Today I’m pleased to announce that after about 9 months of development and planning, I’ll be launching a resource dedicated to murals and street art in Sydney and all throughout New South Wales.
An extension to the semi-daily Instagram posts, I thought it wasn’t enough to engage with and do justice to the great works and creativity throughout New South Wales. I’ve followed a lot of street art posters and Australian art pages and often noticed that in the process of capturing Australia, the prominence of street art from Melbourne and Victoria was rather obvious.
According to a study conducted by Time Out via Betway, Melbourne outperformed Sydney on every social media engagement metric: 356,571 Instagram posts vs 94,272 (4x), 534 TikTok posts vs 54 (10x), 34,800 average yearly searches vs 1,680 (20x), and 41,331 article engagements vs 10,300 (4x). The sunny capital of Brisbane also surpassed Sydney on each metric measured except for Instagram posts.
Social Media Engagement of Australia’s Street Art Hotspots
Now I could just be another social media poster and just post daily pictures of street art, but I did feel quite indifferent about this which is why I haven’t really put much energy into growing a presence. Instead, I’ve endeavoured to build solid relationships with artists, Australian arts organisations, and communities alike.
The website will be a personally-curated and visited trove of street art entries and the research that I’ve trawled through to bring the background and meaning behind them. Hunting for about 8 years, it’s become a formidable collection that I’m happy to share and deepen one’s appreciation for art. It will also work as an ongoing archive to suspend past works in history and a useful interactive map to help plan a road trip.
At this moment, there are over 4,500 artworks present on the map. About 1,800 appear in Greater Sydney, another 900 across New South Wales, another 250 in Canberra, and so on. Just over a thousand artworks have been documented internationally, with 200 in New Zealand, 170 in Hong Kong and Singapore, 130 in Japan, and 120 in the Philippines. My previous visit to Seoul, which was for a family trip didn’t focus so much on street art, but there are 10 artworks there at this time.
Each artwork page is individually curated with a description and photos taken by me. Through research, I’m able to consistently express the details behind the artwork, including the purpose of the work, highlighting the fine details (often the details are greater than the sum of its parts) and precisely detail (as much as possible) its location and other elements. Occasionally there is information or text which is also made available elsewhere, to which I have diligently referenced the original text/source.
Though this is still a rather fledgling website, I will continue to invest my time and contribute through adding and updating artworks over time. As a founder/developer all-in-one, I’m looking forward to future collaboration and expanding functionalities to the website. Features I’d like to see in the future would include:
- Artwork-sharing functions: apart from just copying and pasting a link, a social media link would be neat
- Artist/project/location focus pages: Specialised pages which can feature a collection of an artist’s works including a bio and presence, pages which showcase the artworks involved in a project, or a list of artworks around a specific area or region
- Account management: allow signups at the user level (for those who want to favourite and submit artworks), and at the admin level (for those who want to add new artworks and evaluate user requests)
- Submission capabilities: allow users to submit photos of artworks they find, which would probably be subject to a standard
- Suggesting edits: allow users to input changes, including further information or if an artwork has been vandalised/removed, and
- Figure out some gamification aspect: the very thing that brought me into seeking out street art to rather than just go out, to possibly develop a different approach to really get people out there.
And most definitely, anything I or someone could think of.
With this in mind, there are five goals for Street Art NSW:
- Boost Sydney’s reputation as a street art hotspot. Not just Sydney City and the Inner West, but all of Sydney. A common engine search for Sydney street art will often bring up maps mainly focused around two LGAs with the occasional mention of other street art walks such as Bondi Beach, Cronulla, the Blue Mountains and Liverpool. There are some brilliant places for street art such as Penrith, Camden, the Northern Beaches, and Hornsby, which are often overlooked.
- Build out and complete New South Wales’ street art map. There are some excellent resources out there by many organisations showcasing their public art, but at times street art falls behind, especially when bundled with other mediums or only including those officially commissioned by councils. Though the map shows that there’s much more work to do, from the far corners of Tweed Heads, Tibooburra, Wentworth and Bega, this is the core goal, as well as closely follow the growing number of large silo/water tower works.
- Increase the representation of interior and hidden artworks, especially within schools and businesses. I highly appreciate businesses that go out of their way to engage artists to create visual aspects in their spaces, so make it a statement to offer my custom. Frenchie With Pizza Slice at Pizza Deli and Biin’s work at Nàng Gánh are amongst my favourites. But schools? They are literally a whole different playground. From Mulga’s summery funky beasts to NITSUA’s vibrant illustrations, their murals transport our youngest minds to vastly different worlds, which should be further shared to inspire and instil wonder.
- Eventually branch out to the other states of Australia, and the Pacific Islands. When a regular road trip doesn’t seem to satisfy my travel needs, I’ll find myself visiting another city interstate or embarking on an island getaway. I’m grateful that for my usual work I’m occasionally flown around Australia so I manage to squeeze some time to hunt some street art. Cities such as Karratha, Cairns, Benalla, and Adelaide have been wonderful and fruitful and I’m hoping to spend more time hunting street art in more cities. There are many other platforms which have considerable maps and databases of artworks of cities, to which this project is designed to complement. And finally,
- Grow and extend an international presence to Asia. There are several international cities on Street Art NSW with artworks mapped to an extent, including Osaka, Japan, Manila, Philippines, Hong Kong SAR, Singapore, and Christchurch, New Zealand. By then, it probably seems this project would outgrow its Street Art New South Wales working title and extend all the way out. Apart from Africa and Oceania, Asia seems to be the least documented in terms of street art. Based on my travels and experiences it seems their impressions and attitudes towards street art are still developing to this day.
It brings me joy to be able to bring this project I’ve been working on since the start of the year to meet the light. There’s been a lot of endless nights trawling through each artwork, embarking on a crash course of programming and code, and navigating through the complex world of art.
In establishing this first post, I’ve also dedicated time to writing content which I hope will aid people’s hunts and insights into street art. From artist features, my street art hunting adventures, to reports on brand new artworks, this written aspect will also support the visual narrative of the wide world of street art and murals.
As a solo project, it has come with challenges and a lot of time forgone for other things. But for all the support I’ve had talking with many different people, especially those who tell me beyond my doubts to just simply go for it, I am highly grateful for you.
I’ve learned while working with different organisations and people, some quite productively while others learning a couple of hard truths, but those don’t come without the necessary lessons building who I am today, and what I’ve come to accomplish.
So this project, Street Art NSW, is now available for your viewing. There’s probably going to be bugs, full disclosure on that.
Catch you ‘round!
jxrdan