New York artist Keith Haring’s hectic two-week tour of Melbourne in 1984
Some 35 years before a major exhibition bearing his name landed at the NGV, New York artist Keith Haring visited Melbourne for a whirlwind trip. Here’s how he stamped his mark on our city.
Arts
Don't miss out on the headlines from Arts. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Keith Haring may have been inspired by the streets of New York, but he found plenty of creative flow when he visited Melbourne in 1984.
He was only here for two weeks as a guest of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts, but made the most of his time.
NGV senior curator Meg Slater says Haring visited Melbourne at a time when his profile was building in New York but he could still be fairly anonymous here.
He took advantage of that, openly chatting to people on the street and engaging them, especially if they showed interest in his work.
“He completely embraced his time here – he even participated in the Moomba Fashion Festival,” Slater says.
“He had a lot of time for people, particularly children who came and visited the NGV while he was painting his mural on the water wall.
“His language is meant to appeal to everyone, particularly kids and he wanted to make art for everyone. He’d always slow down and answer questions while he was painting.”
During his brief but prolific time in Melbourne, he painted two murals – one on the NGV’s water wall and the other, which still exists, at Collingwood Technical College.
“The NGV water wall was the largest scale he had worked on at that point and it was quite unique because it was also his first painting on glass,” Slater says.
“It was also the first time he had used a cherry picker to paint and he would go on to use that on all of his public murals.
“He painted that mural in two days, which is really incredible, considering he never did any preparation.”
In addition, he created two spray paint panels at the Hardware Club, which he visited frequently during his time here.
They are featured next to a photograph of Grace Jones performing at Paradise Garage nightclub in New York.
Haring’s painted markings are on her skin and it’s one of the most dynamic sections of the NGV’s premiere exhibition of Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Haring also did a painting for the Moomba Fashion Festival of a man surrounded by men wearing bright blue shirts with barking dogs, as well as a mall drawing of a regional school.
When he left Melbourne and visited Sydney, he painted another mural for the Art Gallery of NSW and then found time to attend mardi gras in Sydney.
MORE ARTS NEWS:
WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE IN MELBOURNE IN THE 1980s
MELBOURNE’S MOST ICONIC STREET ART
MELBOURNE THROUGH THE LENS OF AN NYC POP CULTURE LEGEND
Producing copious work was Haring’s way. During the five years he painted in the New York subways, he created more than 10,000 drawings.
“It was in the subways that he developed his visual language and he did up to 30 works a day,” she says.
“But his time in Melbourne was a very creative time for him. He was constantly making work.
“He met a lot of interesting artists, which is testament to the person he was that he made a mural in a fine art gallery but also went to a technical school in Collingwood and made a mural.
“He didn’t belong to a particular category.”
Keith Haring/Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines is at NGV until April 13.