Over the first weekend of March, the walls, laneways, and buildings of Braddon and Civic will come to life thanks to Surface Festival, Canberra’s first ever celebration of street art.

Running 4 to 6 March, the festival includes over 26 events spanning live mural paintings to workshops and walking tours. Program highlights include a Boogie Down Under block party, the Woden drains time warp outdoor exhibition, and a ‘scoot and screen’ tour involving light projections, music, and e-scooters.

Canberra artist Bohie, who specialises in hand-drawn typography, murals and street art, is among the 35 local and interstate artists participating in the festival.

The Braidwood-based artist told Canberra Daily that Surface will shed light on Canberra’s urban art in a way that’s never happened before.

“Canberra’s got a really amazing individuality to it that is frankly not seen, certainly not on a national scale, because politics has such a loud voice here,” she said.

“Although street art isn’t necessarily going hand in hand with the fine art world of Canberra just yet, it’s really interesting watching the gap close between the two and starting to see the street artists be recognised as fine artists in their own right, which this festival is helping.”

Bohie has had a busy lead up to the festival: alongside painting her own mural in Braddon, she will also run a youth workshop using only recycled materials, and speak on a panel about gender equality in street art.

Having moved back to the region three years ago, Bohie is passionate about highlighting both environmental and gender issues in her work; she also dedicates much of her time to teaching and mentoring emerging female street artists: “which is a lot about giving them a voice and letting them paint whatever they want”.

Giving back to the local community now in the form of both public murals and mentoring, Bohie said growing up surrounded by Canberra’s “incredible youth culture” influenced her heavily.

“I really found my home in Canberra when I started getting involved in skatepark culture, punk music, and all this stuff that was very much happening underneath the surface,” she said.

“That led to ongoing travel and living in other cities to be able to come back and bring it all together here.”

Wiradjuri artist ‘tells local stories’ through art

For local artist and Wiradjuri man, Eddie Longford, Surface offers him an “excellent opportunity” to display his style of art and culture.

For this festival, Longford has been assigned a substantial amount of real estate: he has been creating works on an overpass and on the side of a building in Rabaul Lane, Civic, along with a couple of tunnels in the Parliamentary Triangle.

“I’ve never painted in anything like this,” he said.

Longford’s primary medium is working on canvas in a contemporary Indigenous style that combines traditional and non-traditional techniques and colours.

He retains a similar style to his canvas pieces when working on murals but must alter his methods to accommodate the differences.

“I try to take what I do on canvas and put it into a mural in a simplified form,” he said.

Alongside just the sheer disparity in scale, murals also require the use of different tools and paints.

“It’s similar, but a lot of it’s different,” he said. “It’s a scaled-down version of what you would do on a canvas.

“It’s a much bigger, more commercial kind of process.”

As a Wiradjuri man born and raised in Canberra, Longford makes sure to always acknowledge the local Ngunnawal people in work around town.

“Anything I do throughout Canberra, I always tell stories about the local area and pay tribute to the Ngunnawal people,” he said.

Prior to starting his business and painting full-time five years ago, Longford had always been creating, be it painting or woodburning. He would also work in community roles, either with vulnerable people or in justice, teaching painting classes to inmates.

He has been painting on canvas full time for five years and doing murals for the past four. As well as painting a host of murals on schools across Canberra’s south, he often works as a consultant in education, running sessions for both students and teachers on art, its meaning, and how it can be used to teach children.

Surface Festival is on 4-6 March throughout Canberra; visit surfacefest.com.au for more.

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