It's Our Thing: More History on Australian Hip-Hop (Part II)

ISBN 978-1-921482-45-8

IT’S OUR THING MORE HISTORY ON AUSTRALIAN HIP-HOP PART ΙΙ BLACKTOWN ARTS CENTRE 22 JUNE – 12 AUGUST 2017

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

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SHARLINE BAZZINA AKA SPICE

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CHRIS BISSET AKA PRINS

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DAVID CHALLINOR AKA UMPH

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CHEZ

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DAN KYLE

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MATTHEW PEET AKA MISTERY

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WENDY MURRAY AKA MINI GRAFF

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LEO TANOI AKA DJ BLACK PRESIDENT

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THELMA THOMAS AKA MC TREY

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GEORGE TILLIANAKIS

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GARRY TRINH

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TIANNA VOKAC AKA ROSE

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PAUL WESTGATE AKA UNIQUE

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JASON WING

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LIST OF WORKS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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CURATED BY PAUL HOWARD, KON GOURIOTIS

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Mini Graff (banner), Chez (seat), Mistery (panel) It’s Our Thing Part II 2017, photograph by Sharon Hickey

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IT’S OUR THING: MORE HISTORY ON AUSTRALIAN HIP-HOP PART II PAUL HOWARD AND KON GOURIOTIS

One exhibition could not have contained the years of output from the 14 artists in It’s Our Thing: More History on Australian HipHop Part II. Instead we opted to show some existing artworks and commissioned 56 new works. On display are 260 paintings, drawings, carvings, photographs, screen prints and 3D objects, to expand the project’s curatorial theme from 2016. In the exhibition last year, the work of Khaled Sabsabi and Minky Rawat, aka Atome, was surveyed with artworks by some of the artists who had influenced them, including Joseph Beuys, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. In 2017 we have included more of the artists from the Street Level period, together with post-Street Level artists.

The paths of these artists of the Hip-Hip movement are similar to those of Sabsabi and Rawat, yet Part II has four new categories. Some artists, particularly Rawat, Spice and Unique, have stayed within the form of Hip-Hop painting and music and have appropriated from their socio-cultural environments, whereas others who have their origins in Hip-Hop, have merged

the Hip-Hop form with fine art traditions and contemporary art.

Mistery has recently combined Hip-Hop with religious Orthodox iconography, and Leo Tanoi has merged Samoan patterning and geometric non-objective painting.

Some artists have been inspired to incorporate their Hip-Hop styles with aspects of their traditional heritage. Chez has used Fijian tapa patterns, and Prins has used Maori carving techniques. Dan Kyle has absorbed the aerosol graffiti tag into his oil and pencil paintings as he captures Blacktown’s light.

Mini Graff combines design and screen printing aesthetics with Street Art and Hip-Hop paintings, often with subversive socio-cultural and political messages. Reacting against Hip-Hop’s influence, George Tillianakis’ transgressive art deliberately sets out to disrupt conformist values within the HipHop movement.

This examination of Australian HipHop has grown within Blacktown City. We wanted to provide time and a place to encourage these artists to express their core concerns and their evolution as artists; to

mark their individuality and to celebrate the Hip-Hop movement’s natural inclusive spirit. Without any curatorial suggestion, certain themes of imagery have arrived intuitively in the exhibition. There are works contemplating questions of identity, faith, empathy, sexuality and equality.

In this spirit of inclusiveness we have worked closely with Blacktown City Council’s Graffiti Management Plan and it’s external review, to bring tangible evidence arguing for the consideration of a full range of graffiti management practices in the Blacktown Local Government Area.

One recommendation in the review is for the Council to investigate ways that aerosol art forms can contribute to a reconceptualising of the City as a ‘creative place’ with further exhibitions of HipHop art at Blacktown Arts Centre and other projects on Street Art. Through exhibitions such as this, the key issue of graffiti might then partly be handled by the Council legitimatising and celebrating Hip-Hop and Street Art, and encouraging work in consultation with the local community.

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SHARLINE BEZZINA AKA SPICE KON GOURIOTIS

When Sharline Bezzina, the artist Spice, returned in 2009 from her induction into the South Bronx Hall of Fame, it was to Western Sydney, where she had been a leading Australian Hip-Hop artist for more than 20 years. She was born in Sliema, Malta in 1972 (on a family holiday) but Western Sydney has always been her home. At 10, Sharline began Hip-Hop drawing and Break Dancing. A year later, with her older brother Kuwi, she was using aerosol paints. In 1986, she was one of the first Hip-Hop painters to piece on Street Level’s building (then a pinball parlour) with the word ‘Adore’. In the same year the Spice tag appeared; by 1990 it was her trademark.

This tag has merged Hip-Hop and popular culture, print, and electronic imagery by fusing them into outrageous commanding

power-girl fantasy narratives. Her word-play and images have both vitality and gentle satire. Often with engaging humour, she exploits popular culture’s willingness to be re-represented in her HipHop style. Spice’s art embraces Hip-Hop painting, drawing, music, dancing and teaching. Her twenty works on paper in the It’s Our Thing Part II exhibition display her imposing aesthetic.

Spice’s painting and drawing move effortlessly from intuitive Hip-Hop works to carefully composed drawings that shift and elevate uneven notions of female representation. This public display paradoxically conceals private concerns of health, family and love.

As she says, “I’ve always described my creative outlet as my medicine sketch therapy”.

Thames and Hudson’s Graffiti Women, Melbourne University Publishing’s Uncommissioned Art: An A–Z of Australian Graffiti, and articles in Count Down, Rolling Stone, Dolly, and Yen magazines, acknowledge her.

Her work has also appeared on walls and galleries in New York, London, Berlin, Auckland, Prague, Amsterdam and throughout Australia. Spice has had a profound influence on Australian Hip-Hop histories.

Sharline Bezzina aka Spice, Hard to Burn, It was all a Dream, 3 Knights, I want 2 believe … in myself, Just-Spice, Wizard of Ostralia, Happy Sprays, Tracks, Captain Cave Spice, Only Dead Fish Go with the Flow, Beats Burners and Life, Graffiti Paradiso, Arrakis, Funkenstyle, Space Invaders, It’s Like a Jungle Sometimes, Spice Attacks, Heaven is a Ghetto, B.boys beware, Fire Attack!, From top row, left to right, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers), each H21 x 30 cm (unframed); “My Baby” (General Model SRC 8000), 1983, plastics and metals (Ghetto Blaster), H30 x L59 x W13 cm; Spacemaster (Silver Spacemaster II ST 888), 2011, plastics and metals (Ghetto Blaster), H32 x L68 x W17 cm.

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CHRIS BISSET AKA PRINS KON GOURIOTIS

There is something mystifying about Chris Bisset aka Prins’ HipHop art. This most sensitive and heartfelt of Australian Hip-Hop artists has, by some attribute of nature, been able to preserve a child’s sensitivity. His works are autobiographical; they record an empathy that overwhelms body and soul.

Working with identity, memory and conflict, inspired by his tag’s lettering, he conceals personal narratives. Like the Surrealists, Prins mines his subconscious.

Carvings such as Hell and Back, declaring the end of an addiction, mark important moments in his life. Untitled works are for time to explain. Prins makes us confront the platitudes of violent stereotypes ascribed to boys and young men, especially men of colour denied access to their heritage.

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Prins’ family travelled extensively before settling in Sydney in the early 1980s. As a youth, Prins, born in London in 1971 of Maori, Japanese and British heritage, tried to connect to his Maori culture.

From his first 1986 aerosol painting - on his local shoe repair shop near Artarmon train station - his painting dominated the north-west Sydney train service from 19871988.

In 1996, Phib introduced Prins to carving by providing soap stone and carving tools, giving Prins the idea to merge his graffiti with traditional Maori carvings. This has been his most important contribution to the Australian HipHop movement. The freshness of his carving and Hip-Hop aesthetic saw his work in exhibitions and collections nationally and internationally: first at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in 1998,

followed by Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Djamu Gallery and Penrith Regional Gallery, Archill Gallery (Auckland), Rote Fabrick (Switzerland), Queensland Art Gallery, Fujieda Museum (Japan), Les Brasseurs (Belgium), Cite Internationale Des Arts (Paris) and Tjibaou Cultural Centre (New Caledonia). However, Leaping Boundaries: a Century of New Zealand Artists in Australia at the Mosman Art Gallery in 2001 legitimised him as an artist and as a New Zealander.

For It’s Our Thing Part II he has reached new heights. His letters have been moulded using malleable yet vulnerable plasticine.

This affordable material has become the most expressive for this complex artist.

Chris Bissett aka Prins, Mild Turkey: A nightmare on Hampden Road flappy cougar edition, 2017, plasticine, H13 x L75 x W20 cm; Untitled, 2017, plasticine, H18 x L85 x W10 cm.

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DAVID CHALLINOR AKA UMPH KON GOURIOTIS

David Challinor, aka Umph, was fascinated by Hip-Hop culture while travelling across Sydney by train to and from school and for family visits. Almost overcome by the form of graffiti liveliness with its bold colours and individualism, he became convinced that by connecting with graffiti and with his primary passion for urban music he could reveal beauty in the everyday.

His aerosol paintings began in an offhand style, sometimes incorporating his tag Umph with humorous cartoonish self-portraits or popular urban iconography.

Always experimenting with the aerosol medium to reach new emotive heights and to “give a fresh voice to a much-maligned and often misunderstood medium,” like other aerosol painters in It’s Our Thing Part II, he fell in love with the capacity of aerosol paint to make lasting marks quickly.

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From 1993, studying fine arts at Meadowbank TAFE and graphic design at Granville and Hornsby TAFEs, he used his aerosol experiences. At Meadowbank he gradually took to examining the essence of everyday subjects through colour and form. Born in 1973 in St Leonards, Umph has lived in Sydney’s northern suburbs; his home is presently on the Central Coast of NSW. Yet throughout Street Level’s period in Blacktown he was regularly exhibiting in curated exhibitions on Hip-Hop, painting on gallery walls and accepting commercial and public commissions. Despite not fitting into conventional Hip-Hop styles, his work has been collected for its Hip-Hop style by Western Sydney University and the Central Coast Council.

Nearly all his aerosol presentations have remained in greater Sydney.

With his band Sounds Like Sunset

he has performed throughout Australia for 20 years, releasing three albums with Ivy League/ Mushroom Music, playing at major east coast events like Big Day Out and being broadcast on radios TripleJ, DoubleJ, FBi, 2SER and 4ZZZ. The more Umph makes paintings and music, the more he reveals beauty.

David Challinor aka Umph, Life Gets in the Way, 2017, acrylic aerosol on canvas, H173 x 238 cm

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CHEZ LUCY STRANGER

Chez was born 1974 in Suva, Fiji Islands, of Fijian and Indian heritage. Educated at Suva Grammar School and later Strathfield Girls High School, Sydney, she began using aerosols after arriving in Australia in 1989. During this time she was introduced to the Hip-Hop scene, and adopted graffiti to express herself through writing and painting.

Chez has developed works using aerosols on tapa - a Fijian grown Mulberry tree paper cloth - that explore the disharmony between indigenous Fijians and Indians in Fiji. Chez’s mother was an indigenous Fijian woman from the Naitasiri highlands, and her father was an Indian man from Tavua Fiji, descended from indentured labourers from India who were brought to work the sugar cane fields in the late 1800s.

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In Motives that Connect, for It’s Our Thing Part II, Chez unites the images of her two family cultures in a moment of rediscovery.

“I want to create art that finds connection and symmetry through their traditional art forms”. Her geometric patterns incorporate carefully selected motifs drawn from both her cultural backgrounds. Whilst both Fijian Masi and Madhubani Indian artforms close their boundaries with symmetric patterns as a way to contain the spirit and story within cloth, Chez prefers to break the pattern in places to allow for movement through space, with nothing to be confined or trapped.

Motives that Connect aims to open a discourse in this culturally sensitive context.

Chez has undertaken multiple public commissions, and been involved in several group

exhibitions including Artdecko, 2014-15, at Warringah Creative, North Curl Curl, End 2 End, 2000 and Darco Codeart, 2006, at China Heights Gallery, Sydney. She has been awarded prizes including Highly Commended Outstanding Achievement Award in Open Visual Arts from the NSW Council for Pacific Communities in 2011, and was the 2013 Barnardos Australia Ambassador Artist.

Chez, Sea Change, 2017, acrylic aerosols on Fijian tapa (handmade paper cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree), H120 x 60 cm; Daya, 2017, acrylic aerosols on Fijian tapa (handmade paper cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree), H120 x 60 cm; Marica, 2017, acrylic aerosols on Fijian tapa (handmade paper cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree), H120 x 60 cm

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DAN KYLE LUCY STRANGER

For It’s Our Thing Part II, Dan Kyle, born in 1989 in Blacktown, returned to the bush he explored as a kid. His plein air paintings respond to childhood memories of Blacktown’s natural landscape and contemplate its gradual disappearance under urban growth and development. For Kyle, a key memory is the graffiti on the trees in the Blacktown scrub. Responding to this, in The Reserve he scratches into layers of paint; his textures and marks are reminiscent of the ongoing practice of mark-making in Blacktown – whether on trees, walls or public spaces – as a way of expressing identity. Responding to the past and the present, Kyle’s works are nuanced observations upon the changing natural and urban landscapes in Blacktown today.

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Dan Kyle currently lives and works in the Blue Mountains. He attended the Patrician Brothers College, Blacktown and graduated from the National Art School, Sydney, with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Ceramics).

Represented by Defiance Gallery, Sydney, and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne, he has had two solo exhibitions: Slow Lean, 2016 and From the Turon to the Colo, 2017, at Defiance Gallery. He has shown in major group exhibitions: The Blow In Collective, 2014, with artists Euan Macleod, Guy Maestri and Ann Thomson at the Broken Hill Regional Gallery; and he was selected for the 2016 Salon des Refusés at the SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney. He was highly commended in the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize 2016.

Kyle began painting landscapes after he moved to Kurrajong Heights in 2009. Through application of multiple layers of powder-dry thin paint, he builds depth and space within the picture, amplifying the infinite expanse of the Australian bush and observing transitions of changing light and seasons. His Blacktown scrub works respond to the unique golden light the Western Suburbs can throw.

Dan Kyle, The Reserve, 2017, mixed media on board, H120 x 200cm

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MATTHEW PEET AKA MISTERY KON GOURIOTIS

The time-honoured union of art and religion is revealed with the most dynamic results in the art of Matthew Peet, aka Mistery. Few artists in the Hip-Hop movement have consistently exploited the possibilities of combining HipHop genres and religious genres.

The Bboy teacher has brought together graffiti painting, Hip-Hop music, gospel music, religious icon painting and Biblical scriptures.

Since the early 1980s, adopting inclusiveness and exploring the various disciplines in Hip-Hop with the message of his Messianic Jewish faith, Mistery has become the complete Hip-Hop religious artist. He has achieved this by retaining a core principle of HipHop – commitment to an individual style. As he recently pointed out, he wants “the individual to ultimately affect their respective environments in a positive manner”.

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There is a warmth to both Mistery’s paintings and music. He avoids the clichés of overly consumerist Hip-Hop forms of gangster misogyny. His pictures and sounds are carefully thought–through messages: from experiences of the street; his love of science fiction, movies and literature; the Holy Bible; and his Hip-Hop community (especially members of the Krosswerdz movement, a HipHop interdenominational church which he founded in Sydney). With his brother Werd and others he leads the expanding international Krosswerdz movement.

His lives in Bankstown, where he was born in 1970, yet his work has been presented across Australasia and every continent other than South America. His first international painting, in Bboy style, was in 1986 in Japan while training at a martial arts tournament. For It’s Our Thing Part

II he has combined the Bboy style with that of Orthodox iconography to produce five portraits of actors and characters from some of his favourite movies, including the Terminator, Apollo Creed from the Rocky series, Highlander, Shogun Assassin and The Book of Eli, which symbolise for him values of humility, vision, empathy and perseverance.

Matthew Peet aka Mistery, Saint Connor, Saint Apollo, Saint Sarah, Saint Eli, Saint Ogami, 2017, aerosol on canvas, H180 x 120 cm.

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WENDY MURRAY AKA MINI GRAFF PAUL HOWARD

The artist known as Mini Graff was born in 1974 in Hamilton, New Zealand and attended high school in Kerikeri, and Massey University in Wellington. Living in Sydney since 2000, she has a masters degree from the National Art School, Sydney. As well as appearing in unsanctioned public spaces, Mini Graff’s work has been shown in touring exhibitions across Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia touring exhibition Space Invaders, and is held in collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Australian National Library, UQ Museum and the State Library of Victoria.

For two decades Mini Graff’s vivid satirical posters and stencils have appeared fleetingly on street walls, signage and urban objects.

They operate intentionally outside the narrative structures of art institutional conventions, and often

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reference Hip-Hop culture, protest movements and public claims to the privatisation of city spaces.

Both the Not Commercial series (2016-2017) and Equality series (2014-2017) respond to these issues.

In an age of computerised and digitised image-making, Mini Graff’s practice is distinctive for its artisanal nature. Her work is produced through hand-cut stencils and Letraset typeface, which are then transferred to paper, stickers, or surfaces by screen printing and spray painting. Parody, humour, and social commentary are common themes in her work.

This combination - hand-made technique with telling content - aligns Mini Graff’s work with pan-twentieth century traditions of the use of montage, agitprop graphics and political protest slogans in socially aware art.

Mini Graff’s new work for It’s Our Thing Part II includes a large street banner and a site-specific paste-up applied directly to the shipping container housing the Garage Graphix archive, including the posters and equipment from the community-owned visual arts organisation in Blacktown, Garage Graphix Community Arts Inc. Graphix, based in Western Sydney from 1981-1996, was significant in the development of Australian street art.

Wendy Murray aka Mini Graff, Miss Placed, 2017, acrylic screen print on 90gsm litho, installed at Blacktown City Council Works Depot, H102 x 73 cm. Photograph: Michael Corridore

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LEO TANOI AKA DJ BLACK PRESIDENT PAUL HOWARD

Leo Tanoi was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1970, of Samoan heritage. Since moving to Sydney with his parents in 1988 he has lived across the city, including two stints in Blacktown. Tanoi is a renowned producer and curator of Pacific contemporary art, through cultural events such as Strictly Samoan, 2008, Body Pacifica, 2010, Niu Warrior, 2011, Pacifica Power, 2012, Navigation Pacifica, 2013, and Pacifica Gods, 2014. These have been significant in bringing the art and culture of the Pacific to the wider communities of the greater Sydney region.

Well known as DJ Black President, playing bars and clubs across Sydney and on Koori Radio; an actor, dancer, and singer, Tanoi’s visual art practice is

perhaps the least known of his repertoire. To listen to one of Black President’s sets is to hear the interconnectedness of tradition, geography and contemporary life, whatever the musical genre, and this is a feature that Tanoi brings to his painting.

First introduced to artists and painting whilst working as an art installer at Penrith Regional Gallery, Tanoi describes his work as ‘experiments in minimal and figurative abstraction’. In keeping with Samoan tradition, his abstracted paintings contemplate his genealogy. In one large minimalist painting, Mount Vaea, the mountain appears at night overlooking Apia and the sea in Samoa, an important place in his mother’s history. In another,

Leo Tanoi, installation with Mount Vaea, O le Tupua o Fuimaono and Slingshot collection, 2017

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O le Tupua o Fuimaono, the family’s chiefly lineage is represented through the artist rewriting the story of a black rock.

Leo’s new work for It’s Our Thing Part II is in essence an installation, combining paintings, Hip-Hop inspired DJ sets, and a new painting applying minimal and figurative abstraction based on response work to Hip-Hop collectables from The Slingshot Collection; the bizarre contemporary ‘pop’ models and toys that commodify the global stars and iconography of the modern Hip-Hop genre.

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THELMA THOMAS AKA MC TREY LUCY STRANGER

Thelma Thomas was born in Suva, Fiji, where she began singing at church with her dad from around the age of six. She attended Veiuto Primary and Suva Grammar in Fiji, and later Arthur Phillip High School, Parramatta. She developed her own work in the Hip-Hop scene with music and aerosol art, and still lives in Western Sydney. Known as MC Trey, she is Hip-Hop artist, vocalist, Hip-Hop activist, business owner, community worker and creative producer.

Trey has performed nationally and internationally on stages in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, the UK and the USA. A fixture in the Sydney Hip-Hop scene since

the 1990s, she was nominated as one of Sydney’s Top 10 Creative Innovators in the field of music and is a member of the ARIA nominated band Foreign Heights.

Trey sees Hip-Hop as an extension of her cultural heritage. Through practising Hip-Hop, she has been able to reconnect with her roots as a Fijian Australian. Off stage, Trey has continued this cultural journey, working as a social worker with at risk youth. Over the last decade, with the Australian Museum and various juvenile detention centres, youth organisations and community groups, Trey has developed workshops and projects encouraging young people to learn

traditional Pacific culture through Hip-Hop methodologies.

Trey’s most recent single and music video, Daily, which evokes the environment and lifestyle of the local Fijian people, was released in April 2017. Her music is grounded in self-expression, exploring themes of identity, diversity and equity. With a social outlook, whether it be through music, the local community, or mainstream society, her works aim to impact and change the game.

Thelma Thomas aka MC Trey, We still rockin, 2017, single channel digital with sound, 26 minutes. Curated by Thelma Thomas.

Shot and edited by Liza Moscatelli

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GEORGE TILLIANAKIS KON GOURIOTIS

George Tillianakis’ art is uncompromising. His processes - in performance, music, photography and video - purge the self of inequalities, violence and ignorance. At the Liverpool Regional Museum he constructed four private booths with audio visuals of himself in intimate moments. Fictional settings are his creative weapons to provoke observers to consider their own values. In confined or open space: in a Sydney bedroom semi-naked, black thigh-high boots white boxer shorts and corset far from any visible medical purpose. Or walking on the streets of New York in daylight - camouflaged in black paint and wearing black high-waisted sequined underwear and a black motor bike helmet Tillianakis challenges the viewer to think again.

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His cathartic milieus have no boundaries. They are also steeped in modernist art histories and his rich Greek-Australian heritage.

Universal themes of loss, isolation, death, love, and sexuality underlie Tillianakis’ sharp social and cultural work. These fierce and demanding ideas leave an after image, transforming his observed environments.

For It’s Our Thing Part II he has collaborated with Liam Benson and Ladonnarama to produce a short music video from his music and lyrics, titled Faggot. This highenergy fantasy of regular Westie misfits, with all the violation of conventional sensibilities one would expect in Transgressive Art or early Dada, has the untidiness of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and, seemingly anti Hip-Hop, it

emphasises Tillianakis’ ‘anti-tag’ philosophy.

Blacktown has been Tillianakis’ home since he was born in 1981.

His love of performing began as a two-year-old, singing in Greek for the Greek community. Writing lyrics, composing and producing music videos from his early teens, Tillianakis studied visual arts at the Western Sydney University.

Included in more than 20 curated exhibitions throughout Australia, Japan and New York this century, in mid 2016 he launched his 5th album as Melodiqa: Cry, Fuck, or Fight.

George Tillianakis, FAGGOT, 2017, single channel digital with sound, 3.10 minutes.

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GARRY TRINH PAUL HOWARD

Garry Trinh has lived in Auburn, Western Sydney since 1980; his family migrated from Saigon, Vietnam, when he was five years old. He attended Sefton High School and has degrees in Psychology and in Visual Communications/Photography and Digital Imaging, from the Western Sydney University.

Documenting everyday life through photography, Trinh has exhibited widely in the last decade, won prestigious prizes, and been collected by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. But perhaps his bestknown work is his series for the C3West Project, commissioned in 2012 by Western Sydney Parklands and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney.

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Within Walking Distance was made as Trinh walked eight hours every day for a month through the 27 kilometres of the Parklands, continually photographing.

Fifteen giant billboards of Trinh’s photographs were erected, each within walking distance of the images it displays. The artist speaks now about the close relationship between walking and photography, and how graffiti trained him to walk.

Trinh has documented graffiti for the last two decades. He is in awe of fantastic graffiti pieces, and thinks that if he doesn’t capture them with photography they will quickly disappear, never to be seen again. In this spirit, Trinh has created a new, elongated piece

for It’s Our Thing Part II, based on graffiti, not in this case on walls, but on camper vans seen around Sydney in the last decade.

Garry Trinh’s artwork stands in a long line of environmentally aware art practice from land art in the UK and the USA, Objective Photography in Germany, and Conceptualism and Arte Povera in Italy and beyond. His desire to capture the mundane in everyday life (in particular the humorous and quirky, and certainly not the seriousness of life) makes his images both distinctive and an important record of the foreverchanging environment in Sydney.

Garry Trinh, Vans, 2017, inkjet on satin self-adhesive photographic paper, H30 x 753 cm

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TIANNA VOKAC AKA ROSE KON GOURIOTIS

Tianna Vokac, aka Rose, nowadays draws and makes jewellery, rather than the aerosol murals on various walls in Liverpool, Sydney and Melbourne for which she became known from 2013. Her handcrafted personal ornaments unite natural and industrial materials such as clay and wire; most are meant to adorn the female body. In It’s Our Thing Part II she shows five new portrait drawings. Her Hip-Hop aerosol painting style of bold designs, strong colours and rounded forms, familiar from the metallic enamel colours of her aerosol paintings, is rendered here in slow gentle tones made with soft colour pencils.

Born in 1992 in Campbelltown NSW, Rose is the youngest artist

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represented in It’s Our Thing Part II. Others have been largely preoccupied with exploring the Hip-Hop genre, but, self-taught, Rose does not follow a single trajectory in Hip-Hop. Her romantic concerns are for the preservation of the forces of nature, searching for defences against the irrational intentions of human beings. She wants to make art to reveal the beauty that exists in all people, but especially in women everywhere “To capture and share the feeling of raw and real beauty … that silences the mind and makes you feel,” she says.

Rose’s portraits are singularly centred, always looking directly at the viewer, as if to share their mystery. Her self-portrait is placed

amongst inspiring women. Some of her subjects, such as Frida Kahlo and Lauryn Hill are well known, others are merely described: The Blue-Haired Woman or The Maldivian Woman. They’re not drawn simply to record inspiring women from history or in Rose’s life. These portraits exist to reveal the struggles of women’s continuing global inequalities, their resilience in the face of social injustice and their resistance against the destruction of nature.

Values that Rose strives for herself and others.

Tianna Vokac aka Rose, Lauryn Hill, 2017, gold leaf, ink and pencil on Reeves paper, H42 x 30 cm (unframed); Blue Haired Woman, 2017, ink and pencil on Reeves paper, H30 x 21 cm (unframed); Maldivian Woman, 2017, pencil on Reeves paper, H30 x 21 cm (unframed); Frida Kahlo, 2017, pencil on Reeves paper, H30 x 21 cm (unframed), Self Portrait; 2017, pencil on Reeves paper, H42 x 30 cm (unframed).

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PAUL WESTGATE AKA UNIQUE AND SERECK (DEF WISH CAST) KON GOURIOTIS

Paul Westgate’s graffiti paintings and music are appreciated worldwide. Regular appearances in Stealth, Hype, Vapors, Penthouse (Black Label) Picture Magazine and Rolling Stone magazines, articles in The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald, have demonstrated Westlake and the legendary Def Wish Cast were pioneers in bringing the 1970s South Bronx Hip-Hop art movement to Australian culture.

This exhibition’s title It’s Our Thing derives from Westgate’s Australian Hip-Hop philosophy.

For Westgate, living between inner and Western Sydney since his birth in 1970, the word is of single importance. His artistic development has centred on his willingness to privilege the word, whether as ‘Unique’- the painter,

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or ‘Sereck’ - the musician of Def Wish Cast. As his verbal expression has developed, he’s deepened the emotional resonance of his themes of “burn and beauty”.

Unlike Atome, Westgate crafts his lines to contextualise the situation, encouraging the viewer to experience his feelings, using words to their expressive limit.

The composition of his graffiti paintings and music change course only when required to do so by the urgent demands of his words.

Any change has intense meaning, making every work explosive.

Throughout Street Level’s period in Blacktown (1989-1995) Westgate produced and presented significant Hip-Hop paintings and concerts, including Stage Axe.

The painting 3rd Degree Burn, presented at Sydney University’s Tin Sheds Gallery, Watch This Space project curated by Jeff Gibson, was produced at Street Level. Westgate rehearsed at Street Level in 1995 for his roles as lead actor and graffiti painter in Brave, and in 1992 made Def Wish Cast’s first music video there for the single A.U.S.T (down under comin upper) for the album Knights of the Underground Table (awarded several Triple J’s Top 100 Albums of All Time by industry peers). Westgate strives “to portray that love and feeling when I was young in Hip-Hop.”

Paul Westgate aka Unique, LitTrulyUnique, 2017, chalk, arcylic and arcylic areosol on board, H360 x 480 cm.

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JASON WING LUCY STRANGER

Jason Wing was born 1977 in Cabramatta; he is a Biripi descendant from Taree and is also of Chinese descent. He lives and works in Canterbury in Sydney’s inner west. Wing attended Saint Ignatius College Riverview and graduated in 1998 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, and in 2002, gained a graphic design degree from Sydney Graphic College. In 2006, as a street artist, he began using spray paint and stencils, but he gradually moved towards installation works, and by 2011 these were his main concern.

Wing is strongly influenced by his biracial Chinese and Aboriginal heritage. His work explores identity, consistently incorporating Chinese motifs, paper cutting techniques and imagery into his practice, as well as considering

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issues of colonialism and Aboriginal culture. His work responds to the current and ongoing sociopolitical challenges that impact his wider community. Reflecting on discourses of Australian identity, social injustice and racism, he critiques society with the aim of inspiring transformation and educating for greater social change.

A conceptual multidisciplinary artist, he works across installation, public art, photography and sculpture. Important aerosol pieces

by Wing include In Between Two Worlds 2012, Chinatown, Sydney, Harmony Day 2006, Blacktown, and Self Portrait 2008, Adelaide Festival Centre.

Major public commissions include Australia was stolen by armed robbery, 2012, New South Wales

Parliament House, Sydney; Sydney Dreaming, 2016, Prime Minister’s office, Sydney; and Phoenix park, 2016, Rhodes, Sydney. His solo exhibitions include House Wigger, 2014, Alaska Projects, Kings Cross, People of Substance, 2012, KlugeRuhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Museum, Virginia, USA, and The other other, 2011, Tandanya, Adelaide. Awarded the Parliament of NSW Indigenous Art Prize in 2012, he has also been a finalist in the 2014 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) Sydney and a finalist in The National Australia Bank Private Wealth Emerging Artist Award, Sydney.

Jason Wing, Know Your Place, 2017, acrylic paint on marine plywood, H172 x 239 cm

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LIST OF WORKS

// S H A R L I N E B A Z Z I N A AKA SPICE

Funkenstyle, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Captain Cave Spice, 2017, ead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Fire Attack!, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Spice Attacks, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

It was all a Dream, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

3 Knights, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Beats Burners and Life, 2017, ead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Only Dead Fish Go with the Flow, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Heaven is a Ghetto, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Graffiti Paradiso, 2017, Lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Just-Spice , 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Give me a Break!, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

B.boys beware, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Arrakis, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

I want 2 believe … in myself, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Wizard of Ostralia, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Hard to Burn , 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

Happy Sprays, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

It’s Like a Jungle Sometimes, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

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Tracks, 2017, lead, ink (felt markers) on paper, H21 x 30 cm (unframed).

“My Baby” (General Model SRC 8000), 1983, plastics and metals (Ghetto Blaster), H30 x L59 x W13 cm Spacemaster (Silver Spacemaster II ST 888), 2011, plastics and metals (Ghetto Blaster), H32 x L68 x W17 cm // C H R I S B I S S E T A K A P R I N S

Untitled, 2017, plasticine, H42 x L11 x W9 cm Untitled, 2017, plasticine, H41 x L11 x W14 cm Mild Turkey: A nightmare on Hampden Road flappy cougar edition, 2017, plasticine, H13 x L75 x W20 cm Untitled, 2017, plasticine H18 x L85 x W10 cm

Untitled (White), 2001, acylic on medium-density fibreboard, H38 x L95 x W2 cm One Sick Fuck, 2004, acylic on medium-density fibreboard, H39 x L149 x W4 cm Untitled (Black/Grey), 2003, acrylic on medium-density fibreboard, H28 x L96 x W3 cm Untitled, 2004-2005, camphor laurel and vanish, H37 x L114 x W5 cm

// C H E Z

// W E N D Y M U R R A Y AKA MINI GRAFF

Daya, 2017, acrylic aerosols on Fijian tapa (handmade paper cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree), H120 x 60 cm (unframed).

BCC Priority Shipping (red), 2017, acrylic screen print on litho, H102 x 73 cm

Sea Change, 2017, acrylic aerosols on Fijian tapa (handmade paper cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree, H120 x 60 cm (unframed).

// D A V I D C H A L L I N O R AKA UMPH

Marica, 2017, acrylic aerosols on Fijian tapa (handmade paper cloth from the Paper Mulberry tree), H120 x 60 cm (unframed).

Life Gets in the Way, 2017, acrylic aerosol on canvas, H173 x 238 cm

Symmetry, 2017, acrylic aerosols on board, H107 x 96 cm (unframed).

Still Life, 2017, acrylic aerosol on canvas, H85 x 113 cm

// D A N K Y L E

Untitled I, 2016, oil, acrylic and acrylic aerosol on canvas, H45 x 45 cm Untitled II, 2016, oil on canvas, H45 x 45 cm // J A S O N W I N G

Know Your Place, 2017, acrylic paint on marine plywood, H172 x 239 cm

Afternoon Light Watching I, 2017 oil and pencil on board, H40 x 60cm Afternoon Light Watching II, 2017 oil and pencil on board, H40 x 60cm The Reserve, 2017, mixed media on board, H120 x 200cm

Ship to Postal Code, 2017, acrylic screen print on litho, H76 x 51 cm Super Heroes/World’s Finest, 2011, acrylic screen print on Snowdon, H204 x 70 cm This is Street Art (pink), 2015, acrylic screen print on litho, H76 x 51 cm Time for Change, 2015, acrylic screen print on litho, H102 x 68 cm Make Your Mark, 2016, acrylic screen print on litho, H51 x 76 cm Miss Placed, 2017, acrylic screen print on 90gsm litho, installed at Blacktown City Council Works Depot, H102 x 73 cm. // P A U L W E S T G A T E A K A UNIQUE

LitTrulyUnique, 2017, chalk, arcylic and arcylic areosol on board, H360 x 480 cm

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// L E O T A N O I A K A DJ BLACK PRESIDENT

Mount Vaea, 2017, acrylic on canvas, H180 x 200 cm O le Tupua o Fuimaono, 2017, acrylic on canvas, H101 x 101 cm Hip-Hop Minimal Abstraction, 2017, acrylic on canvas, H122 x 76 cm Slingshot Collection, 15 figurines

// G E O R G E T I L L I A N A K I S

FAGGOT , 2017, single channel digital with sound, 3.10 minutes BLACK, 2012, single channel digital with sound, 31 minutes Diamond in the Rough (Fucker), 2007, single channel digital, 27 minutes // T H E L M A T H O M A S AKA MC TREY

// T I A N N A V O K A C A K A R O S E

Blue Haired Woman, 2017, ink and pencil on Reeves paper, H30 x 21 cm (unframed).

Maldivian Woman, 2017, pencil on Reeves paper, H30 x 21 cm (unframed).

Self Portrait, 2017, pencil on Reeves paper, H42 x 30 cm (unframed).

Frida Kahlo, 2017, pencil on Reeves paper, H30 x 21 cm (unframed).

Lauryn Hill, 2017, gold leaf, ink and pencil on Reeves paper, H42 x 30 cm (unframed).

We still rockin, 2017, single channel digital with sound, 26 minutes Curated by Thelma Thomas. Shot and edited by Liza Moscatelli // G A R R Y T R I N H

Vans, 2017, inkjet on satin selfadhesive photographic paper, H30 x 753 cm Mr Fix It, 2009, inkjet on vinyl, H233 x 350 cm // M A T T H E W P E E T AKA MISTERY

Saint Connor, 2017, aerosol on canvas, H180 x 120 cm Saint Apollo, 2017, aerosol on canvas, H180 x 120 cm

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Saint Sarah, 2017, aerosol on canvas, H180 x 120 cm Saint Eli, 2017, aerosol on canvas, H180 x 120 cm Saint Ogami, 2017, aerosol on canvas , H180 x 120 cm Saint Beatrix, 2017, aerosol on board, H240 x 590cm // R E B E C C A ‘ B E K ’ R U S H B Y

Street Level Archive, 1992-2017, digital // A R C H I V E P L A T F O R M

The archive of Sharline Bazzina aka Spice, Chris Bissett aka Prins, Blacktown City Council/Blacktown Arts Centre Collection, David Challinor aka Umph, Chez, Kon Gouriotis, Dan Kyle, Wendy Murray aka Mini Graff, Matthew Peet aka Mistery, Bek Rushby, Minky Rawat aka Atome, Khaled Sabsabi, George Tillianakis, Garry Trinh, Paul Westgate aka Unique and Jason Wing, 2017, laminate and paper on medium-density fibreboard, H100 x 600 cm

Gallery 1, It’s Our Thing Part II, 2017

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Gallery 2, It’s Our Thing Part II, 2017

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Blacktown Arts Centre wishes to thank the co-curator, Kon Gouriotis, and assistant curator, Lucy Stranger; visual artists: Sharline Bazzina aka Spice, Chris Bisset aka Prins, David Challinor aka Umph, Chez, Dan Kyle, Wendy Murray aka Mini Graff, Leo Tanoi aka DJ Black President, Thelma Thomas aka MC Trey, Tianna Vokac aka Rose, George Tillianakis, Garry Trinh, Matthew Peet aka Mistery, Paul Westgate aka Unique and Jason Wing.

We would like to thank Chez, Kon Gouriotis, Dan Kyle, Mini Graff, Mistery, Prins, Minky Rawat aka Atome, Bek Rushby, Khaled Sabsabi, George Tillianakis, Garry Trinh, Umph, Unique and Jason Wing for access to their Hip-Hop archives. Leo Tanoi would like to thank Slingshot for lending part of their collection of HipHop toys to the exhibition.

The Arts Centre gratefully acknowledges the support of Blacktown City Council’s Civil and Park Maintenance Directorate, in particular the authors of the Graffiti Management Plan 2012-2017. Additional thanks also to Richard Wiezel, Senior Coordinator, City Image, Blacktown City Council, and to Blacktown Arts Centre staff. The Blacktown City Council staff from Community Development, Building Construction and Maintenance, Communications and Marketing, and the Depot provided valuable assistance. And also thank you to Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre for providing access to the Street Level archive.

Blacktown Arts Centre

T 9839 6558 E artscentre@blacktown.nsw.gov.au W blacktownarts.com.au A 78 Flushcombe Rd, Blacktown NSW 2148 Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm (closed public holidays) General admission free BlacktownArts

@BlacktownArts

Blacktown Arts Centre is an initiative of Blacktown City Council supported

by Create NSW

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Jason Abbott, Amanda Edds, Ernest Aaron Exhibition Installers Sharon Hickey Photographer Kim Gregory Designer Judith Pugh Catalogue Editor BLACKTOWN ARTS CENTRE Jenny Bisset Director Aboriginal Arts Aroha Groves Aboriginal Arts Development Officer Charlotte Galleguillos Head of Learning and Engagement, Solid Ground Bee Cruse Community Engagement Coordinator, Solid Ground Emily Johnson Program Assistant, Solid Ground Administration Miguel Olmo Coordinator, Operations and Administration Erin Rackley Senior Administration Officer Paul Locke Arts Administration Trainee Cultural Planning/Community Engagement Monir Rowshan Coordinator, Cultural Planning and Community Engagement Tia McIntyre Project Officer Curatorial/Programming Paschal Daantos Berry Coordinator, Programs Paul Howard Curator, Visual Arts Maria Mitar Curator, Performing Arts Marketing Jodie Polutele Producer, Marketing and Community Engagement Programs Emily McTaggart Arts Marketing Assistant Sanki Tennakoon Arts Marketing Assistant

Garry Trinh, Mr Fix It, 2009, Inkjet on vinyl, H233 x 350 cm, photography by Sharon Hickey