Caroline

Caroline Lane, St Peters on Friday, 4 December 2020

Caroline runs parallel to May Street and has a lot of graffiti. It’s a backside alley lined with fences and factories. There is a gym and a poster printer. A broken model of an 18th-century ship is dumped outside one of the garage doors. Maybe it’s meant to be the HMS Endeavour?

A sketchy, black-and-white Spiderman rises above a geometrical graffiti. A paper sign says “Do not paint here”. At the corner of May Lane is a mural by Reubszz. When I look around towards St Peters station I see a construction site, a high building, almost finished. Just there I took a photo of a grey old house many years ago.

It’s hot today. What am I doing here?

Love is the answer

Mary Street, Newtown on Friday, 3 April 2020

I have to go to the bank to get my credit card. I was thinking of just leaving it, although banks are an essential service, and I need the card. The bank is at the corner of Mary and King Street, so I take the opportunity to look around. At the end near Lennox Street, dogs are barking ferociously inside a building with a mural painting. Two men with red safety tops are walking in and out.

The street is a bit shabby. Apart from the house with the mural, most buildings in the street look neglected and covered with tagging.

An old mattress and shoes are dumped in the driveway to an undercover parking lot. The only other neat place is the temporarily closed Kelly’s Lounge. There are beer kegs outside the door, waiting for nothing.

The next building has a tag saying “God hates us all”. Some posters inform people that a virus doesn’t target race. This is because Asian people have been attacked and vilified in public. There are too many dumb people who think the Chinese are personally responsible for the virus break-out. Words of encouragement are painted high up on a corner building glowing in the sunshine: “Love is the answer”.

Writings on the wall

Maud Lane, Marrickville on Sunday, 8 March 2020

On my way to Maud Lane, I passed by Maude Street which isn't on any map. It runs alongside the Braddock Playground, with only grass and bushes and a sandstone arch leading into it. Someone is meditating under the arch.

The street turns around a corner and becomes Maud Lane. It runs along the railway track. The first view around the bend is a section with rubbish bins, a container with pallets piled on top, and a truck in front of a low white building. Squashed cardboard boxes, a battered suitcase and an abandoned shopping trolley are sitting right under a bent sign that tells everyone not to dump rubbish there. Is this ignorance, vandalism or civil disobedience?

The lane has workshops, garages and warehouses on both sides. Number 25 insists that the lane’s name is Maude with an ‘e’, defying the street directories’ spelling. It is empty and silent. Good to come on a Sunday.

Funny how I get excited by the sight of a rather ugly street. The feeling comes from something unexplainable, a vague memory of industrial streets in my home town Hamburg. But also from the fact that this place, like so many in Marrickville, is yet untouched by new apartment block developments. A couple of people are working. One is behind half-closed roller doors, and the other is driving a forklift from one end of the lane to the other. Apart from them, I am all alone. After heavy rain, the sun has come out and it’s warm.

While editing the photos I enjoy looking at all the details on the walls. Not so much the big elaborate graffiti, but the small scribbles, messages, colours, and objects leaning against them. In one section a few pieces of broken timber are leaning against a black wall. They look like words from an ancient language, like runes. Now, in August, five months later, they look to me like the “writing on the wall”, an ominous warning.

Enmore and Stanmore

Marian Street and Marian Lane, Enmore on Monday, 24 February 2020

Late afternoon and sunny weather with a few fluffy clouds. Marian Lane features the back walls and garage doors of houses in Marian and Metropolitan Street. Lots of doves on the powerlines. Two schoolgirls are walking along slowly. Someone in the far distance is shaking out his carpet. The stop sign at an intersection is upside down. People leave things for others to take, a packet of clay, a printer wrapped in plastic with the sign ‘free to take’, a box with toy fruit and veggies that said something like ‘never used’ or ‘never opened’. 

Marian Street has shops and graffiti at the end towards Enmore Road and then starts to be quiet, tree-lined, and relaxed. Nice houses, all old, well kept, different styles. All the same trees, I think a type of bottle brush, not in flower at the moment, so not sure. I thought it would be great to live in this beautiful, green street and have all the shops, cafés, pubs, and the Enmore Theatre just around the corner. 

Myrtle Street and Lane, Stanmore on Monday, 2 March 2020

Late afternoon, the weather just changed from very hot to very windy and a lot cooler. There is a Catholic Primary school on one street corner, and another Catholic institution further along. ‘Sisters of Mercy’ with the invitation ‘all welcome’ or similar. There is a gallery on the first street corner I came to. Houses are old, in good condition, painted and decorated, nice gardens. A group of young people is waiting at the door of one of the houses. People come home with their children from school or daycare, and other people come home from work in their Mercedes and Audis, using the garage doors in Myrtle Lane West. They get out of their cars, still in office suits, to take in the rubbish bins. The lanes are a bit confusing. They don’t have street names displayed. The planes fly low, making huge screaming noises. A white fashionable dog walks purposefully along the footpath all by herself. A woman seems to be concerned, but it’s not her dog. She gives up.   

Graffiti in May Lane

May Street and May Lane, St Peters on Sunday, 23 Feb 2020

I often drive through May Street when I go to Marrickville, and I took photos in the area for other projects in the past. Tugi and Dianna have their framing workshop Graphic Art Mount in May Lane where at least half of Sydney’s artists get their exhibition framing done, including me. May Lane is known for its graffiti. Tugi made the best out of this fact and invited street artists a few years back to do graffiti on the walls officially, like a proper exhibition with opening nights. There is still graffiti everywhere.

Today the shop is closed because it’s Sunday. A fair amount of people pass through the lane. Some are doing a phone video with a young woman in yellow. Some walk their dog, and some come from St Peters train station. 

May Street has a large lawn with some trees, a small playground, and a football oval. There is another green strip named “May Street Playground”. It’s a tiny bit of grass with a couple of trees and two benches. Someone left a French novel, torn jeans, and a towel.

There are artists’ studios in a red brick building and still a lot of old workshops and traders. Sadly, at a closer look, many of them have a ‘For Lease’ sign displayed. At the Country and Town Hotel end of May Street, they are just finishing the WestConnex road works of this section. 

Olive…

…and Welcome

Update on 19 June: When I edited my photos from this day, I looked up some names of the graffiti writers. One of them is called ‘Land Writer(s)’ which is an Aboriginal street art duo, making art about indigenous concerns. Most entries I’ve found were from around 2016. There was a Sydney Morning Herald article featuring a piece they did in Brisbane about black death in custody.