#section8melbourne

Tucked away in the alleyways of Melbourne, Australia—at the corner of Tattersalls and Stevenson Lanes—hipsters gather at the iconic outdoor Section8 bar (partly set in a converted shipping container) to sit on wooden palettes and listen to music while being watched over by an eclectic mix of graffiti and street art. Most visible among those to bar patrons is this fabulous 2014 work by Conrad Bizjak, aka Rad. Labeled by Melbourne street art reporter Toby Fairbank of @allthoseshapes as a combination of graffiti artist, fine artists, and surrealist Fairbank calls Rad’s results a blurring of dreamscapes and possibilities “creating the fantabulous strange and wonderful with charcoal smears, oil dabs and aerosol precision.”  @conrad_bizjak  @section8melbourne

A year after Matt Adnate’s photorealistic portrait work started to make a splash on the streets of Melbourne he joined forces with fellow Melbourne artist Mik Shida to create this 2012 work in Stevenson Lane. Adnate’s large-scale work—made all the more impressive for being painted completely without any scaling or outlining—is now mostly commissioned, but he says this wall was completely self-funded. As a result the pair had a two-day deadline for completing the work so they painted in shifts, with Adnate painting the figure during the day and Shida—who started painting on the streets as a young teen—adding the beautifully contrasting graphic embellishment mostly at night. The finished work towers over popular Melbourne laneway bar, Section 8.  @adnate  @mik_shida  @section8melbourne