Get on this opportunity to customize a 7″ bunny!

Submissions at HERE (Australian artists)

If your lucky enough to be in Byron Bay tommorow, Beastman is painting live at Art Park.
Wishing we were there!

This busy week is coming to a close as we settle back into our Melbourne roots. To top of Sydney week on 6YL we bring your our top 3 picks for FBi radios’ SMAC Awards.

The SMACS are this city’s truly interesting annual awards, given to the artists, musos, venues, promoters, creators and culture makers who keep Sydney’s creative heart beating. The SMACS exist to award originality, creativity and innovation: to celebrate the leaders, thinkers and doers of our town.

1. Best Visual Artist

We’re giving props to Daniel O’Toole aka Ears. While we’ve seen his work in Melbourne, he just seems to be on every street on Sydney and, it’s not hard to understand why. Ears combines his art school learning with street art smarts to develop a uniquely-Ears body of work, which he describes as, “loose abstracted portrait style that plays with lyrical line work and bold colours.”

We’ve picked Ears because of the balance he’s managed to maintain in terms of his style and the accessibility of his work. People can view it on the streets AND buy it from a gallery. It’s a win/win situation.

2. Best Art Event

Standout nominees (maybe just because they were familiar to us) were the Outpost Project and Secret Wars. However, I think for us it had to be Outpost hands down. While Secret Wars is an undoubtedly fantastic event that always showcases great talent and is a rad night out, Outpost is definitely a one-of-a-kind event. Unique to anything else in the Australian arts and culture scene it has drawn thousands through its gates.

Not only is this the festival that brought Banksy to Sydney, its line up features pretty much anyone who’s anyone in Australian street art. While you’d think it’d require more than a little trust to turn Cockatoo Island and its heritage listed buildings over to a bunch of people who get their kicks from drawing on walls, we guess this just shows how far the street art scene has come, and the ability of its members to stick together. The result is a transformation of the historic island as never seen before. 

I mean really, who else has taken over an entire island to showcase some good ol’ Australian vandals talent?

3. Best Collective

It’s no doubt that music is a big influence in our day-to-day lives with artists and musos regularly vibing off each others talents to continue creating their respective masterpieces. This is why we’ve picked, ‘Big Village‘ for repping some of Sydney’s best Oz Hip Hop talents. If our ears are happy, our hands our happy. And with happy hands comes some happy painting… amongst other things.

You’ve heard us out. Now it’s your turn. Head to the SMAC Awards website to have a look at all the other fantastic nominees and put in your votes! *cough* Ears, Outpost, Big Village *cough cough*

To top off an amazing Sydney-filled week on the 6YL blog are some of our flicks from Newtown and Sydney’s amazing initiative; The May’s Lane Project.

The project is an initiative set in place by Tugi Balog, who runs his business behind the gallery wall.

The exhibition space consists of five panels that are hung in window spaces along the side of a building in May Lane. Each month several artists are invited to use the entire space as their canvas, or to focus on the panels which are then kept each month as part of a larger documentation project.

And just FYI, you can put your hand up to do a panel. Just e-mail them some samples of your steez!

More photos on Facebook.

Sydney’s councils are a busy bunch. Spending a whole lotta time and money both buffing and commissioning work to adorn the walls of their city’s streets. In our meanderings through Sydney’s not so many laneways, we came across Barry McGee and Amaze’s bombing, Lister’s 3D installation, Art & About Sydney’s comissions by Numskull, Beastman and Ears, and some work of the non-commisioned variety.

To check out more of findings head over to our Facebook page.

Tomorrow we bring you more from May Lane. Get excited!

After an epic day at Outpost, we trekked, literally trekked up many-a-hill to check out the infamous China Heights gallery. And if it wasn’t enough after the smells of Haymarket, the steep incline, there was stairs. Many many stairs. No wonder it’s called China Heights.

Anyway, ‘No Money, No Wife’ was a solo show by co-founder of the gallery Mark Drew. Intimate and slightly below boiling temperature gallery space held a mighty fine wall of his latest colab with New Era sporting some very fresh snap-backs in a couple of colourways for those colour-matching-outfit-inclined. There were also some prints up for grabs, capturing some of the sights and sounds of Japan, where he’s currently based. Also a blast to the past in his zine-making teenage years in the form of a homage to the legendary Tupac.

All in all, great top off to an artfilled day. Stay tuned. Tomorrow is a continuation of Sydney-week and some sights and sounds off the beaten path of the S-Y-D.

Leaving early on a Friday morning, we flew across state lines to check out the last weekend of the Outpost Project on Cockatoo Island. An island that had been used to house some of Australia’s most wanted had been transformed into a exhibition space that housed some of Australia’s most wanted vandals talent.

Embarking on a picturesque ferry trip across the harbour and under the Sydney Harbour Bridge marked the start of a day that was so brimming with amazing artwork it had to be photographed, Facebooked, tweeted and Instagrammed all in the one go. After being shepherded off the ferry and funneled into the entrance you get startled by the overwhelming expanse of the island. Looming cliffs on the right were topped of with an interactive installation of, ‘Cup Rocking’ that had many more participants using its more easily accessible ground-level position. Following to the ground level you could see a Lister balloon inflatable, the Everfresh wall, sheds galore, the graff bus, a Beastman x Numskill teepee and a larger than life soy sauce sushi fish sculpture.

With so much to take in, we just followed the arrows into the belly of those looming cliffs. Held up by wooden shafts that now grace tags of young vandals who made the trip. The first piece we had the chance of absorbing was an audio visual installation of some guy running. Heartbeat, breathing, it made me tired just watching him. Moving on. We walked down the long corridor that was lined with huge canvases featuring work of some of Australia’s most well-known street artists such as the boys from Everfresh and talents from Just Another Agency. Heading towards the light we exiting into the glaring sun to be greeted by another domineering figure. One of Beastman’s creatures guarded the door of a massive warehouse that contained Kid Zoom’s installation of his childhood home and demolition derby of 3 Holden Commondores… (I never did find out why they were destroyed?). In the same massive warehouse held the T-World exhibition, Junky Projects, murals, forums, workshop spaces and a whole lot of street art goodness.

Venturing out into the glorious sunlight (we haven’t got a day in Melbourne as nice as that in 49012 days) we stumbled across a really cute zine room (featuring some of zines – thanks ppl who drew in it!). Exploring some more, we were absolutely floored with the HUGE piece by Ethos and then were speechless we turned a corner and saw a MAMMOTH piece by Vexta (whom we did an interview with earlier this year). It just doesn’t get any better than that!

With so many canvases by so many different artists and colossal murals, it definitely made out trip worth it. We can’t wait to see how it grows and what’s on offer next year! Wait, you’re doing in again right?… RIGHT?!

Hit up our Outpost Facebook Album for the full photoset.

There must be something in the Sydney water. Check back tomorrow for more Sydney goodness on 6YL’s Sydney Week.

If you haven’t jumped on the Six Years Later bandwagon yet, not only is it Sydney week on the blog – it’s also my pleasure to bring you the work of one of our Issue 1 family – Barry Patenaude. ‘Drawing Attention’ is his first solo show and focuses on what are typically overlooked and familiar objects from around the home and reinterprets them as beautiful moments in ordinary life.

We enjoyed an amazing weekend up north and if the calibre of art just from last weekend alone was anything to go by; Sydneysiders are really bringing it.

Head down to Showcase Gallery if you’re in Sydney – it starts in an hour!

While we were in Sydney, we had to check out Beastman‘s new work at Kind Of Gallery in Darlinghurst. His new work is totally awesome, and thanks to Josh (gallery staff/co-owner) for giving us some tips of things to check out in Syd.

If you’re in Sydney, make sure you go check this out!

Beastman – Cosmic Nature
Kind Of Gallery
72 Oxford Street
Darlinghurst 2010 – Sydney
8th December – 18th December