As we keep building our street art maps, we are finding that the number of unknown artist posts is creeping up not only in our city but in general across the platform.
With regards to our Melbourne map, we’ve opted to use ‘Unknown - Melbourne’ in the artist field. This way, we can quickly pull up a list when we need to update the record. We’ve come to learn our city’s artists quite well and after trying to consult with the wider local street art community, we still have a growing catalogue of unknows. There has to be somebody out there who can help crack some of these ‘cold cases’. Perhaps the artists in question were visiting from overseas and a SAC member from another country may be able to recognise them and help us out.
Could we potentially have a collaboration channel here to help reduce the unknowns across the platform? For the ones that we did eventually manage to solve for Melbourne, it was quite an enjoyable and educational experience in the end!
This is what our unknowns look like:
Please let us know if you can identify any of the artist.
I like the name you gave them; ‘cold cases’. Sounds very familiar tho, and great to see you reach out for help on the matter. Just wondering if some of them can be tracked down by asking the owner of the store/building/cafe?
Indeed a difficult piece! I’ve been trying to have a look at the Amsterdam Cafe mural for a bit. I try to look at artists who have a similar style or have done something nearby (Callum Preston, Hugues Sineux and Roger Anderson) but no dice.
Plus I’ve also had my fair share of asking owners/staff who painted such murals and getting not-serious answers such as their sister or themselves saying they did (when you can see the artist’s signature, sometimes I like to ask even when I have seen them to hear their response).
I often find when documenting artworks in another city, I see their post of an artwork I previously marked as Unknown and it’s a great lightbulb moment! Documenting Canberra has helped me fill the artist entry in a few Sydney artworks. I’ll have a go looking for the others soon!
Neda I like your determination of using “Unknown - Melbourne”. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Maybe opening a uniqie categorie on the forum here would help?
And it’s true if you finally find the artist’s name after weeks/ months: years of searching. Quite satisfactory, not.
Hi Neda, Excellent post. It really is so annoying to not be able to identify artists of walls. When I was hunting for Montpellier and Lisbon I made a rule to myself to not list these artworks but for sure this is a pity because some of them are really good. I had a look at your unknox list and for one of them I thought of Waroox, it’s really a similar style, but he usually signs his work and I’m not sure he ahs ever been to Australia. I’ll keep thinking about it!
On thing you could also do is share it on your story and ask other hunters to share it on theirs. I know that a lot of artists follow hunters on Insta and maybe they would be able to recognize their work or identify it for us.
Thanks for having a look into our cold cases! Hearing about other hunters experiencing the same challenges puts it in perspective. Well crack those puzzles, just a matter of time!
It really was!
One of our most enjoyable solves for me was a Charles Bukowski roller door art in the CBD.
Both of us had it tagged unknown for like 6 years!
Hello, our unofficial Melbourne hunter!
Glad to see you join the discussion. Thanks for having a look at the cold cases and having a go at cracking the puzzles.
We did share the list with the local hunting Instagram group but nobody knew… so thought to try here, on SAC.
@Virusfreak79
All Unknown artists will be placed together with their work on a place, page or tab to be visited.
When someone feels like it and has time, he/she can pick out works that you might recognize by the style or the signature.
Even though there are not many that are going to be found, it is still that…
