THE GHOST PROJECT: GHOSTEYES

PEACH GHOSTY. NORTH STEYNE SURF CLUB MANLY. 1AM

Hello again everyone!

I think it may have been 6 months since my last post. My god. I have wanted so much to write again because so many HUGE things have been happening but I guess it’s okay to leave massive stretches between writing when you only have a three person readership, (Hey dad!)

For longer than that though, the Ghosts have been waiting patiently for an introduction. I always feel as though I teeter right on the edge of wanting to talk about my work but on the other side of that line is how much satisfaction I get from leaving it shrouded in mystery. And technically, Street Art should remain mysterious because, it’s not really allowed.

Happily it was actually one of my classes which got me thinking again about telling the stories behind the Ghosts, (Currently studying Design at Billy Blue College of Design in Sydney). We were learning about one of the little spoken about but key ingredients of what makes excellent design. The final key ingredient to some of the biggest moments and movements in design history:

Rebelliousness.

Designers which have influenced the fabric of how we live today, found solutions and are involved in creation which came to life outside the parameters of the known. They found unique angles and solutions and to hell with everyone who laughed, (and they did laugh). The more I think about the designers, artists and people who I admire in my life, they all have a deep fast running core of rebelliousness in some way. They have stepped outside what is ‘normal’ and accepted in order to live by the musings and direction of their own inner flow. They break the rules. There is nothing sexier than that.

So after a nice class of steaming hot delicious validation that ‘Rebels are Excellent Humans’ (yess) I decided to re-open the Ghost files because jokes aside, rebelliousness really is what makes a designer great. It’s the secret sauce and yes you have to have all the building blocks, (bun, patty, tomato etc) but it’s the sauce which brings everything together.

I think three paragraphs of justification is enough to be going on with so, here we go.

I told you guys a little bit about my midnight wanderings around the Northern Beaches in my first post, finding abandoned night spaces and capturing their mysterious gorgeousness under harsh street lighting. I was trying to preserve the hard beauty of those dark shadow infested places that is so obvious to me but barely noticed by most.

They seemed to me to be moments out of time. Busy streets were now totally abandoned and never had the old adage of the tree falling in the woods seem more relevant; If I was not here to witness this still beauty, those shadows, the texture of that road under lights, did it really exist? I felt like a ghost, a silent lone witness as transparent as the quiet beauty of these places, only to fade away without anyone to know what had been seen and felt under cover of darkness.

And so, GHOSTEYES was born. I wanted to leave a mark so that these things WERE noticed, that forced you to look at these private expressions of beauty simply because, they were worth noticing.

As you know the first thing that came were the boxes and I spent a couple of years hijacking the nondescript mail storage boxes scattered around empty residential streets in the early hours of the morning and spray painting them bright candy colours.

Those heady days. This project was EXTREMELY fun I am not going to lie, but also pretty risky. And each one took me hours and after about 50 boxes or so I started to look for new targets.

Throughout my nighttime photography sessions I came across so many gorgeous walls that were illuminated to accidental perfection. Like the boxes I wanted to bring awareness to these mysterious and dark places, heavy with shadow and lines that only the ghosts were witnessing. Luckily all those months exploring with my camera meant I had already done my due diligence and scoped out the best walls to launch the second phase of the GHOSTEYES project and bring the ghosts to life, so to speak.

The ghosts are shapes which I designed and cut with a CNC router from 30mm Birch Ply, sanded, painted, sealed and stuck to my absolute favourite and darkly beautiful spaces around the Northern Beaches. Walls were also chosen depending on the lighting already in-situ and how that lighting could best be used to my advantage. I discovered that if the lighting and placements of the Ghosts were perfect, I could make it seem like the Ghosts were materialising through the walls into your awareness.

Because they were all friendly ghosts I gave them all some sweet 80’s Party-Shirt details to let everyone know they were chill, and pretty soon, they were ready to stick.

And stick I did

CURL CURL SURF CLUB. CURL CURL. 10PM

CURL CURL

FRESHWATER TOILET BLOCK. FRESHWATER 1AM

FRESHWATER

CLOSEUP

MY FRIEND LUCY + GHOSTY. STEYNE HOTEL. MANLY BEACH

QUEENSCLIFF BUS STOP. QUEENSCLIFF.

CROWN ROAD. QUEENSCLIFF. 3AM

NORTH STEYNE SURF CLUB. MANLY

All in all there were around 30 ghosts placed. Because of their 3 Dimensional nature, (And the fact that they were stuck to walls with Industrial Liquid Nails Adhesive) The Ghosts have remained on their walls for quite long periods of time. You can’t simply paint over them and they are extremely difficult to remove, although either a collector or the council certainly found a way…

I get so excited when people interact with the Ghosts. After their removal there was still the shadow of the ghost shape left on the wall and this gave me the idea to respond to their removal with an inverted back with white outline ‘Ghost of a Ghost’, crying pearly tears because he was taken down.

INVERTED ‘GHOST OF A GHOST’ CURL CURL SURF CLUB. CURL CURL. 11PM

Oh the fun we have.

It’s coming up to the second round of ghosts currently being cut and I’m so looking forward to bringing the ghosts back to life again as there is only one left now haunting Crown Street in Manly. The rest have been acquired and hopefully are gracing a mantlepiece or two of a local Beaches resident and not in the bin. Some have even found their way to New Orleans thanks to my EXTREMELY supportive Fiance Chris who stuck one up among some of the most famous street art in the world and it has now become part of the Official ‘New Orleans Street Art Walk’ where they call me the ‘East Coast Ghost’. I’m in the Program and everything.

So what are they all about really. I wish I could give you some long winded academic conceptual essay behind the ghosts but the truth is they’re simply about recognising beauty in unusual places. Culturally we are obsessed with the idea of perfection, so much beauty out there is so manufactured, I mean don’t you just get so sick of obvious beauty sometimes? It’s so, the same. I’ve always been drawn to the darker aspects of beauty, of life. I like things that are just that little bit dissonant, mysterious, that make you want to probe deeper, to know. And I know I can’t be the only one. The Northern Beaches is so bright and pretty and perfect, I like that the ghosts aren’t just trying to reflect that ‘perfect beach lifestyle’ back to the insanely lucky wealthy demographic of people that live here of which I am undoubtedly part. Under all this idyllic perfection there is this huge fear of imperfection, a sort of binding sense of conformity in the Beaches bubble. Maybe this is me instinctively smashing against these constraints but it feels more like the expression that Darkness is beautiful too and that we don’t have to be so afraid of our shadow selves, that they are worth exploring, worth exposing. A good reminder to myself as well that these creative explorations into the shadow world will make me a better designer and keep my rebellious heart keen and sharp.

So there you go, there was an essay in me after all.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey! If you have wondered about the Ghosties I hope this gives you satisfaction. Keep your eye out for the next run.

Grace xx