Nicholas Building Arts

Melbourne Art and International Artists

Vali Myers. A Memoir by Gianni Menichetti

• Vali was a dear dear friend of mine and next door neighbour in the Nicholas Building for many years until her passing away February 2003. We would take our studio guests around to each others studio, for a visit. I spent many hours in Vali's studio, as did many others, sitting around on her cushions talking art, life and having a few drinks as the sun went down on the Cathedral outside her studio. Her advice invaluable, her friendship cherished. I still have many of Vali's items which she passed on to me, in my studio, things that are of value to another artist. Early handwritten drafts of her book and diary, and even her old broken fridge, which I use to store my clay in - the door seal still works and prevents the clay from drying out. With these, to me it feels like Vali has not left the Building, rather she's just away somewhere, at Il Porto perhaps feeding the chooks and working by candle light with a goose quill pen on a new work, and one day will walk through the door again with 'Hello love, what have you been up to?" I thoroughly recommend this book to everyone. - Garry Shepherd

The Australian artist, Vali Myers, was a legend in her own time. Première danseuse of the Melbourne Modern Ballet at seventeen, she left home and spent ten years in Paris, living much of the time on the streets but never ceasing to draw. Ed van der Elsken famously put her on the cover of his Love on the Left Bank, that manifesto of Paris in the 1950’s and her work was praised by George Plimpton in his Paris Review. Then, saying goodbye to all that, she spent forty years in semi-seclusion in a wild canyon in Italy, where she continued producing her minute, mystical, and passionate drawings. Tough as nails, she fought the local authorities who wanted to introduce loggers into the valley, after a long struggle succeeding in having it designated an Environmental Oasis. Finally, Vali returned triumphant to her native Melbourne, where she was recognized as an artist sui generis.

In this brilliant memoir by her friend and lover, Gianni Menichetti, her art, times, and personality come through unforgettably. For thirty years, Gianni Menichetti, the author of this memoir, lived with Vali Myers in the wild canyon of ‘Il Porto’—first as lover and willing slave, ultimately as friend, confidant, and protector.

New Release: Vali Myers ● A Memoir ● by Gianni Menichetti

• “You saw in her the personalization of something torn and loose and deep down primitive in all of us.” — George Plimpton, Paris Review
• “Vali’s dogs, Vali’s trees, Vali’s donkey, the birds, the flowers, the caves, the spiders of Vali. We have seen for the first time the old skeleton of nature." — Bernardo Bertolucci, film-maker, Last Tango in Paris, Stealing Beauty
• "It was like being friends with some angel who had gotten kicked out for lewd behavior" - Chris Stern, musician, Blondie

$25.00 US
ISBN 0-9785606-0-4
Published by The Golda Foundation © 2007

Vali & Gianni dancing, Il Porto
by Marco Bakker 2000

Vali in her Nicholas Building studio

Nicholas Building artist (and lift attendant) Dimi, with his just arrived copy of Gianni's book. Dimi is in the book.

Below: A sample of Vali's works.

More works and details on www.valimyers.com

 

  

 CYbA TRYb. Garry Shepherd

Shantaram. Gregory David Roberts

Greg is well known around the Nicholas Building, writing his masterpiece novel Shantaram, here over a number of years in the early 2000's, on the second floor. (Pic right) Greg on the phone (again) in the Nicholas Building Arcade. Picture credit: Garry Shepherd 2004

The movie version of Shantaram is currently in production, staring Johnny Depp. (Pic left) Greg and Johnny in the Nicholas Building. Picture credit: Bill Carter. For more information and details of Gregs lectures, seewww.shantaram.com

Well Theatre. Great Wall Of Books

The Great Wall Of Books is in Federation Square Melbourne from 5 January 2008 to 10 January 2008 - From 2pm until twilight each day. See The Age review

Dario Vacirca (left), artistic director of contemporary arts company WELL Theatre, and creative engineer Alex Ben Mayor in front of The Great Wall of Books at Federation Square yesterday. The installation is five metres tall and 11 metres wide. Photo: Michelle Ferguson

ABC Radio. Documentary 'Nine Floors of Inspiration'

NEWS

ROSS RIVER reflections - pigmentGALLERY

End of Year exhibition / auction - pigmentGALLERY

 

Open Studio - October 2007

Council to consider subsidising Artists Rents

Artists Increase Property Values by 20%

 

September 11 2007 - Garry Shepherd

 

We’ve it done again. Nicholas Building artists have just had a 20% rent increase, due to the increase in market value of the building. Indicating that Nicholas Building artists are good for your financial health.

 

So what can we say? Buy Buy Buy :)

 

 

Council backs bid to keep artists in CBD

September 12 2007 - Garry Shepherd

Clay Lucas of Melbourne’s The Age has today reported of Melbourne City Council’s (MCC) support for artists in the CBD.

It’s very nice to see MCC community services committee chairman David Wilson not only taking an interest in us, but also giving some sort of formal recognition as to the benefit of Artists in the Melbourne CBD.

Thanks David, good to see Council is not just interested in parking tickets, business conventions, sporting events and Art, but the actual CBD Artist.

I am sure I am not alone in suggesting the Nicholas Building Artists would welcome a rent subsidy to enable us to stay in the already established Nicholas Building.

An immediate and much cheaper option than subsidising the refurbishment of an entire building somewhere else and hoping an arts community such as the Nicholas grows. Perhaps an idea for further discussion.

Alternatively if Council was interested in buying or leasing some of our artworks to adorn Council properties at some stage, that too would also go a long way to making our future presence in the CBD viable.

The Age report extract below. See full report.

Council backs bid to keep artists in CBD

Clay Lucas
September 12, 2007

WITHOUT weirdness, without difference, without tolerance, a city will die, wrote American economist Richard Florida in his book The Rise of the Creative Class.

Last night, Melbourne City Council took Florida's advice on the chin and approved the recommendations of a worrying new report, Housing the Arts in the City of Melbourne, commissioned by its arts and culture branch.

The report found that the same Melbourne artists who had been instrumental in bringing life back into the city — with buzzing laneways, boutique shops, small cafes and leading-edge businesses — were now being pushed out by rising rents and residential development.

"Without artists, we are losing the soul of the city," community services committee chairman David Wilson said yesterday. It was crucial the council acted now to stop the exodus, he said.

The Housing the Arts report found that the availability of low-cost studio accommodation was declining steeply in the city centre. If left unprotected, it would force the majority of artists out, the report said…

The Housing the Arts report was prompted last September when a group of artists at Centre House, in Flinders Lane, were evicted after more than a decade in the building. They had to make way for redevelopment. [See Centre House Shutdown]

The release of last night's strategy coincided with a rent hike for artists at one of the city's last remaining artists' centres, the Nicholas Building, in Swanston Street. Artists were told last week that their rents would rise by 20 per cent.

 

Lift Status:Unreliable and at times dangerous to life. 

BANKSY BACKLASH

14 December 2008. - Garry Shepherd

Oh here we go again, the Nicholas just can't help itself but get in the news again, such the drama queen !! Le Grande Madame of Flinders Lane.

About 15 years ago a lot of stencil artwork started appearing around the Lane, mostly by architect and design students. It was due to the sudden public access to the internet, especially at Uni's  and arts colleges around Melbourne.

There were massive libraries of clip art online to download and the downloaded clip art was treasured for it's rarity, exactly like Dj's did with vinyl records, and graphic artists do with fonts.

Because of the monochrome designs, they were easily made into stencils.

You'd just print your photoshopped clipart stencil onto transparent acetate sheet and use an overhead projector to make any scale you wanted on your stencil material. Artschool 101 sort of thing.

You could also print your design on stickers, often with hand colouring to make it more unique. There were stickers everywhere, mostly in secretive nooks and crannies. This was for locals not tourists, this was the underground, we liked the idea of a treasure hunt down alley's etc. It was part of the Lane art community ethos.

It was usually first year VCA or RMIT students who were all excited about everything, they had studio's all around the Lane - great parties too. And all the facilities, layout tables etc to do this easily.

There were plenty of them in the Nicholas, invariably getting thrown out for living in their studio's and practising their stencil art in the passage ways. There were permanent toxic hazes around all their studios. You can still see the dried enamel over-spray covering dust on the old electricity wires in the passageways. A dead give away.

But the Nicholas was only half full in those days, we could leave our doors open knowing nothing would be stolen. It was a friendly open door building, we even had free access to the roof for our afternoon tea in the sunshine.

The roof was our social meeting place for the building. You'd start in the studio with an opening or just weekly drinks and roam up to the roof, chat with others make new friends. Half the building met each other on the roof, we had chairs old jewellers log stumps for tables etc. 10 floors up, you'd look eye ball to eyeball with the gargoyles on the cathedral across the road.  (Pic Below) A brilliant view at night when they're lit up, an urban faerieland, the fruit bats flying over the cathedral from the botanic gardens across the river at dusk into the sunset...ahhh.

We'd always have parties up there, every New Years Eve, stand among the fireworks echoing off the roof tops, while watching 500,000 people cram the streets below.

We were all oldskoolers from the Lane, all good friends and neighbours, about 300 of us living in half a dozen buildings between Swanston and Elizabeth streets, you could even leave the front security door unlocked on buildings at night without fear of intruders, that's how it was then, that's why we liked it.

Then the McArtist hommies arrived and it was battle time.

The stencil work was far more interesting than the ghetto kitsch the McArtists were doing, so it was quickly assimilated into the McArtists work and any pre existing stencil or sticker artwork was wiped out.

There were quite a few battles with these interlopers. Our building safety equipment got trashed, so did the roof, which was then permanently closed with a huge fire door and now an alarm.

We kept our doors closed and locked, the McArtists moved in small packs and were violent, often completely smacked out on heroin, tagging our toilet walls with their blood from used syringes. It was not a happy place around 2000, it was like the drunken violence that fills Melbourne streets every week end now.

I had all my CybaFaerie works destroyed in what later became City Lights off Centre Place, I even had one of my CybaFaerie sculptures stolen ( pic left).

I had to report it missing to the Flinders Lane Police HQ. 'I want to report a missing CybaFaerie' I announced to the desk cop, 'Have you got a picture ?' the desk cop immediately replied without batting an eyelid. I sure did,

I had an A4 poster with 'Have you seen this CybaFaerie' on it. I was about to post it all around the Lane. Well she should be easy to spot he said in all seriousness - Lane cops have brilliant poker faces. He made one phone call to a usual Lane suspect and the sculpture was returned within 5 mins. I hadn't even left the Police Station, I was still filling in statement details and there it was. I was impressed !

We at the Nicholas Building were starting to get a lot of mainstream media coverage at the time, newspaper articles, TV stories, fashion shoots, TV ads and of course our famous open studios.

Hoards of envious glory seekers from interstate started to pour in for McArt 'Bomb fests' of the CBD. And growing legions of backpackers were touring the area.

One of them, Banksy it is rumoured.

Banksy was recently exposed as not being a poor street kid artist as he liked to make out, but an affluent Robin Gunningham 34, from the UK. Just another globe trotting rich-white-boy-playing-ghettos.

Nobody cares if they are rich white boys, but if you try to pretend you're a poor street kid to boost your artwork prices, we call that Fraud in the art world - and in Law courts too.

I lived in my studio on the 7th floor just a few metres around the corner of where the dufflecoat diver appeared in the rear Lane of the Nicholas Building, which is called Cocker Alley.

I'd been there in the same studio for 10 years. The diver stencil was there much earlier than the Banksy visit 2002 (or 2003, dates vary) from my recollection.

In fact I always thought it was done by one of the local stencil artists. There were about 3 very prominent ones, all doing stencils in the same clipart style for years. They were very good. In fact many have suggested that it was the Lane stencil artists from the 1990's that inspired the young Banksy and prompted his visit from the other side of the world. 

It was only when Banksy hit the headlines a few years back making big bucks from his work, did the whole attribution of the diver stencil on the Nicholas Building appear, along with a rightfully placed question mark.

In Flinders Lane art culture, if the question mark is left unchallenged (ie sprayed over or amended), it means there is a majority agreeing with the doubt of the work being attributed to Banksy.

If left unchallenged for years, a very rare occurrence where full works usually disappear within a week, then the doubt is deemed proved.

Nobody has come forward to strike out the doubt, or provide verifiable proof that Banksy ever did it or was even in Australia at the time !

Not even those who made the Banksy claim in the first place. You'd expect them to be the first with proof, to back up their claims. But no, not a peep.

Thus after years of silence waiting for proof, even from Banksy himself, the work has been shown to be a Banksy fake, and street justice has been executed. That is the way of Flinders Lane art culture.

I'd suspect it was the original Lane stencil artist who has destroyed their work, rather than have it wrongfully attributed to Banksy, and fair enough too. Why should some rich kid from England profit at a Lane artists expense ?

Frauds are not tolerated in the Lane, and people who rip-off Lane artists are driven from the CBD. So bye bye Banksy, I doubt you ever did this work, but I don't doubt you are happy to exploit Lane artists for your own greed.

So here's today's front page article online of The Age

"The painter painted: Melbourne loses its treasured Banksy"

Clearly not 'treasured' by everyone.

You can see the question mark over the original (right side of pic), questioning the claim that this is done by Banksy, it appeared as soon as the claims did.

On the left what The Age describes as 'vandals' destroying the street art.

I'd first take offence at such a term. They clearly have no understanding of Flinders Lane Art culture.

That silver paint or 'Chrome' as it is usually called, is a sign of judgment by the Lane street art community.  The chrome drips are like blood drips signifying a wound, and the tag is the verdict of the judge.

This is street justice in the Lane. It's Judge Dredd country. It's public art, everyone is a legitimate critic and judge, everyone is THE LAW!  as Stallone's Judge Dredd would snarl.

Maybe the Lane has a little bit of bite left in it yet ?

 

Cocker Alley Rats

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