This collection is of and about the City.

It's about a unique time and place in Melbourne's recent history when artists ruled the unused and overlooked nooks and crannies, from the late 80s through to today, and reflects the 150 or so projects and 500-plus artists I have worked with through Citylights Projects. 

This collection is about place and environment, and it's a lot about Centre Place and Hosier Lane, my headquarters and outdoor galleries over the last 20 years.

In 1992, I moved into a rundown building on the corner of Centre Place and Flinders Lane called Centre House. This artery into the city area had been at the heart of the rag trade in the 60s and 70s. At the time of my arrival, it was amid a takeover by hundreds of artists, living and working in the cheap industrial spaces made available by the economic recession of the day. 

There were a few cafes, no bars, and lots of empty shops. Melbourne was yet to embrace its greatest urban geographical asset - the laneways. No one came to the city after 5 pm. Which was great, because it made a perfect playground for the artists. 

By 1994, I had met many artists with whom I would continue to work to this day. I coordinated my first project by repurposing empty shops in Centre Place as storefront galleries. In 1996, I co-founded Citylights Projects, a permanent 24-hour outdoor light-box gallery. These projects evolved out of natural collaborations and play amongst a thriving community of artists. 

Citylights was born out of Situationist and Punk principles, utilising advertising mediums and graffiti strategies to establish a hub for the diverse community of artists and the community in this area. Other artists began to add to the once blank walls, and the alcove quickly became an organic outdoor gallery amongst the bins and pigeons. The space became an Autonomous Zone, self-mediated, community-sanctioned, non-bureaucratic and beyond council control. People loved it.

On weekends, I scoured school fetes, op shops, and garage sales for vintage skateboards and Australian ceramics of the 1950s. My teenage education in the arts came via skate and surf culture, rock flyers, and skateboard deck art.  A love of organic design led me to seek out the work of Grant and Mary Featherston.

In 1998, I opened a second Citylights installation in Hosier Lane, exhibiting first and second-generation street and graffiti artists alongside the myriad forms practised by CBD-based artists.  Moving my HQ to Hosier Lane in 2001, I ran a hectic studio of video artists, graphic designers, architects, comic book makers and street artists.  We began using Hosier Lane as an outdoor extension of the studio, painting sections of the street, in the process meeting and attracting 3rd generation street artists of the nascent and soon to be celebrated stencil art scene. 

By 2004, I had begun to develop and curate projects like the Freeze Mutherstika panels featured in this collection. This project was one of the first (and few) times that many of the key artists of the stencil art movement would collaborate on one piece, and remains as a unique time capsule featuring artists who are today established as leaders of the field. Eighteen artists worked over three days in a free-form maelstrom to create this group work. The Freeze Muthastika Panels are simulacra of what Hosier Lane and Centre Place looked like in 2004. 

By mid-2004, Hosier Lane was well on the way to becoming one of the country's most celebrated cultural venues, having been painted from end to end and attracting artists from around the world, and Australia to this day.  Banksy, Blek le Rat, Fafi, Shepard Fairey, and Invader are just a few of the most notorious that have left their mark here.

My lifelong fascination with the ephemeral is evident in this collection. I began to collect stencil proofs and paste-ups from artists I was working with or met in Hosier Lane, and 2004, I presented my first collection to the National Gallery of Australia, which became the first institutional acquisition of street art in Australia.  

In 2005, I founded an indoor gallery in Hosier Lane apocryphally called Until Never, seeking a new outlet beyond the street. Since that time, I have continued to collect works from both contemporary and street artists. Through my projects, I have endeavoured to take indoor artists out into the street and bring the outdoor artists into the gallery, creating opportunities for collaborative processes. 

The collection presented here features works that I have lived very closely with, and reflects artists who I believe are some of the most dynamic and iconoclastic players in underground movements in one of the most significant art movements of the turn of the century.

Andy Mac
Hosier Lane Melbourne
April 2010