Updated

As street art sells for thousands of dollars in a Melbourne gallery, there are calls for more laneways to be opened to graffiti.

Source: 7.30 Victoria | Duration: 6min 54sec

Topics: visual-art, vic

Transcript

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA, PRESENTER: It used to be called graffiti. Now it's known as street art and it's gracing the walls of some of the best homes in Melbourne. And it's selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

Some of Australia's best known street artists took their work from the laneways to the well heeled Melbourne suburb of Armadale this week for a special exhibition.

Cheryl Hall went along.

STORMIE MILLS, STREET ARTIST: A lot of the time I do these characters, these men that are sort of the downtrodden and melancholic people and I he idea of dressing them in a little costume like either as a bunny man or, you know, like this morning as a ladybug man, it gives them that sense of joy and frivolity that's always the glass half full and for me that's sort of my outlook on life. Things are always on the up.

So it gives them a sense of relief. Yeah, takes them out of their everyday kind of struggle.

CHERYL HALL, REPORTER: Stormie Mills may have failed art at school but his graffiti is now changing what may soon be taught in class. He's part of an international art movement that's being brought up by the big collectors.

STORMIE MILLS: Always really grateful, but it's very humbling. You know when you paint something on a wall and 24 hours later it's painted over by somebody, the fact that somebody would come into a gallery and buy it to hang in their house, it's like, yeah, that total juxtaposition, yeah, it does make you think 'wow, this is pretty awesome'.

CHERYL HALL: Like other street artists, Stormie Mills has been painting in far less salubrious surroundings since he was 14.

STORMIE MILLS: When I was 14 years old and going out at night painting, if I'd been stopped from doing that early on then I probably wouldn't be here now and I think that would, for me it would be a great shame.

I don't necessarily think that people were so much against it. I think there's a very vocal minority that applied that pressure for, you know, graffiti to be illegal and to get rid of it and all those other things. But, you know, the amount of kids that are out there painting it, kids with parents and I'm sure their parents wouldn't want them arrested for creating artwork.

One thing informs the other. I still paint a lot of walls. I would learn something when I'm in the studio that I then go out and paint on a wall and vice versa.

CHERYL HALL: Ken McGregor has taken five years to put the exhibition together. Not an easy task when most street artists want to remain anonymous to avoid fines and even jail.

KEN MCGREGOR, CURATOR: Deface and Banksy, it's not their real names, you know I happen to know quite a few of their names because I've been involved with them over the last five years in particular. They are false names and false bank accounts as well, because they can't, they don't want to be tracked back just in case they get caught for work that's previously done, you know, several years ago.

CHERYL HALL: Some of the artists, like Paris's Blec le Rat, have been around for years ,but it's only recently their work has become valuable.

ALEX MCULLOCH, METRO GALLERY: The Rat, well that was the first image that he was, that he ever did in the late 70s, the small rat that he littered the streets with of Paris. And it was a comment on the dirtiness and he's often making of things though. He's got David holding a machine gun here. This is one of his very famous iconic images of the beggar and obviously there is a huge amount of poverty in Paris and he is commenting on the fact.

Swoon is in her early 30s, so she has had a huge amount of success for a young artist. She is based in New York and she'll do, this is one of her well known images, she actually pastes up on the wall all over New York and LA.

CHERYL HALL: Melbourne artist Haha is well known for his images of Australia's famous outlaw Ned Kelly. He says it's a revolutionary image that fits well with street art.

KEN MCGREGOR: It's one of the greatest billboards that you can have on the street. You don't have to actually go into a gallery. You don't have to pay a fee to actually go and see the work. It's there, it's all over the place. And that's what these street artists do.

CHERYL HALL: Melbourne is becoming famous for its graffiti, a reputation it has tried to obliterate in the past by cleaning up the city and painting over it. Some of it well known.

This Banksy, the tiny rat with a parachute, was in Hosier Lane in Melbourne's CBD until early this year when a council cleaner painted over it.

Ken McGregor called that cultural vandalism. But he also acknowledges that street art is not permanent. Places like Hosier Lane are so popular work is constantly painted over by other artists.

These images by Stormie Mills have now disappeared, too.

KEN MCGREGOR: I think you have to let it grow as well. Melbourne is the street capital of Australia and it has the respect of all the great street artists and Deface an Banksy and Blec Le Rat they've all been here and they've all stencilled the laneways of Melbourne. So internationally it stands up just as good as London does, just as good as New York did.

I think the best thing for Melbourne is to give the kids some more laneways to do because the amount of tourism that's generated from it is huge as well.

CHERYL HALL: For the artists, it's about the ability to immediately engage with the community.

STORMIE MILLS: There's a real sense of freedom as well, I think, painting a wall because you know it's, you know, ultimately it's transient. It's not going to last forever. And it kind of frees you up to work a bit more fluidly and more relaxed and I learn a lot by doing that I wish it would be as easy to paint canvas like that sometimes.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: Cheryl Hall with that report. And that exhibition is on at the Metro Gallery in Armadale, and we should clarify, it's only legal to paint on approved sites around the city.