Peteskibreen's Blog

Chaplin was the master of a lot of things and having taken off from the USA to live in Switzerland based on the USA deciding he was a communist is indicative. My sister watches his brilliant film “The Dictator” every Christmas season while his commentary on art – above – has a poignancy that continues to be debated by capitalist interests while ever it has skin in the game. Graffiti is “the last bastion of freedom of speech” and as art by unpaid and sometimes unknown artists it continues to draw ire from private property owners and government corporations around the world. But it is “making its mark” as the marketting gurus and cultural developers attempt to capture the modality. Making Melbourne’s AC/DC and Hosier Lanes tourist graffiti “street art” meccas has not stopped the tagging and beautifying of Vic Rail infrastructure. I have noticed that Queensland Rail’s rolling stock on our line – Ferny Grove – has improved aesthetics on a daily basis over the past 6 – 12 months. I suspect it is due in part to stretched policing and the development of the new underground rail network, freeing access to train skins by writers late at night. Whatever the cause it feels at times as if we are mildly alive and have more happening in Brisbane than the soul destroying tourist and sport driven pandemic. While a graffiti purist, I celebrate the iteration of graffiti into commissioned art in public spaces. At times it is encouraged and not commissioned with new appreciations growing in the younger generations of renters – and the homeless. 

In Brisbane this Saturday [ February 3, 2024] Cheri Desailly – a Brisbane photographer in the spirit of New York graffiti photographer and documentary maker, Martha Cooper , will be presenting her first major exhibition of photos of 17 Brisbane based muralists/street artists/graffitists. She has asked me to open the exhibition and I feel honoured as there are others, many others who could have been asked, especially my son Randal Breen who ran the Jugglers space from 2002 – 2010 before I took on the director role. Most of these “Grand Artists” are friends of mine who have strong links to Jugglers Art Space. We sold the buidling in 2018 to the YMCA after 16 years of evolving engagement with a range of artists and graffitiists.

Art is a world of beauty, of representation, of mark making. From tatooists to graffitiists to sculptors to designers to painters and film makers, art is what it means to be alive and human. We make marks because we must as South African artist William Kentridge posits. The control of what is art and who can do it and when and where will, it seems, under any level of community control – capitalist or socialist – limit and release good art and bad art. Horrible art is sold out of K-Mark and Cheap Shops while cheap blank canvases in the same shops offer forgiveness to those who pass up the horrible art to take home a canvas and attempt an art career. Loads of ripped canvases at the local dump sometimes show how hard that can be.

People say – “I love murals and street art but I dont like the tags. They’re horrible. ” This kind of commentary is a reflection on a range of values and ideas and concepts where certainty – and predictability – are the main filters. Social media is one platform that has driven these filters but it has always been in the thinking of the community that has an underlying fear of anything from Covid to war. And the growth of children into adults is always going to involve experimentation, uncertainly and unpredictability. We limit those values forcefully to our children’s detriment. One of our values at Jugglers was that we wanted to be a community that allowed experiment, safety, welcome, respect, group decisions and mark making. It did not mean we were feral , rather, we had more of a “wild is fine so long as there is respect.” dynamic.Everyone is happy to applaud – and sometimes commission or buy art from new artists – but turning the blind eye and accepting the human as evolving while being a companion full of integrity – is critical in the making of that artist. There is no value in turning graffiti artists into criminals because of the demand for certainty and predictability in the city. Pushing school leavers who want to be artists into business so that they can supplement their art with their business usually means they never become artists or fulfill the call of their souls. How to live and pay the bills is a key question of course but when art is valued as national sacred policy – as sport is – then how to live will be less of a challenge.

Mark making in the tunnel – 103 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Queensland, Aus.

Work by Sofles -Brisbane based international graffiti writer and Jugglers’ alumnus.

A work by Marc Chagall – Russian Jewish painter. When does the heart and style of any artist become more important, expensive and selected than another? Making good art is essential. Pushing back against exclusion and control is also essential.

“Three Wise Men” Peter Breen Mixed media on canvas, 2008 #1 of Triptych

In beginning my road to making good art - which is a long and tortrous ongoing one – this work was a response to the tunnel at 103 Brunswick Street and the writers and artists who for many years drew and wrote in it almost every afternoon and over the weekend. The title was an obvious send-up on the Christmas story. Who says who is wise and why is it that a determination to make good art can fail when the judges of standards are vested in some elite club? Consensus to be sure is part of the knowing but feeling the call to make marks and selling everthing to make them is greater than the success of a market driven talent fostered by a few. Talent is created with constancy and so is good art. The great cellist Pablo Casals said at 80 when asked why he practised 4-5 hours/day: “Because I think I am making progress.” The artists who can make a quick sale in an age of consumer madness and who are short on hard mark making work contribute to art as comodified, not wondered at. These muralists have become wise as they started off as wise and were given space to make marks. They also made their own marks in spaces at times illegal, at times dangerous, at times instructive. They are feted now while continuing to make better marks and work. Their art is good. They are enriching the culture, expanding our wonder and appreciation, adding to local stories and pushing the boundaries away from the control of the few for the many. Socialists couldn’t be more encouraged.

Peter Breen January 29, 2024.