Interview with Sweet Streets Curator, Tessa Yee
We asked Tessa Yee, the curator of the Sweet Streets Festival Award Show a few questions.
When is the festival running until?
It’s on until 24 October from 8am-7pm weekdays and 11am-7pm weekends. The works start coming down Sunday 24 October.
Where can we see it?
1000 Pound Bend, 361 little Lonsdale Street
How much does it cost and how do we book?
It’s free!
What’s the best train or tram stop to get off at?
Melbourne Central Station, or Tram on cnr Elizabeth and La Trobe Street
Where can we get more information?
Head to our website
Now for some questions about creating the show and what’s next.
What will people see when they come to your show?
The Sweet Streets Award show represents a plethora of urban and street-styled art such as stencil works, free hand graffiti, yarn bombing, stickers, sculptures, toys, paste-ups, collage, and illustration. With artists from the US, Finland, NZ, Asia and Australia featured in the show. Well-known local artists Drewfunk, Deb, Tom Civil and Beastman have done large-scale murals decorating the space, while other household street-art names such as Haha, Max Berry, Rehgan de Mather and Ears have contributed some beautiful works on canvas and paper.
How long have you been working on this show? And what’s been involved?
Since the start of this year. I started putting together the call-out and getting in touch with artists, forums, blogs etc to try to spread the word that I was looking for artists for this show. I also did a lot of research and talking to people about their work and how it fits into the broad definitions of ‘urban art’ and compares to works you see on the street.
After the submissions closed in August – a panel from the Sweet Streets helped me choose the best works for the show, which would sit alongside a number of invited artists. This was extremely difficult due to the number of excellent entries and the comparatively limited space we had at 1000 pound bend. I had to make some tough decisions based on my aim to make the show as diverse as possible and representative of not just the typical styles of street-art, but also artworks that are on the fringe of this definition as well.
Where did you draw your inspiration from for this show?
Having curated the Melbourne Stencil Festival last year, I was eager to take on the challenge again this year and was really excited to have the expansion of the show to all ‘urban and street-styled’ art. This obviously meant I could encompass many styles of works and go much further beyond purely stencil works.
Most of my inspiration was drawn simply from talking to, and meeting artists, and exploring their different styles of art both on and off the street. I wanted to see ways in which I could represent street styles in the gallery without the works seeming too out of context.
As I discovered new styles such as knit graffiti which uses practically any 3D object as a basis for a knit piece, and met artists who explored a lot of mixed media such as recycled wood, felt, and cardboard, I became more and more concerned with trying to include these kinds of pieces in the show to represent the way street art has evolved far beyond the typical methods of creating work.
Of course, I also knew it was important to represent traditional graffiti, characters and letters, stencil art, paste-ups etc as well, but I was just really inspired by the way street artists explore so many different surfaces, textures, and objects for their work, because this is what they have to do if they want to create free artwork that is site specific – they have to adapt to the materials at hand.
In 10 words or less why should people get moving and check out your work?
On or Off the Street – this art IS MELBOURNE CULTURE.
What was your biggest challenge along the way?
Having to limit the number of works to fit in the space – because there is just so much good stuff out there!! It was a painful process….
Where will we see you next or what are you next working on?
After a short break when the festival ends – I’ll be back to working at Brunswick Street Gallery and thinking about my next major curatorial project there (no doubt it will be street art related). I will also continue to be on the Sweet Streets Committee and can hopefully contribute more to next year’s events!
