By the late 90’s stenciling was going totally nuts, coinciding with a rising interest in political comment driven by globalization and several years of political conservatism in Australia.

By the time airliners where crashing into the WTC, Melbourne was covered in stencils, and a wild and hectic scene evolved driven by artists like HaHa, Dlux, Sync, Psalm, visiting Swede Sixten, Rone, Vexta, Civil, Azlan, Albo, and Phibs. Prism started up the massive Stencil Revolution website, HaHa and Dlux ran the now defunct but pivotal Early Gallery, and the Empty crew began staging Empty Shows in abandoned warehouses and secret locations.

Everfresh crew have been innovating massive hand drawn paste-ups, sticker wars have come and gone, Ashtek has taken massive fire extinguisher expressionism to the public and Reks,1337, Guz and Lister come down from Brisbane regularly to put cats amongst the pigeons. And Nails, Monkee, Nurok and Reka, all progressing their own new schools of aerosol freehand. Not to forget an insane show by the great Barry McGee in 2004.

So what next?

Well that’s the interesting bit. Culture seems able to absorb and co-opt the street very rapidly, and a lot of the Melbourne scene are now busy on gallery exhibitions, graphics, working for corporate dollars or starting their own varied business. Monkee keeps slack hours at his Rancho Notorious shop, Citylights director Amac is about to open a lofty guerilla salon (strictly by appointment), the City of Melbourne have just announced a zero tolerance policy to graff in time for the Commonwealth Games, and Karl and Jake have published a fine record of the last 5 years: “Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne“.

So as we write the citizens and cops wait nervously to see what new directions the Rats of Melbourne will bring to the walls. We say “bring it on !”.