Jugglers is Going Green - A review of the Jugglers/Brewsvegas event by C.Francis
/Last Saturday, Jugglers underwent a significant milestone in the development of becoming a more environmentally conscious space.
As part of the annual Brewsvegas festival, Jugglers facilitated a venue-wide activation of live and large painting to enable some real “badass”, up and coming street artists to continue the dialogue between the genre and participation within the community. Our courtyard and tunnel were transformed throughout the day by the buzzing crowds, live music, good beer and tremendous talent that encompassed the onlookers.
Personally I found the event terrific, as it was a chance to break down the barrier that generally separates artist and audience. This was achieved by spectators being able to witness in real time the transformation of the courtyard and tunnel into lively murals that exposed communal and political commentary of the Australian social climate. Familiar graffiti iconographic tags, the indigenous flag, portraits and even the comical representation of our prime minister’s head propelling out of a jack in the box were represented boisterously. People generally associate graffiti with vandalism which contributes to the lack of voice that street and graph artists receive in comparison to the more familiar and accepted art genres styles. Since the root of the word ‘graffiti’ is ‘to write’, graffiti can be interpreted as an instinctual human need for communication and in relation to the way it is displayed it can potentially tap into mass communication to express issues of cultural frustration, anti-consumerism and individual expression.
Since 1998 the Jugglers community has been inspired to take action around the need to write and continues to address the critical shortage of creative spaces available in Brisbane and to provide a vehicle for cultural inquiry.
Brewsvegas also attempted to advocate a transition and breakthrough into becoming a more environmentally conscious space. Jugglers is happy to announce that we have become a SUGAR only Aerosol space!
Our partnership with Crush City seeks to enforce a shift towards more sustainable arts practices which can be achieved by making our courtyard a SUGAR only aerosol space. This Ironlak initiative is a revolutionary health conscious aerosol formula that has amazing results, as it is the world’s first hybrid water and alcohol based acrylic paint. This innovative technology has led to a unique formulation, which combines water with alcohol made from sugarcane to replace petroleum-based solvents. This therefore rids the use of sprays that contain hydrocarbon or compressed gases that are notorious for being greenhouse gases. Therefore Jugglers is proud to say we are minimizing our carbon footprint!
If you or a friend is interested in doing the same, then you can collect a loyalty card from the Jugglers Gallery and received discounts on SUGAR paint from Crush City!
Claudia Francis is currently working as an intern at Jugglers while completing her Bachelor of Visual Art at Queensland University of Technology.