Arty Graffarti

It’s not everyday that a show opens in Melbourne based around typography, calligraphy and graffiti lettering, but when an artist like Shoe rolls into town, who’s really gonna turn that down? With a show consisting of minimal colour and imagery, it was packed to the brim full of style, substance and originality, with a nod to the history of fonts to boot.

Walking into this show, I at first felt that it was a little bare bones, but its not, theres plenty to see across the walls and it all ties into the overall feeling across the work. It is bare bones, but its all about the skill and perfection in the lettering, theres no bang and whistles in this show. Each brush stroke is produced with the intention it was made for, this is some seriously amazing work and it was a lot better then I even imagined it would be. There’s really something to be said these days that isn’t machine made that still holds a hint of perfection in it, walking through this show, it just incredible to think that this has all been drawn by hand from a person, it is very clear that practise [with skill and dedication] makes perfect.

I may be reaching far out with this, but with a movie like The Artist just hitting our screens, an ode to the silent film era in Hollywood, I can’t help but see the same connection with this show and typography in general. While this isn’t exactly a direct nod to old typography, it is clear that there is clearly an influence amongst all this great work and Shoe himself has added his own twist to it. There are a lot of artists, designers, tattooist and even graffiti writers that could relate and respect this, literally creating work like this from your hands is an amazing thing to be able to do and should really be respected. As I said before, its not everyday you see a show based just around a particular hand style, its bare, minimal, black, white and it’s as fresh as it is old and I’m hoping to see more of it now that its hit town on this scale.

If you’ve got some cash in your wallet you can grab yourself one of these prints by DangerFork too, they were a lot larger then I expected and they look simply dope! Not too bad for $120 [unframed] really, they are pretty damn big.

My apologise for being so late with this review, I’ve just started school and shit has just been crazy busy and I like to have a crack with the gallery shows [as you may know]. But cudo’s to Neils Meulman and Rtist for a solid show of work. This one runs ’til the 12th of February, which is this weekend, so get in quick! It’s gonna be a big one for Rtist this year and you shouldn’t miss a thing!

Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman

Rtist Gallery

[Their website is finally live and its pretty damn solid too!]