For the past several weeks, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Kings Way: The Beginnings Of Australian Graffiti, a book about the highly influential and spectacular urban street art community that sprouted from Melbourne’s suburbs. The book went on sale in Australia at the beginning of July and has yet to make it States-side (at least on Amazon.com
First of all, the book is big. The 370 or so pages do a fantastic job of detailing some of the people who were at the very start of the urban art movement in Melbourne. Authors Duro Cubrilo, Martin Harvey, and Karl Stamer outdo just about any other graffiti book I’ve ever picked up with page after page of high-quality color photographs — over 1200 of them in fact — from over 60 photographers who witnessed Melbourne rise to become one of the graffiti capitals of the world.
But Kings Way isn’t just a book about graffiti. It’s also about the cultural influences — like hip-hop music and b-boys and breaking — that helped Melbourne crews and writers thrive in their environment. Graffiti writing and artwork stemmed from these communities and Kings Way doesn’t neglect that important fact in its essays or photographs.
In the end, Kings Way really is just a gorgeous book. If you want the definitive volume on graffiti art in Australia, I suggest that you look no further than Kings Way. It’s all there — the people, the places, the history — and I have no doubt that it’ll help make you feel like you were there to watch it all happen. For those of us in the US, you can pre-order Kings Way: The Beginnings of Australian Graffiti
If you want to see some more beautiful images from the book, click inside!
