Rationale
Melbourne is known as one of the world’s great street art capitals for its vibrant and unique expressions of art throughout its locations. Street art includes stencils, sticker tagging, paste-ups and murals. For this documentation, I wanted to explore the community and culture within local and international street art whilst noting the art and design of its form. To do this I decided to narrow my focus on paste-up artworks especially those with illustrated and detailed elements. Incorporating my passion for skulls, I aimed to create a visual link between beauty within street art and skulls, demonstrating a detailed and delicate side to street art.
Hoping to target a niche market of teenagers to young adults from around 17 years of age onwards, as well as a more diverse group that include other street artists, tourists or generally those with an appreciation for contemporary art and expression; I have named this documentary ‘#projectpasteup’. This name proposes a sense of casualness, youth and interest but also establishes a strong and direct attraction to my intended audience and documentary topic. On top of this, ‘#projectpasteup’ allows for a more memorable name that can easily translate into a hashtag across multiple social networks like instagram and twitter.
After having the opportunity to plaster up my own paste-up artwork within Hoiser Lane, many things became apparent. What, however stuck was the amount of consideration needed to decide on the most suitable location for my paste-up. Pasting work on areas such as anonymous tagging, a spray painted bin or amongst a collection of other illustrated paste-ups, can result in different affects in terms of the way each piece complements and emulates each other.
With this in mind, the approach for ‘#projectpasteup’ was to create a paste-up kit to exhibit the relationship between different street art installations and surrounding objects. Provided within the kit is a series of photographs that portray alternative scenes and locations of street art around Melbourne’s CBD. Also supplied is a collection of illustration stickers. These stickers shall be used in conjunction with the photographs to demonstrate the careful consideration between paste-ups and locations, whilst drawing a parallel between the similarities in overlapping stickers on photographs verses overlapping paste-ups over graffiti surfaces. Alternatively, the stickers can also be used by the target audience for personal use. Additionally, found within the kit, is a small instruction manual detailing how to make wheatpaste and fix a poster, along with a paste-up poster design. The inclusion of the poster is open to personal use; either as a poster or as a paste-up that allows the audience to have the chance to experience first-hand the art of wheatpasting.
To further attract the intended audience, the kit is enclosed in a brown string sealed envelope. This was with intentions to enhance the grunge and street art experience within the urban art form. However, it also adds a sense of intrigue and curiosity as to what is inside.
In conclusion, after multiple brainstorming and feedback sessions the final assignment was created from a combination of all aspects that best fulfilled the criteria. Due to the specific target audience of my chosen topic, it was important that the documentary clearly resembled the essence of the street art community throughout the final piece, whilst documenting the interaction between different contemporary art pieces.
