Stop 1 Chapel St/ Johnston St

Welcome to Juddy Roller studios, this space is owned by Artist Shaun Hossack with the ambition of renovating a disused garage into a functional café and an artistic hub. It is also developed in a hope that art enthusiasts and artists could have chances to showcase their works and engage with the community easier. Having a look around, you will see that installations, stencils, paste-ups, aerosol paints artworks are being filled up the spaces by many different street artists.

Looking up on the wall, opposite Juddy Roller café, you will see a naked woman, with dear skull as head and hoofs as feet, painted with aerosol paint, acrylic paints and pigment ink. This is one of typical and distinctive images of street artist Kaffeine, which directly convey to surrounding a less tangible emotions or a feeling of melancholy through the dear skull, creating a morbid character-based image. The naked women here does not mean to create a distinct female quality nor convey a message of empowerment, it is just the way Kaffeine gets inspired and loves to re-invented into images that best fit to the characters and stories-based. At the end of the tour, you will have another chance to explore Kaffeine’s other artworks and its mission to the society.

Turn around and have a look on a piece of art that looks like anime style; this is definitely a signature of street artist Cherie Buttons who is obsessed with Japanese Pop Culture, ranging from Japanese awesome fashion, packages of foods and drinks, advertisement to everything about Japanese culture. As you can see from the image, a feature of an umbrella with one eye, a long tongue and jumping around with one leg, is a mythical ghost in Japanese folklore, which called Kasa-obake. And on the left of the image is the portray of sexually attractive girl that often reflects Buttons’ self-image and wishes such as the clothes, the jewelry or even the hair style and colors she wishes to have on her collections. Cherie Buttons’ main aims of creating these artworks are to creating her own fashion line, labeled as “Mint Soda”, and hoping that the designs could bring some Kawaii, the quality of being cute, to Australia.

Along the way to the second stop, you will find two women portrait artworks of artist Adnate in the corner of between Brunswick St and Young St/ Johnston St, and on the right side of Argyle St/ Brunswick St. Adnate has developed himself from a graffiti artist into a contemporary portraiture artist, which often painted in large scale wall with the mix application of aerosol and acrylic paints. The point of view that I want to mention is if male street artists create women portrait or naked body, would it be criticized as feminist like what happens to women street art, and is that important to judge the meaning and quality of artworks in the limited rubric of gender.

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