Street artist Baby Guerrilla discusses her trajectory of an artist from painter to large scale murals, paste-ups and installations. Her influences and early life in Sunshine.

TRANSCRIPTION OF AUDIO

I’m Baby Guerrilla, I work as a visual artist. I'm interested in everything. Art related, mostly, painting, drawing sculpture. I think the idea for life, what I'm doing now was born so early. Like, I went to like a primary school here in Sunshine, you know, it was in the era of hip-hop and boom boxes and stuff like that. And I remember one day I got to primary school and someone in chalk had graffiti the wall and l thought it was like the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. 10 out of 10. I was absolutely on a high from this, this picture on the wall. And it was like of a boom box with music coming out of it in all colours and stuff like that. That just blew me away. I think an idea was kind of born. 

I have a really supportive family. And I also had just like a fantastic art teacher at high school. She was just a lady who just went over and above. She just made the art room, a safe place. It was like, it was a haven from the rest of the school, you know, whatever was going on in your home. She kind of just drummed into me that like don't ever put off your dream, go for it, tomorrow will never come. You blink and 10 years has gone, you know, you really have to go for it. That really resonated with me. I studied at VCA. It was at VCA that l realized that drawing was kind of recognized as an art form in its own. Right. So I always thought a drawing was just something that you sketched under a painting to be painted over. And then there was actually a drawing department there.

I found the drawing part a lot more spontaneous than painting. Cause like paintings would take me months, but the drawings were a little bit quicker and kind of more immediate. I had a studio in the city. I started making little drawings about my everyday environment and I became really interested in collage; experimenting with everyday objects. I just went on a complete roll. So I'd take work time sheets, I'd take parking tickets, any bit of slip of paper that caught my attention, cardboard, fruit boxes, packaging and I'd take it. And then I'd start putting like human figures with it. And I love like the juxtaposition and the different textures and how the art kind of related to your everyday world. I found so much beauty in that, it was really exciting. I would feel my studio walls with a collage.

Being obsessed with textures, the street became the next natural kind of step onto that. And then it was like bricks. What does the drawing look like on wood or brick or what does it look like on a sign? So then I started doing all these little paste ups around the city and in Footscray and a few in Sunshine. Your practice just grows from practicing. So everything led to something else gradually, you know, you kind of up the challenge to yourself and things started to get bigger then instead of just wanting to do a quick slap up somewhere. I started to kind of take more notice of the entire wall and like broadening my vision. It wasn't just about just putting anything anywhere because like in the beginning I was just hitting every wall. I think one of the things I found really stimulating was like the connection with other people because people give you feedback. So it took the work kind of out of the gallery, you know? I guess it's like a songwriter writes a song because to talk to people. So it was like to open a dialogue with people and that was really rewarding. I always thought I was gonna like be a painter and people kind of started commissioning me for, for paste ups and other mural work.

Recently, I just did a sculpture because I'd started with much smaller, like 15 centimetre sculptures on cardboard and wood. I just did like an 11.5 meter one. So the practice has grown with each step forming the next one. I design specifically for a space, you know, there's so many parts that go into like creating a concept for what a work, what the space is being used for? What colour is the wall? Is it a vertical wall? Is it a horizontal wall, colours and shape? So with that particular wall that I just did, that was a vertical wall. Like something really different for me because the building was like curved. So it's putting a sculpture on a curve. So yeah. Heaps of challenges, wind sun rain. That's something that I've been wanting to do for ages. Is that feeling of achievement that like, it's so exciting, I was trying to think, what else, where else can you go with this?

And I think part of the appeal of paste ups and that type of work is like taking drawing into another context and seeing how far you can push it. I find that really exciting. So kind of introducing [street art] to an audience that will have had not much experience of that. I think [about the]corner of the city where people drive past every day, that's filled with power lines and gray offices. There's a sculpture there, you know, something completely different. I think that's kind of cool. People like that. There's some thought put into their everyday environment.  You know, you'll see businesses that just without any care, just putting branding kind of like bombardment. Yeah. Like putting a kind of a loving touch to your everyday environment. I think that's really nice. 

My public art that I do, I try to make it accessible for people. So you're not going like, Oh, what is it? You know, I definitely design much differently in the public sphere than I would like in my own painting sphere. My paintings are often much darker. Yeah. Completely different. I guess a lot of my earlier paste ups were pretty dark too. And I guess I have both streams, but sometimes I deliberately filter out. Like if I know something's going to the public, I think like, nah, okay. I won't, that will depress people. But the studio, you know, painting will always be, you know, a love. I'm also painting walls as well. And painting walls again is different from studio painting. I find it quite challenging because in my studio I'm like every stroke matters kind of thing that you have to do. If you're painting on a large scale, let go of some of the detail and control. So coming from like that fine art background, it's almost like you have to unlearn and just get a lot looser.

I think even when I was at Uni, like I've always, I guess most artists do this naturally. Like you change it up for yourself. I wouldn't be able to just do the same fit for everything. Like you just need that different stimulus. I think I've always pretty much gone between those three; painting, drawing [and] sculpture. Sometimes you'll come to a challenge and you might not have the answer. And then I noticed that you circle back like five years later. And I think that's very much been the case with that last sculpture, like people have asked me about doing a large sculpture for many years as like you find the crack, the answer of how to do that.

Growing up around here Braybrook and Sunshine. There was just no public art [and] there wasn't that many libraries. It's really changed. Now. It's got more resources. There was a bit of a wasteland like big divide, you know, East and West, uh, just not many resources at all. Another kind of thing that made me kind of interact with my surroundings because it's like, there was nothing kind of personal on the walls and anything heritage had no protection. It was pretty much ripped down around here. Camberwell, you'll see, there'll be a public building and people, you know, protest and it will get saved. Here, that hasn't happened. It was just sold off. Yeah. And I think, you know, immigrants and stuff, people just concentrating so hard on, you know, living; that they didn't have time or the resources to take on those things or kind of stand up for their rights.

The first ones were mostly in West Footscray. Cause that's where I was living. I did some in Sunshine as well. Like nowhere was really off limits, but in Sunshine, I did a few. Basically behind the fruit shop, uh, in, in the main street near the corner of Hampshire, I've done some in the laneways there that are pretty old and they were some of my first ones. Very faded, but yet they're both still there. Now the council there is commissioning artists and they've commissioned a beautiful mural, which is also in the same lane way. Like councils to go, you know, like maybe artists, maybe this laneway or this suburb would look good with some more murals or art. And that's good that that's starting to happen. 

The mindset that I was in then. And it was just so strong. It was just, I had to do it like it was such compulsion, you know, not a problem to get up in the middle of the night. You know, set the alarm, have these missions, like nothing was gonna stop me. I think I saw the possibility; there was a point where I went, what would this look like if it was 10 meters instead of one meter? Just finding that opportunity and making it. I didn't care whether it was commissioned or not, that was kind of going to happen. And I think so exciting, you have this idea and you can see the possibility and I just needed to see it for myself. Would it work? 

I got into this whole thing I think, was started up as something more spontaneous and easier than my painting practice. But then I think it's like my nature that I've gotten into it and I take it too fast instead of now just wanting to slap something up and be done with it.

I kind of have made it into this whole elaborate thing of wanting to be perfect. So now it's not, it's not quick because as you learn more, then you can see more of what it could be and you want it to be more perfect. The challenge, what you want to achieve kind of goes up each time you set bigger goals for yourself. If you're not moving or growing, you're kind of stagnating. And I think it's always been like an intellectual challenge. I don't think I could just stay doing that one thing at the one size repetitively as there would be no point.

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