Flash Forward
Melbourne CBD, 2022
The art of painting, having lost the battle for gallery space over many decades, has nevertheless won the battle of the streets. Close to the pavement, painting remains a genuinely popular art – however we judge its quality – and the energy and rogue vigour of the genre are undeniable.
The City of Melbourne has shown cultural leadership in this potentially messy epidemic of imagery and lettering. Under the banner of “Flash Forward” it has curated a large project to redefine 40 of the lesser-known laneways in town. In many cases, the artworks have clinched the aesthetic potential of some otherwise ugly and noisy rear-end architecture.
The most immediately successful of these public-art interventions are those that function as if they’re a kind of architecture in themselves.
An example is Nick Azidis’s dazzling geometric arrangement in blues, vermilion and black at Highlander Lane. The vertical bars are capped with horizontals, as if proposing perspectives that crash or implode. The patterns command an entire wall but also a section of the adjacent walls and pavement, so that the butt-end of the lane is reconfigured as a high-voltage niche.
Review by Robert Nelson, published in The Age,
May 12, 2022
https://www.theage.com.au/culture/art-and-design/alive-with-vibrations-the-pandemic-art-that-remade-our-city-s-laneways-20220512-p5akpn.html
Flash Forward online:
https://flash-fwd.com/laneway/highlander-lane
© 2016 Projection Teknik
