Street art in sydney

You don't need to visit a museum or art gallery to see the best of Sydney's sculpture. It's on the street and it's free
All the world may well be a stage according to Shakespeare, but in Sydney, all the city is a sculpture museum. The biggest and best known outdoor sculpture event is the annual Sculpture by the Sea. Staged along Sydney's spectacular Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk during November, the free exhibition attracts more than 450,000 visitors and has exhibits by more than 100 artists from Australia and overseas.

But there's plenty of street sculpture to be found in and around Sydney's streets, parks and gardens during the rest of the year.

Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain

The Royal Botanic Gardens in the Domain have more than 35 fountains, sculptures and memorials. Wrapped around Farm Cove at the edge of Sydney Harbour, the Royal Botanic Gardens occupy one of Sydney's most spectacular positions. Established in 1816, the land was, in colonial times, the Governor's buffer of privacy between his residence and the penal colony. Roads and paths were constructed through the Domain by 1831 to allow public access and ever since, it's been a place for the people.

There's statues of some of our early governors and politicians, famous writers such as Henry Lawson and the three-metre-high bronze statue of Scottish poet Robert Burns and even one of Shakespeare as well as memorials to police officers who have lost their lives in the course of their duty.

You can't miss Brett Whiteley's famous 'redhead' matches, one live and one burnt; the reclining bronze by English sculptor, Henry Moore, considered to be one of the greatest of all twentieth-century sculptors; and the soundscape installation by Nigel Helyer called Dual Nature, relating to the history of people and shipping in Woolloomooloo Bay with shell-like objects sitting on the seabed, held in place by crane sculptures mounted on the foreshore. The chambers create sounds from the ocean and mix with a solar-powered recording.

And of course, there's Mrs Macquarie's Chair, a huge seat carved in an outcrop of solid stone at the northern most point of Mrs Macquarie's Road in 1816, where the wife of Governor Macquarie liked to sit and watch the ships come in.

Also worth finding is Janet Laurence's Veil of Trees, a meandering line of forest red gums with glass panels embedded with seeds, ash, honey, resin, and fragments of prose and poems by Australian writers, inspired by the landscape.

In and around the city centre

Janet Laurence, in collaboration with Fiona Foley, also created The Edge of Trees in the forecourt of the Museum of Sydney, the first public artwork in Sydney to be a collaboration between a European and an Aboriginal Australian. It's a forest of 29 iron and wood pillars and symbolises the meeting of cultures that occurred on this site two centuries ago. Wander around and through the 'forest' and you'll hear fragments of early Eora language.

In Martin Place you'll find Passage, a water sculpture by Anne Graham. It consists of three bronze balls, reflection pools and fountains and an eerie mist that rises every 10 minutes from pavement grilles creating an illusion of the space once occupied by past residents, and often disrupting traffic on Macquarie Street if the wind is blowing the wrong way.
At the top of hill outside the Sydney Hospital, also on Macquarie Street, sits one of the city's favourite statues, Il Porcellino, a wild boar. People from all over the world have solemnly rubbed his nose, made a wish, dropped a coin in his basket and had a photograph taken standing near him.

The original Il Porcellino statue is estimated to be over 500 years old, and was unearthed in Rome after having stood for more than 100 years in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. The Sydney Hospital and Sydney Eye Hospital Il Porcellino, which is a copy of the original, was presented to the hospital in l968 by the Marchessa Clarissa Torrigiani in memory of her father and brother - Dr Thomas Fiaschi who died in 1928 and Dr Piero Fiaschi who died in 1948. Both had been renowned surgeons at the hospital.

In the foyer of Renzo Piano's Aurora Place in Elizabeth Street you'll find Tim Prentice's wind-driven kinetic art piece Three Wheeler and Kan Yasuda's massive marble boulder-like Touchstones.

One of the city's more controversial sculptures is on the wall of the P&O Building in Hunter Street. Tom Bass's fountain has been affectionately known as The Urinal ever since the satirists from the infamous 60s magazine Oz were photographed alongside the sculpture pretending to use it as a urinal. Bass has another sculpture at East Circular Quay which explores the role of industry and scientific research and the future of society, called Research 1959.

Sydney Olympic Park

Sydney Olympic Park is home to the largest collection of large-scale site-specific urban art in a single precinct in Australia, with more than 50 single pieces of public art providing a unique record of the cultural history of the Sydney Olympic Park.

This includes works relating to the early industrial uses of the site, through to the Olympic Games and the current development of the park as the home to a new creative community.

Favourites include Robert Owen's Discobulus, a seven-metre wide discus; The Sprinter, a 12-metre-high, 3.5-tonne, three-dimensional steel rendition of an elite athlete that once adorned the top of the AMP tower in the lead up to the Olympics and Games Memories, an installation of poles incorporating Olympic memorabilia, visual art, audio-video presentations and volunteer names from the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

History of street art

Where did it all start? Well stencils have been used as far back as the Roman times and the first known book to be printed using stencils was the Bible! Actual street art as we know it has been around since the 60’s. It has come under many names from urban art, wall art, graffiti, graffiti art, and stencil art to name a few. It has predominantly originated in New York where the spraying of ‘Ding Dong’ trains by black gangs was a nightly exercise. Graffiti sketches would be practiced and refined during the day and sprayed at night. This led to different graffiti styles being created and from simple tags came intricate shadow 3 dimensional styles, bubble, mechanical, gothic, and many more. These early urban artist are considered the crusaders of the graffiti world which up until recently has been very much an underground scene.

One of the first graffiti artists was TAKI 183 who used to tag the subway trains and walls of NYC as he worked as a foot messenger. On 21st July 1971 the New York Times ran an article on him called "Taki 183" Spawns Pen Pals. This was probably one of the single most important article every written on street art. His fame led to thousands of kids copying his tag and creating their own all over New York and across America, this in turn led to competitive tagging. Kids started to develop their own signature tags and the most prolific become heroes in their neighbourhood. Tagging and graffiti quickly became a way for people to express themselves and a way for kids to communicate. Julio 204 was another early graffiti artist but he did not get the attention that TAKI 183 got mainly because he only used to put his tag up around where he lived. These two graffiti artists are arguably the two most important and influential street artists of the early graffiti art and without them it may never of reached its height today. After TAKI 183 and Julio 204 urban art and tagging has grown and grown. Some people went out and bombed entire subway trains and lines others started doing throw-ups which consist of an outline with a single layer of fill colour. Some people dedicated more time to creating large scale paintings and images with huge amounts of detail and 3-D effects, while others developed their pieces into very intricate and usually hard to read lettering and words known as Wildstyle. All of these graffiti styles can be seen today.

It was often considered a nuisance or vandalism but in today’s world it has become much more acceptable. This is primarily due to a street artist called Banksy. Love him or hate him Banksy has managed to take graffiti street art to the masses. His political and thought provoking grafiti art has become increasingly popular and has led to thousands of graffiti prints being sold some for ridiculous sums of money. So popular is his work that buildings with ‘a Banksy original’ on it have had their value increase! So many street artists now have the recognition that they deserve. Here are sum you should know:

• Obey • Armsrock • Bast • Bigfoot • Banksy • Blu • Borf • Blek le Rat • C215 • D*Face • Espo • Fafi • Faile • Gaia • Hely • Invader • JR • Spaz Mat • Chris Stain • Swoon • ZHE155 Zevs • Sickboy • Mode2 • Mudwig • Unkown • Cyclops • Aiko • Alex One
All of these artists have amazing work and have all been influential in the graffiti world.
Today wall art, graffiti art, graffiti paintings posters and street art prints can all be bought from websites and artists all over the world. Wallbomber.co.uk has graffiti art for sale as limited edition graffiti prints and urban art canvas as well as original street art produced by artists such as unkown, ZHE155, and Hely and many more.

The Wildhearts band

The basic information about the wildhearts busker

Genre                                                        

Pop Rock, Americana

Members

Alexander Pappas
Bo Duke
Memphis Queen

Biography

"We needed Money, so we started a band."
The wildhearts band is getting welcomed , they usually performe their amazing music in darlingharbour or somewhere else in sydney.

Street art is an amorphous beast encompassing art which is found in or inspired by the urban environment. With anti-capitalist and rebellious undertones, it is a democratic form of popular public art probably best understood by seeing it in situ. It is not limited to the gallery nor easily collected or possessed by those who may turn art into a trophy.

Some people argued that street art is illegal, but generally legal distinction between permanent graffiti and art is permission. This topic becomes even more complex regarding impermanent, nondestructive forms of graffiti .

With permission, traditional painted graffiti is technically considered public art. Without permission, painters of public and private property are committing vandalism and are, by definition, criminals. However, it still stands that most street art is unsanctioned, and many artists who have painted without permission, have been glorified as legitimate and socially conscious artists.

There are a lot forms of street art, for example: traditional, stencil, sticker and video projection.

Traditional: painting on the surfaces of public or private property that is visible to the public, commonly with a can of spray paint or roll-on paint. It may be comprised of just simple words or be more artful and elaborate, covering a surface with a mural image.
Stencil: Painting with the use of a homemade stencil, usually a paper or cardboard cutout, to create an image that can be easily reproduced. The desired design is cut out of a selected medium, and the image is transferred to a surface through the use of spray paint or roll-on paint.

Sticker-Propagates an image or message in public spaces using homemade stickers. These stickers commonly promote a political agenda, comment on a policy or issue, or comprise an avantgarde art campaign. Sticker art is considered a subcategory of postmodern art.

Video Projection- Digitally projecting a computer-manipulated image onto a surface via a light and projection system.

Personally, i think we should try to find different forms of street art in sydney, take some photos and make a video for our next assignment. Here is a video i found from internet, think it is a good example.