everyone… by now we have left his big personal peice and are walking back towards the centre of Newtown again… and there is graf everywhere….
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wheat paste artworks are also popular and this is one of the best I’ve seen.. it’s all printed onto large sheets of paper and stuck up to the wall and it’s very very effective as you can see….

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all though Matt and I talked about lots of the street art we passed by there was just so much more that had to be passed by due to lack of time…it was only meant to be a two hour tour although you could spend two days and not get it all done… and the vast majority of the works on the street were just amazing… some of it took my breath away…

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by now we were heading back to King Street and the Martin Luther King mural that has over the twenty odd years of it’s existance become a bit of a local icon so Matt and I started to tell some of stories of some of the older and more famous/infamous long lost murals and peices that had once graced some of the most prominent walls around the neighbourhood….

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and then we were back on King street and heading for the Martin…

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and this picture of Matt and one of the lovely volenteers standing infront of the mural and just about to introduce me up to address the tour… which with onlookers and add ons from the walk now numbers more than 60 people….

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I spoke for about 15 minutes or so about how the mural had come about and how we did it and then Matt and I traded a few outrageous stories about various things pertaining to street art and street artists and explained how we had all met and come to work together… and the people just loved that to bits.. when I stepped down I had a roar from the crowd that was a bit like a standing ovation… now sadly I have no pictures of me actually speaking to the crowd .. at this point anyway and as this is the point where the tour ended … for me anyway this is also the point where this way too long journal ends as well…. but as I have no pictures of me to share I’ll just close this down with a few pictures of shop windows that might amuse you all… oh and whatever you do… if you get a chance to take a graffitti tour with some of the artists on hand to chat too… DO IT… it’s way good fun and a very very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon……

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Flaming Moebious Strip with Full Moon and little star Sydney Park Hill on the night of the 24th August 1997

A little history:

The Winter Cycle was a project that had its original genesis in a dream. A dream about painting and how to escape the limitations of paint while still being true to the landscape that inspired it. Partly about landscape painting and partly about a sculptural interaction with the landscape this massive hybrid art work took several months to realize and culminated with the spectacular burning of a 50 metre long Moebius strip under a full moon. It began as an expression of whimsy and ended as the peak event of the second Mascon Festival of the Moon held at Sydney Park on the edge of the inner city of Sydney on the 24^th August 1997.

Sydney Park itself is a large and unique 44 hectare expanse of reclaimed industrial land that sits between Newtown and the airport. Originally in the 1870’s the site was home to a huge brick making industry. When the brickworks closed down after WWII the massive clay quarry that remained was used as a rubbish tip. The clay pits that supported the brickworks themselves are also famous for the discovery of a full, intact skeleton of a Paracyclotosaurus davidi in 1910. The Paracyclotosaurus davidi was a prehistoric amphibian and the only known species to have lived in Australia.

It is also rumoured that a deceased circus elephant was buried in the tip sometime in the seventies but this may be an urban legend. Eventually during the sixties and seventies these vast empty clay pits were filled and the tip was closed. In the early eighties the whole site was dedicated as future parkland and slowly the rehabilitation of the site commenced.

One of the most defining landscaping decisions made was the creation of several large long and beautifully rounded artificial hills which were created around a central wedge shaped clearing. These hills were created in order to take advantage of the relative height of this corner of the park and allow for sweeping 360 degree views south across to Sydney Airport and beyond to Botany Bay and also give a spectacular long view north across to the city of Sydney itself. The four towering chimneys that remained from the brick kilns were retained and have been incorporated into the architecture of the park along with some of the old kilns and various other pieces of brick making machinery and these make up the heritage aspects of the park.

Sydney Park has also played an important role in various youth subcultures in the early days of its redevelopment although these were generally held without official approval. All through the 90’s and up to the present day the park is used for semi-regular Punks Picnics. This tradition began initially with a gathering of punks living in Newtown but it soon expanded to incorporate many of the other subcultures that proliferate in this vibrant inner city neighbourhood and its surrounds. The park was also appropriated and colonized from the early 1990’s by the Vibe Tribe for a series of huge free open-air rave parties. These raves were a fundamental part of the Sydney electronic music scene during this time.

The last of these parties, called Freequency, was held on the 8^th April 1995. What happened that night became a pivotal moment in time for Sydney Park when things changed irrevocably. This event became in many ways the defining moment not only for the Vibe Tribe and its particular local subcultural audience, but also for South Sydney Council in its attitude to the use of Sydney Park itself.

On the balmy night more than 500 revellers were chilling out to the lo-fi acid sounds of the Vibe Tribe when the party was violently shut down by 40 riot police. At 2 am the police arrived and in frustration at not being able to find the generator that was powering the party or anyone that was in charge, formed a wedge-shaped riot dispersal position and charged the dance floor with batons and dogs. Nine people were arrested and two were hospitalized while countless others testified to witnessing ravers being beaten and harassed.

This extreme reaction by the Police eventually was the subject of a damning police investigation and some of the recommendations made where to have an immediate effect on the overall strategic management of the park. While this violent raid was the being of the end for the Vibe Tribe and their huge free dance parties it also proved to be a catalyst for subsequent subcultral developments that had a direct bearing on the evolution and creation my artwork The Winter Cycle.

Council, partly in an attempt to control future illegal gatherings with their attendant risks but also to diffuse the growing approbation from the local community about the raid and general management of the park began to not only allow, but to actively promote community arts festivals on the site. One of these was the Mascon Festival of the Moon. This fledgling and almost pagan inspired festival involved a fair day followed by a lantern parade and a firework display and quickly became hugely popular with the local community.

The Genesis of The Winter Cycle:

Given my long term proximity to this huge wild place and my previous successful engagements with the local area in the guise of various community arts projects, it really was not surprising that I found myself thinking more and more about ways to make use of this park. The public release of the findings of the police inquiry into the raid on the Vibe Tribe dance party at the brickworks and the Ombudsman’s recommendations in regard to this were taken very seriously by the Council and they were very very open to creative yet viable suggestions on how to make the sprawling vastness of Sydney Park seem benign and inviting to all. This sudden openness and interest by South Sydney Council in promoting interesting ways of using the park by local groups was the aimed primarily at community groups but they were also quite open to approaches from individuals with proposals for specific projects.

I was at that time in 1997 living only a couple of blocks from Sydney Park. The line of the long sinuous hill that faces Sydney Park Road runs for several hundred metres from Mitchell Road to the Princes Highway and ends with the drama of the four towering chimney stacks near St Peters Station. The smooth lines of this graceful artificial hill seemed a perfect place for a little intervention with the landscape. The Winter Cycle came in to being as a direct response to this particular and specific location and is a sort of landscape painting with the landscape serving as the canvas.

One night I found that I had been dreaming about the north facing hill of Sydney Park and this is where actual work began to evolve. I got a small group of artistically inclined friends around and asked them if they would be interested in trying to do something quite mad with me. Hmm they said as one…. depends….. what have you got in mind? Well says I …. we are all painters here and yet at times I feel limited by what painting is understood to mean. I love the landscape especially the odd sensuous landscape of Sydney Park but just making a tidy little oil painting on canvas just doesn’t seem to be an adequate response to the vastness and scale of the actual site itself. How would it be if we could actually use the side of the hill facing Mitchell Road as the canvas and inscribe right into the land itself in order to make a painting? Hmmm says they…. all sounds good so far but please be a little more specific….. and so it went on….. I produced a little biro sketch I’m made that morning and we began to meet and take it seriously.

Having put my proposed Hill Painting idea to my friends successfully I then began the task of writing the proposal up and taking it to the Council. This was in May of 1997 and because of the physical logistics involved in actually creating this hugely ambitious work it was going take a couple of months to fully articulate the project. The second Mascon Festival of the Moon festival was booked into the park for August and it was suggested to us that we approach the festival organizers and tie the proposed finale of our project in with the spectacular fireworks event they had planned for this night. When they heard what we were planning as the finale of our landscape painting project and saw what we had already begun in the first part of the project, they were extremely happy to accommodate our request.

The Winter Cycle: A hill painting project in two parts:

Calling ourselves the Grass Routes Renaissance (GRR) we proposed that as group of local artists all working in different media we had all been variously drawn to and affected by the unique topography of Sydney Park and wished to respond directly to the landscape itself by way of an interactive and holistic landscape painting using the land itself as the canvas. The theme was the desire to represent all that changes with the seasons over a period of time and all that remained constant. As winter changes to spring, and so on and so forth, we were alluding to the perpetual life cycle of nature with a sculptured painting that represented the moon, the sun, the elements and fire which in turn was an infinite cycle of growth, fruition, death and regeneration.

Part One:

Four 20 metre long pagan symbols representing the moon (luna), the sun (sol), the elements (elementa) and fire (ignis) were inscribed on the north facing hill of Sydney Park. These symbols were marked out with spray paint and when the ground cover had grown sufficiently deep the symbols were drawn into the hillside using lawnmowers. After the inscribed symbols were clearly visible they were then infilled with lime to echo the colossal chalk drawings found in various locations in England. These symbols were visible to users of the park, from the road by passing traffic, from the air by passing planes, from Centrepoint Tower in the very centre of Sydney its self and from Cyberspace. How unfortunate that Google Earth was still some time off in the future.

The four pagan symbols….luna (moon), sol (sun), elementa (elements) and ingis (fire)….. inscribed into the hillside of Sydney Park August 1997. photo taken from the gantry of a crane.

Part Two:

On the opposite side of the hill facing the Airport and bordering the main clearing of the Park, a 50 metre long Moebious strip (infinity symbol) was inscribed into the hillside using a Bobcat. On the night of the festival a specially prepared 120 metre long petrol soaked rope was laid in the cavity and in a spectacular finale to the project was brought to flame just after sunset illustrating the infinite nature of the natural life cycle to all the participants and guests attending the festival.

Flaming Moebius Strip with fireworks finale at the Mascon Festival of the Moon 24th August 1997 Sydney Park

The project was a spontaneous expression of ‘joie de vivre’ by a group of committed local artists working collectively. The work in its totality represents the idea of a gift given to the community of Newtown by those artists who were involved in articulating it. It was at once complex and simple, easily understood by the people viewing it and with bridges to the community to participate in its finale. The work was environmentally appropriate, simply executed and left no residual trace. It was also very cheap to realise and delivered a high level of satisfaction to the audience and the local community as well as the artists who created it as well.

Grass Routes Renaissance (GRR) comprised Juilee Pryor, Catherine Keyzer, Mary-Anne Johnson and Jeff Corbett. No public funding was sought in relation to this project but immense assistance in kind was provided by South Sydney Council who provided unfettered access to the site itself and then backed up their delight with the whimsy of the project by allowing us unlimited access to the logistical support of their Department of Parks and Gardens. These marvellous men provided us with the lawnmowers we needed for drawing in the symbols on the first hill along with some tonnes of lime need to fill in the symbols. They also generously provided us with the services of a Bobcat and its driver for a full day to draw in the Moebious Strip on the second hill. To South Sydney Council go our very great thanks and to the organizers of the Mascon festival similar thanks are also due for incorporating our Flaming Moebious into the finale of the Mascon Festival of the Moon.

Juilee Pryor May 2009

Juilee Pryor with Jeff Corbett, Cathrine Keyzer and Mary-Ann Johnson on Sydney Park Hill August 1997

The  legendary ‘I have a dream’ Mural on King Street Newtown  Sydney……….shot with a tiny toy camera while going past on the bus

The most famous illegal mural in Australia…. painted by Andrew Aiken and Juilee Pryor over three nights and two days in August 1991 using about $1000 worth of scrounged and donated paint with the aid of a triple extension ladder and the use of a donated cherry-picker. The writing that follows is what was posted under the colour photo when it was first uploaded to Redbubble about a year ago………

Behold, the dreamer cometh,

Come now thereforth

and let us slay him….

and we shall see

what will become

of his dreams…..

This is a picture taken in Newtown recently of a legendary mural that adores the main thoroughfare, King street. It’s a very old (painted in 1991) illegal bit of street art that has subsequently become an iconic part of the area. A very simple design. The face of Martin Luther King next to a large and now very faded reresentation of the world and under that are the first couple of words from a very famous speech given by Dr King. ‘I have a dream’ ….”Underneath it is a representation of the Aboriginal flag. It was a wonderful speech and it’s a wonderful and enduring mural.

It was painted all that time ago by two people who were both very damaged and maybe even a bit mad at the time. He was on the run from the law for a terrible crime and she had just been abandoned by her husband, leaving her destitute with three tiny children and an imminent eviction. They were both artists and met one day when they were both painting something on the side of a building on the same street. In their mutually recognized despair and confusion they decided to reach inside to somewhere really deep and give a gift of themselves to all around in order to stave off the darkness that otherwise would have engulfed them and tumbled them right down into the pits of hell. Not far from where they were was a blank three story wall on the side of building on the main street. Perfect.

So less than two weeks after they had first met they painted this great humanist message on the side of this building, knowing full well that they risked imprisonment for defacing the street with this simple but profound message of peace and love. And they poured it out over two days and two nights. Never even signed it but rather gave it as a gift to anyone who could see it for what it really meant. Then walked away in the silence of the night not really expecting much from it. But the people of Newtown took this gift in to their hearts and in the ensuing 18 years it has become one of the best loved and most iconic representations of this amazingly diverse and vibrant community. Almost a sacred symbol of Newtown really.

Funny story this one. The artists never made a penny out of it and are not even really know for their own work but sometimes just sometimes one of them reflects on the inanity and shallowness of the art world and wonders why she bothers and then she remembers that sometimes just sometimes the gift of the spirit moves in her and no matter how hard it all is sometimes …. that it really is worthwhile to give of yourself. That it can make a difference to work from the heart. And that thought helps her get through the next bit of time.

Juilee Pryor

This image was first published on Redbubble on the 13th Febuary 2008

This picture of a lovely laughing child was taken some years ago now while I was driving out from Meekathara in the WA central desert on my way towards the Gun Barrel Highway. At a tiny camp called Wiluna I stopped to look for some art and come across this family sitting in their car in the shade. This child’s sweet face has stayed with me all this time but today, this momentus day, is the first time I’ve felt like I could display it. Little Debbie and her family are impoverished by anyones standard but they clearly have love and strong family bonds. This child represents what we that is we white Australians are saying sorry for.  Sorry that we couldn’t see value in our fellow Australians. The first settlers here in this wide brown land. Sorry that we took little children away from their family and their country and people. Only a relatively short time ago this child and her mother would have fled at my approach fearing my whiteness and the dreadful things we whites perpetrated upon them in the name of the law.

So from the bottom of my heart Debbie I would like to say Sorry. Sorry Sorry indeed I am very sorry. And I hope that now we can all go on together in peace and trust and mutal respect.  For all the little Debbie’s white and black and brown and pink and yellow lets all step forward together hand in hand and welcome whatever it is that comes next……..