The Chop Shop more than a Small Deal

After months of hard work and overcoming huge unforeseeable obstacles, Canberra's first warehouse bar, The Chop Shop, finally opened it's magical golden doors on the weekend. The bar is the baby of Sancho Murphy of Sancho's Dirty Laundry and Pat Rose of Coy, and it's even more amazing than the completely rad thing you'd expect from two of the most passionate, creative, hard working and inspired people on the Canberra scene.

Sanch and Pat began their collaboration at the end of last year when Pat hosted The Coy launch party, they developed the idea for the arts space early in the year and once they found the empty warehouse (next to the Traders on Lonsdale Street, Braddon) their vision had a home. Together with the help of tens of local artists and creatives in July they ran a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised $17,380 of their $10,000 goal.

Just a few days before their first event, Omar Musa's book launch, they were hit with a stop work notice and all their work was ground to a hault. The very next day the story was in the local media, social media and even the talk of politicians. In a rollercoaster that lasted 42 days the team worked closely with the government to overcome the issues.

Although the path to The Chop has been longer and far more complicated than the team had ever anticipated, the two stuck with it, not just for themselves, but for all the artists they wanted to showcase and support with the bar.

The first event they were about to hold all cosy up in their own warehouse was the debut exhibition of local artist James Smalls "I'm kind of a Small Deal". The exhibition was held Friday, the night before their actual launch party; which saw those lucky enough to get a ticket, party hard with some of the best acts in Canberra as well as Koolism's, Hau Latukefu getting on the mic with Suavess and Hayds.

During the exhibition, Smalls showed a range of works, including street art, prints, spray, paint, stencils, sculpture, line work, and on canvas, skateboards, and some kind of magical hybrid of spray cans and toy guns. Smalls work showed his range of talent, far greater than what's you usually stumble across on the street.



Keep up to date with The Chop Shop on their Facebook or Blog

The Chop Shop Kickstarter

Unbelievably rad things are happening in Canberra!

Introducing, THE CHOP SHOP.

Sancho Murphy from the Dirty Laundry and Pat Rose from Coy are uniting forces to create a home for Canberra’s street culture unlike anything ever attempted before! Taking an abandoned warehouse in the heart of Braddon and turning it into an space made for street artists, musicians, skaters, creatives, designers and all manner of cool people! And they’re doing it all to support the artists, not themselves! So how about you show your support and chuck some pennies to their Kickstarter, it’s a very reachable goal and all contributions come with a treat; one of a kind skate boards, limited edition shirts, tickets, stickers, parties and more! Get Kicking Canberra!

Teaser Post Before all the Goodies

Last week I attended a private paint sesh featuring some of Canberra's best street artists. I can't yet reveal what we were all up to, but I thought I'd give you a little teaser in the mean time. Just believe me when I tell you; something great is coming to Canberra.

Oh oh ohhh, there's so much more to come! Keep posted baby~

The Coy House

Canberra's freshest clothing brand Coy dropped one of the most memorable house parties for their brand's launch at the end of last year. Decked out with live painting, free booze and sweet tunes throughout the night it was an impressive event pulled off by the brand's creator, Pat Rose.

The venue was the Coy House, a once ordinary little house in Lyneham with lush (read: overgrown) gardens and a spacious deck. The party kicked off a warm Summer afternoon, with sunshine flooding the garden; the sideways fridge full of Magners and sangria bathtub went down a treat.

The party featured some of the best street talent Canberra and beyond has to offer; Houl, JRB, King of Nothing, Mr Manok, Sancho, Bugz, Abyss .607, Walrus, Voir, Sprinkles, Wyrm, Goodie, Roskoe, Oh Jessie, Mim, Jess Mess, Alycia and Hams. Each artist had a wall on the inside or outside of the house to do their things to with the help of MTN Australia.

The result was a house with such a diverse range of art (not to mention that amazing party), with spontaneous collaborations happening, it was hard to not become inspired by all the creativity flowing.

Coy is undoubtedly a brand to watch, with a party so huge straight off the bat, there's no signs of slowing down from the brand. Best bet is to grab some fresh, hand screenprinted threads from their website or Sancho's Dirty Laundry when they reopen.

Video produced on the night of the party. Watch it, you won't regret it*.


*Unless perhaps you're prone to seizures.

Ginninderra Underpass

Another one of the 26 legal graffiti sites in Canberra is hidden under Ginninderra Drive. Just a few hundred metres before the turn for Charnwood is quite a spacious underpass, split into two main pathways, the spot features 4 long walls to paint, with the centre wall being broken into three main columns.

  Long enough to feature several decent sized tags along the outer walls. The centre columns feature a couple art pieces; a propaganda style portrait of a boy with an unidentified series of numbers, a bit of a dinosaur not yet entire covered creeping round the corner, and out on his own on the back of a pale pink column with a rusted and beat up trolley at it's base, a chiwawa with a spray can.

 

Sancho's Dirty Laundry

One of the biggest supporters of Canberra's street artists and independent labels is a little store called Sancho's Dirty Laundry. The ridiculously cool lady who's been doing the hard hustle for years to make her dream become a reality is Sancho. We had a chat to Sanch about the store and her experience, before it leaves it's current location of Lonsdale St Traders this Sunday, the 4th of April 2014.

Tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and what you do?

I studied at ANU art school, and just did my basic bachelor’s degree through there; it was actually in the photo media department. I originally wanted to go into the, kind of, drawing and painting, but my Dad was like ‘no, artists can never make a living!’, so he made me do something a bit more commercial. But since then, I kind of graduated, jumped from job to job; at one point was working at a commercial screen printers, I worked at the Mint, in product development. But, I just found that it was really soul destroying in the public service. Like, I had friends who were doing creative things, whether it be tattoo apprenticeships, skaters who got into the art side of things, graffers, and I thought it’d be cool to open up a shop which supports that kind of thing. Also I was doing my own t-shirt label on the side and I just found it so hard to get stocked in retail outlets, unless you were a big established brand. So I used my shop as a testing ground for all those things, and so far it’s going good.

How did the shop get started?

After I left the public service I was pretty much just doing pop-up shops and markets, but I found that it was pretty hit and miss. And also, it’s a different kind of target market I’m going for. So then, just when I was about to go back to the Mint, I was struggling paying my bills, doing the freelancing, a friend pointed me to this competition the Lonsdale St Traders were doing. Pretty much you just had to post your creative business idea onto their page and the one that got the most likes won a week rent-free pop-up. So that was really cool!  And it was nice to see how many people supported the idea, it kind of gave me this warm fuzzy feeling. Cause, you know, if they’re willing to help the pop-up, imagine the support from the Canberra community you’d get for an actual shop! We lucked out in the end, that the shop across was moving out at the end of that week, so I just enquired about that space and pretty much just took a chance; and put all my savings into it! I was a bit freaked out the first few weeks; you’ve really got to focus on the marketing side of things and get your name out and about. But in Canberra, with anything, momentum picks up, through the community support network. So it’s been good!

Why Canberra?

Why Canberra? Um, why am I sticking around here? I’m a creature of habit and familiarity, and I don’t know, I guess. I mean, I was born in Sydney, but spent most of my formative years in Canberra, from Kindergarten upwards. And, Canberra’s pretty unique in that, it’s a cool thing because everyone knows everyone. But that can also be a bad thing, because, everyone knows everyone! But, I tend to focus on the positive side of it, and as well, there’s a lot going on. I think that you kind of have to look for it, like in places like Sydney and Melbourne that’re so dense there’s so much more going on that you can see from the surface point of view, whereas Canberra’s like a fraction of the size. Our biggest pull is universities and public service jobs, so that’s all that people see Canberra as being, but actually there’s a lot going on.

I know you know a lot of artists, but who are some of your favourites?

Um, one of my favourites is… I don’t know, it’s hard ‘cause it’s kind of like when you’re a parent and you don’t want to give a favourite child! But I think the one who’s won my affection the most so far, and one of the hardest working artists is Houl. He originally came from Sydney, and it’s cool to see his presence grow in Canberra. I just think it’s from the sheer volume of works he puts up, but also the quality of it. Like, each one just gets better and better. And there’s no ego with that guy, he’s like the funniest, nicest dude ever.

Then I’d say another artist would be Voir and that’s just because the quality of his work, like he’s just amazing. He’s got like four different styles he jumps from. I think he’s done really well to kind of, teeter that line between graff and street art, and it’s really interesting to watch. And he’s been doing it since he was, I think, 14 years old or something.

Any advice for up and coming street artists?

Ah, I don’t know, I’m not that full of wisdom; I think that I lucked out towards the end, but I’d say perseverance, probably. Because if I stopped doing it before that opportunity at the Traders popped up, if I just gave up on doing markets stalls and trying to do the hustle, I probably never would have gotten on to it. People wouldn’t have referred me to that competition knowing that’s what I wanted to do. So perseverance and a lot of hard work hey?

Entrepreneurs always make things look easy, you know when you read those success story magazines, they make it look like the graph is always ‘onwards and upwards’, but it’s not like that. It’s kind of like ‘you go up, then you probably drop three times as much as you went up, then it goes sideways a bit, and you’ll probably backtrack’, that’s what’s it’s more like. It’s just about hard work and dedication. And, I guess you’ve got to be talented too.

So what’s next for you and the Dirty Laundry?

So we’re closing down on Sunday, the 4^th of May, that’ll be our last day. But that was a decision, because I’ve got a few other projects in the works; think pop-up shops, pop-up galleries, some more kind of street art, graff based events. So that’ll happen the next few months, type thing. But we’re gonna open up the new location! In like, two or three months, just depending on how things go. We’ll become more of a graff shop, a bit of a gallery, more indie tee labels, and independent skate labels.

So while we’re patiently waiting for the Laundry’s reopen who else in Canberra is supporting the local street art scene?

There’s quite a few actually; there’s La De Da Bar of course, I’d say they’re probably one of the first, more active, kind of, cultural, bar type, hubs that do it. With regular painty events and what not. There’s Art Market, that happens, I think, once every 4 or 5 months and that’s really sweet because it promotes the commercialisation. People are always dissing making money from your craft as selling out, but it’s cool to have places like this that perpetuate it, saying ‘hey, you can do creative stuff and you can make a living from it, through this event, be a part of it!’. Honkytonks, they do that Wednesdays at the Wall thing, that’s quite good. BeachBurrito as well, they’ve recently jumped on a few creative events through sponsorship and what not.

There could be more that the galleries do for street, graff, and for the lack of a better word, ‘low-brow art’. Galleries tend to be more geared towards the art side of things and often you require a tertiary education to even have your proposal considered. And, I think it’s cool to have these alternative fringe places supporting others, because there are talented people out there who didn’t go to university.

What are your ultimate goals?

I guess, to enjoy my work through helping people. But it’s kind of already like that through this small space. I’ve met so many creative people, and being able to do that for a living, and being sustainable. Like at the moment it’s still in that start-up phase, so I still have to hustle a lot. And, I guess It’d be cool to be taken more seriously in the arts world, through my shop and the people that I support

Keep up to date with Sancho on Facebook: 

Sancho Designs and Sancho's Dirty Laundry

Curtin Underpasses

A few colourful tagged walls can be found in the underpasses of Curtin. These spots are a part of Canberra's Legal Graffiti sites. The site's feature mostly large tags, with the occasional semi torn paste up, stencil, and a couple characters. One of the pieces is a detailed face done by the iconic Voir.