Blek Le Rat - Godfather of Street Art

Blek The Rat

My young nephew Jake has been a budding artist since he could first hold a crayon in his hand. To support his passion, I started to research Melbourne street artists and discovered a burgeoning scene that was starting to be taken seriously by critics around the world. That was a few years ago and since then the laneways of Melbourne and wildly popular Silo Art trails are proving this genre to be a unique tourism drawcard for our city.

A lot of people credit Banksy as the first popular street artist but my research found a Frenchman who goes by the name Blek Le Rat to be the true original of the species.

Banksy - Balloon Girl

Blek Le Rat's stencil graffiti of black rats in public spaces were as prolific as their namesake around Paris and thus the beginning of street art as a medium to raise social consciousness. His early work was intended to denounce the elitist nature of art in a city like Paris and later works became more politically provocative.

In his early heydays Blek Le Rat said;

“Art is not about making money or selling brands, but about purity of thought and imagery. It should make people think about what is really going on in their lives, in their community, in their world. And the ultimate reaction to art is that it makes people want to upset the status quo and create change.”

It is with that ethos in mind and that C has long had an affinity with visual imagery primarily through the camera lens, we often see and love street art and on this trip we pay homage to this contentious and somewhat underground medium as best we can.