For years, the graffiti culture has enjoyed many books and DVDs dedicated to the colourful art: Subway Art by Martha Cooper, Style Wars, Getting Up: Subway Graffiti In New York by Craig Castleman. For years, all the aforementioned material on graffiti has come out of America – until now. Kings Way: The Beginnings Of Australian Graffiti has set the precedent as the first Australian tome to be published of its kind. This part visual encyclopaedia, part social history book dedicated to Melbourne’s emerging graffiti scene brings to the fore nine years of production, 3000 scanned photos, 50 interviews with artists and 1200 chosen images. Duro Cubrilo, Karl Stamer and Martin Harvey gives us some Graffiti 101.
What were you trying to convey with Kings Way? “To tell the true and balanced story of evolution on the local writing scene and most importantly the preservation of paintings that no longer exist other than a photograph,” says Duro Cubrilo.
“It’s a visual story and historical account of the early days of the underground Melbourne graffiti scene,” chimes in Karl Stamer.
Kings Way contains so many images – how hard was it collating it all?
“I can’t even begin to explain how difficult this component was, I knew what had to go in then worked back from there. The hardest part was selecting which picture of which painting was better as many of the contributors had pictures of the same painting. There were over 6000 images in the end and we only utilised 1200. If this isn’t an indication of the enormity of this scene I don’t know what is,” says Cubrilo.
Was 1983-93 graffiti’s glory days?
“As far as I am concerned, yes, these were the glory days. I guess anyone’s glory days are the times when they were growing up. Although the artwork produced back then was a world away from what’s being painted these days,” explains Martin Harvey.
Was it an easy or hard process sorting content and writers for interviews?
“Potentially the book could have been 1000 pages long if we’d put everything we wanted in it. Kings Way covers a 10-year period that begins in 1983, which were the golden years for Melbourne graffiti. It was a laborious process going through so much amazing content, unfortunately we simply couldn’t add it all,” Stamer tells.
What’s the difference between New York graf and Melbourne graf?
“The difference is that New York has the juice. New York, the “Tuff City” is where it started on the dark and dangerous subways, where style was developed and mastered. New York is the Mecca. Melbourne, as far as I’m concerned was New York’s little sister city. I have never seen pieces so closely aligned to New York in feeling and style as I have in Melbourne’s golden era. But maybe I’m a little biased,” admits Harvey .
kingswaybook.blogspot.com