Know this: the streets are an intersect of stories, and all stories begin somewhere. When a street artist blips the map with their graf’, stencil, sticker, paste-up or wall scrawl, they are tagging a reference point to their own personal story for all to access, including the origins of that story. In theory.
Well, Trevor 6025 is taking the hard work out of uncovering the beginning of many a Perth street artist with his new book, Craigie Tales. In a city where anything north of Warwick Train Station is considered bogan, Trevor 6025 is detailing one of Perth’s most culturally important street art origin myths: The Craigie Walls, a low brow incubator of some of the West Coast’s best.
Gone now, this site – in the postcode of 6025 – began in 1994 through the combined vision of The City of Wanneroo and Craigie Senior High (CSH). Street art crossover success Stormie Mills and Ms Carolyn Kosovich, an art teacher at CSH, galvanised the project into motion with a box of aerosol cans, a new batch of students perpetuating the site’s use for the next 15 years.
The site itself comprised of two tennis court walls, one top, one bottom, totalling 120m of wall canvas, bricks skittering in size and texture. CSH closed in the mid 2000s, soon after demolished, but The Walls remained… until they were finally destroyed in March or May 2009. Their destruction took with them approximately 5, 475 days of graffiti making. That’s a helluva lot of graf’.
Craigie Tales, due for release mid-2011, is Trevor 6025’s attempt to definitively map the cultural impact these Walls had on Perth street art.
What are some of you best memories of the Craigie Walls? My best memories were my early ones of riding up to the walls and seeing a new HK Production or a new piece that could not have been painted anywhere else. Craigie had the right conditions to allow good paintings to happen. Other good memories were learning how to paint there with friends. I still can’t paint (Trevor 6025 is renowned for his auto-photographical paste ups) but Craigie allowed me those moments to fail and succeed.
What did the Walls signify? The walls were a foundation of a relationship between Craigie boys who had nothing else in common besides location and that is what the walls shaped, a relationship.
Why this book, Craigie Tales? The local histories of individuals are always lost and tales and stories become urban myth and folklore. This book is an attempt to record those moments before they are forgotten or erased like the walls themselves. Craigie played a pivotal role both as a government school in formal lessons and an education in a subculture that continues to shape our built environment. Basically a very northern suburb helped develop what Perth graffiti is today and this needs to be recognised.
What can people submit to Craigie Tales? People can submit stories, photos, sketches anything that relates to creating a holistic picture of this site. Everything is considered important, the more information the better, then a unique document can be produced that details those moments and images that existed. I read somewhere ‘To not transmit the experience is a betrayal’… now, you wouldn’t want to betray Craigie, would you?
Secret surprises? I will tell you one thing: 2002-2004 are some good years!
Visit Craigie Tales online or via Facebook to submit, subscribe or peruse the imagery submitted thus far. Edited by Trevor 6025, Craigie Tales and its documentation of The Craigie Walls will be released mid-2011.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
www.craigietales.com.au www.trevor6025.com http://perthstreetart.tumblr.com
