Where alley meets gallery

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — On a cloudy Saturday afternoon in downtown Melbourne, Bernadette Alibrando leads a group of tourists into an alley that, at first glance, appears to have the usual alley stuff -- dumpsters, backdoors, a little loose garbage rustling in the wind. With her eight tour participants surrounding her, she gives a simple instruction: “Look up.”

Hanging several dozen feet above our heads is a stark white and bending staircase that leads nowhere. This conceptual piece, she explains, can be thought of in many ways. It might make us think about the frustration of climbing the corporate ladder, for example. It also serves another purpose: Its oddly chosen posture reminds us to keep our eyes open, because art is everywhere.

This is more true in Melbourne than in most places. For reasons nobody can fully explain, Melbourne has emerged in recent years as one of the world capitals of street art, a rival to cities such as Berlin and London.

The sheer volume of it is staggering and impossible to miss. The walls, even in and around the city’s central business district, are adorned with spray paintings of playful robots and kung fu fighters, political figures and pop culture icons, cartoonish creatures and pretty ladies.

Jake Smallman, one of the authors of “Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne,” speculates it has something to do with the huge number of dark alleyways, perfect cover for spray painting in the wee hours, that wend through the city center. “There are just as many alleys as main roads in Melbourne,” he said, noting that while the street art started appearing in the 1980s, it has “exploded in the last 10 years.”

Finding the best pieces can be a challenge. Much of it is hidden in remote corners of alleyways. Some of it is lost when other painters spray over someone else’s work. Installations are tucked away in small, unexpected places. This is where Alibrando comes in.

An artist and art consultant, Alibrando spends her days visiting artists’ studios, galleries and new installations. Her twice-weekly walking tours are an insider’s guide to the Melbourne art scene.

Although every tour she conducts is slightly different, much of the day is spent poking through Melbourne’s unnamed buildings and hidden “laneways,” an Australianism for alley, where much of the artwork is on permanent display but can be hard to find.

Just how hidden? On this tour she has to heave her tiny frame against a dumpster in one dirty alleyway to reveal a painting of a diver in an old-fashioned diving suit, a question mark over his head. There, hidden behind a green garbage bin, is one of Melbourne’s most famous street paintings, left there by the enigmatic and world-renowned street artist known as Banksy. Banksy’s work fetches so much money at auction that his spray paintings have elsewhere been chipped or carved out of walls.

To prevent that, the city has covered its remaining Banksy in a sheath of thick plastic to deter thieves or vandals.

Not too long ago, the city had a strained relationship with its street artists and might not have gone to such length to protect any of the art. Painters adopted monikers such as Civilian, Meek and Rone to keep from getting in trouble with local authorities who, for years, looked at Melbourne’s street art as unwanted graffiti.

In recent years, such events as the Melbourne Stencil Festival, which draws artists and visitors from around the world, helped changed some minds.

“It is definitely becoming more popular,” Smallman said. “The city is starting to promote its street art because people are realizing this is part of the culture of Melbourne.”

Where it used to be illegal, the city has designated certain lanes for graffiti and now commissions several large installations in the alleys every year. Most other places it is still illegal, although more property owners and communities are commissioning street artists to paint the exteriors of buildings across town.

Melbourne’s street art challenges conventional notions of art galleries and museums, in part because more and more are run by artists and found in unusual public spaces. Alibrando takes us to see Mailbox 141, one of the city’s tiniest and most charming art “galleries” -- literally a row of mailboxes lighted from inside and displaying very small pieces of contemporary art work.

Alibrando points out a few other artist-run spaces in the streets of Melbourne. One is a pair of panes of glass on a cafe door. Another is a series of display cases in a subway station. The artist-run spaces tend to be little, unwanted nooks, according to Stuart Koop of Arts Victoria, where rent is cheapest.

The best-known of the artist-run spaces is Citylights, a pair of “galleries” co-founded in 1996 by artist Andy Mac. The galleries consist of a series of printed artworks in illuminated boxes that light up two alleyways downtown. More than 400 works have been featured over the years, and the site is one of the most popular cultural destinations in Melbourne.

Alibrando guides her group to Hosier Lane, where a new series has been installed by Ash Nolan, a Melbourne artist whose work is a series of scenes from alleys around town. Underneath the boxes are several sprayed and stenciled paintings by some of Melbourne’s best-known artists, including Phibs and Meggs.

Much of the art is visually arresting. To visitors, it is also an insight into Australia itself, its politics and history, its wit and creativity.

“A lot of this is very here and now,” said Alibrando. “It’s about what is happening in the culture, what is happening in the world.”

Alibrando stops at a new painting, done by a young artist, of a homeless man asleep on a public bench. Stylistically, it is a sophisticated piece, she noted, because it required several large stencils. It also adds a new image to a theme that is played out on the walls: the city’s growing homeless population.

Other issues of the day such as immigration and global warming are also given visual form on the walls in Melbourne.

Politics, in fact, is a huge theme in Melbourne’s street art. Smallman added the war in Iraq, and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s close relationship with President Bush, made him a target for street painters.

Alibrando takes us to another laneway, where a gigantic chandelier that lights up at night, created by a trio of local artists, is wedged sideways between two buildings. It is meant to represent the extreme wealth of Australia’s gold rush of the 1850s, which lured many to Melbourne in the first place.

Just as much attention is paid, however, to Australian pop culture. The huge number of sports figures -- cricket, football and rugby players -- speaks to Australia’s obsession with sports.

We stop at the studio of one of the most prolific and well-regarded of Melbourne’s stencil artists, Regan Tamanui, who paints in the street under the name of Haha. The soft-spoken New Zealander with a growing international reputation is responsible for painting bright portraits of Australian antiheroes.

Tamanui learned his craft in the streets and, like many Melbourne street painters, has successfully transitioned to showing his art in more commercial venues. His work has been exhibited in galleries around Australia, New Zealand and in the United States. The National Gallery of Australia, among other large collections, owns several Tamanui originals.

When Alibrando leads us into his studio, he is preparing for a gallery show in Auckland, and the group gets a small preview of what he will show. Among the works is an oversized painting of the tattooed face of Tame Iti, New Zealand’s best-known campaigner for Maori rights.

Tamanui is respected, she explains, partly because so much work is behind those images. Though he used a mere 12 stencils to create the desired layers of shading and color for that portrait, Tamanui often has to make more than 40 stencils for each painting.

Alibrando sweeps us off to Fitzroy, a short tram ride, to stop in at two more traditional gallery spaces and to visit one final mural.

Our eyes fully sated, Alibrando declares it is time to fill our bellies. She takes us to a little restaurant where the group chats about the day over cheese and crackers, water and wine.

It is another of her little hidden spots, tucked away in an alley in downtown Melbourne, hidden from view from the surrounding streets.

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If you go

THE BEST WAY

From LAX, United and Qantas offer nonstop service to Melbourne. Air New Zealand and Qantas offer connecting service (change of planes). Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,718.

TOUR GUIDE

Walk to Art tours by Bernadette Alibrando are offered at 1:45 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. The fee per person is about $70. For info: 011-61-3-8415-0449 or www.walktoart.com.au. Her e-mail is info@walktoart .com.au.

latimes.com/melbourne

Around every corner

Go online for more photos of street art in Melbourne.