14 September 2022 to 14 February 2023
Invader uses grids of tiles to represent pixels, connecting streets with screens and digital culture. Two decades later, many of Invader's works are still intact, providing a window into the street art of the era. This exhibition explores the impact of Invader's visit, his surviving works and the broader motif of the grid in Melbourne's graffiti and street art.
Melbourne's colonial grid was pegged out by surveyor Robert Hoddle in 1837, the same year fellow Londoner Charles Babbage designed the first computer. Both the colonial imaginary and digital culture depend on the abstract space of the grid, reducing the world to binary codes or expanding it infinitely. The works of Invader and the modest sculptures of early street art can help us get "off the grid", making evident the combination of colonial logic and digital systems that shape the present city.
Bio
Lachlan MacDowall is a writer, photographer and curator who has published widely on cultural history and digital cultures, including graffiti and street art. His recent books include Instafame: Graffiti and Street Art in the Instagram Era (2019) and, with Kylie Budge, Art After Instagram: Art Spaces, Audiences, Aesthetics (2022). He is currently an Associate Professor and Director of the MIECAT Institute in Melbourne and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.