about_famouswhendead.

about the gallery space.
famouswhendead gallery is a new gallery space in the heart of Melbourne, near the Queen Victoria Markets. It is dedicated to established, new and emerging Australian and international contemporary artists.

The gallery is operated by PinXit Arts & Events Management Agency Pty Ltd, a company I set up in 2006 and which is organising exhibitions, managing artists and facilitating workshops.

In 2007 PinXit presented several exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. Among these was the Urban Art Agenda, an international stencil art exhibition, as part of the Melbourne Design Festival at Shed 4 in the Melbourne Docklands. Images can be viewed at flickr.

Since 2004, I have also been the director of the Melbourne Stencil Festival, Australia's largest annual street and stencil art event and touring exhibition. It was through Melbourne's rich street art culture that I came to open famouswhendead gallery in early 2008.

what is street art.
The new millenium has seen an explosion of art on the streets of major cities all around the world.
For the lack of a better term, the phenomenom is called street art. Besides traditional forms of graffiti (tagging, throw-ups, pieces, murals) other forms have emerged: stencil art, paste-ups, stickers, installations.

Graffiti has its origins in the USA when it first appeared on trains in New York and Philadelphia in the late 1970s. Stencil art goes back some thousands of years. Aborigines in the Top End of Australia used hand-stencils to leave their mark in caves and on rock.

Frenchman Blek the Rat was the first to use life-size stencils and spray paint in Paris in the early 1980s. Inspired by graffiti, which he had seen in the USA, he set out to try something different. He painted his first stencils in the immediate neighbourhood of the Louvre.

UK stencil artist Banksy is probably the most well-known stencil artist. Around the world he is loved for his funny and satirical works. He has inspired generations of young artists. His original paintings, prints and now even entire building walls have achieved record prices at auctions recently.

Stencil art in Australia took off in Melbourne around 2000/2001 with dozens of artists stenciling on walls and in numerous lane ways in the inner-city, in places like Hosier Lane, Centre Place and off Brunswick St in Fitzroy. Thousands of images appeared over the next few years and some of these are well-documented in Jake Smallman & Carl Nyman's book Melbourne Stencil Capital.

In 2004, stencil artist Satta and I organised the first Melbourne Stencil Festival, Australia's first large stencil art exhibition. It presented over 200 works to an excited public, featuring two dozen of Melbourne's most prolific street artists at the time, among these Phibs, Civil, Haha, Meggs, Psalm and Vexta. The festival has since become Australia's only annual showcase of street and stencil art, and has recently held exhibitions in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

famouswhendead gallery maintains a catalogue of authentic stencil art by Australian and international artists.

JD Mittmann