A local witnessed this burglary next to the Hopetoun in Surry Hills.

Alex Wain spotted it yesterday (see more of his gorgeous photos here).

What better way to start Jan 1st 2011, than with some photos from my ‘hood.

Even photographed a burglary taking place.

It’s not often we get such witty street art in the neighbourhood at the moment. Anyone know who’s responsible?

I know, it sounds unlikely. But Turkish artist Ahmet Ogut is in town, and he wanted to give a running lecture.

So we arrived at Artspace in Woolloomooloo, strapped on running shoes, and left along Cowper Wharf Road. Reuben Keehan, curator at Artspace, took photos.

Cutting through the back streets, we stopped at corners along the way – little holes in the urban fabric, pot plants, framed pictures on the wall – basically anywhere Ahmet could stash away an A4 print of his work.

Here’s one that’s in the show. It’s a 2005 work called ‘Somebody Else’s Car’ (picture from Ahmet’s website) – a series of 20 slides showing the artist sticking yellow panels and a little ‘Taksi’ box to the roof, turning the random car into an Istanbul taxi.

As we ran along the streets, Ahmet ferreted these plastic sleeved A4 prints out from wherever he’d hidden them, and explained the work, told stories, got laughs.

Ahmet’s work is really preoccupied with the moment between the person seeing the art and the art itself. He’s done things like cover the floor of a gallery with asphalt. Or this work, part culture jammer, part wonderful whimsy.

It’s a 2009 piece called ‘This area is under 23 hour video and audio surveillance’.

Okay, doing a lecture while running isn’t for everyone. And it does feel like an extension of what Ahmet does as an artist. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a particularly not-dull way of doing an artist lecture.

This instant gallery is a long way from Dubbo, that’s for sure. It’s under the Burton Street bridge on Barcom Avenue, Darlinghurst.

That’s just one piece of paper fixed on the wall. But there are plenty more, fixed to the walls with fat slathers of glue. The DIY gallery runs on the walls on both sides of the avenue. Lots of names checked, and plenty of different styles.

Lots of collages. Mostly printed on paper. But otherwise, not much in common.

It seems like the work of a bunch of artists, maybe an art class?

[UPDATE June 7, 2010]
Turns out it *is* a group of artists, thanks to Hamish in the comments below. It’s a crew called International Noise – some of their work points to a site at internationalnoise.org, but there’s nothing there. You can find out more at Valentina Schulte’s website, she’s a member of the group. Apparently it’s a Sydney based artist run initiative with local and international artists collaborating using guerilla tactics to do art on the streets.

Another temporary art thing appeared at Taylor Square recently.

We caught it mid-construction, but the final results are spectacular. It’s Dale Miles’ work, Underworld.

I love that this terrific beast is arising from the dingy downstairs toilet at Taylor Square. A real underworld.

These weird geometric objects appeared behind a fence on Taylor Square last night.

I walked by on Friday morning, as council workers tore plants out of their planters and pots, and tossed them into the back of their trucks.

They plant those flowers, take them out, plant them, erect new planters, take them away, without any real connection to what’s going on with the plants – they seem pretty healthy. Still, those planters have been strange from the moment they appeared.

I walked past later, at about midnight, and a fence had been erected around the Taylor Square public toilet. I peeked over the top, and this is what I saw.

I’m pretty sure it’s Dale Miles’s Underworld (the latest in the Taylor Square Plinth project – we blogged about Louisa Dawson’s work in October). He’s shown widely since graduating from the National Art School several years ago – see more here.

He says it’s a response:

to the mysteriousness of the shape of the space enclosed by the entrance fence and the two descending staircases. It is the mystery of the void inverted, the spider exiting its funnel.

The original idea is this. More pictures to come.

This little bit of alpine art is on the loading dock of a Surry Hills warehouse, just behind the Bourke Street Bakery and around the corner from the Brett Whiteley Studio.

It’s a series of craggy mountain tops, set in pink – each mountain seems to have a letter, but I can’t make sense of it – it’s out the back of Gineico Marine‘s Devonshire Street warehouse, on Esther Street and Esther Lane.

There are quite a few other bits of street art on the block – see local blog Acid Midget for more. Little stencil galleries like this are tucked away across Darlinghurst and Surry Hills, I wonder whether the work tends to cluster because of a lack of monitoring, support from residents and local businesses, or just that once one person’s done a stencil at a spot, others want to join them.

Walking through Taylor Square today at lunchtime, several council workers were hard at it laying some bitumen next to the old loos on the northern side of Oxford Street.

I asked one of the guys what it was they were working on. He told me it was for a “temporary art thing”.

Intriguing. Watch this space.

It’s been a busy week for the guerrilla knitters in Kings Cross.

Three days ago, we caught their yarn going up in Fitzroy Gardens, but they’ve been working around the clock with a crane and a giant ladder, and the results are spectacular.

I love the idea of public art, but all too often the stark modernist blocks and balls in our public squares seem more alienating than intriguing. They stand so defiantly, inscrutable.

I Heart Kings Cross is something quite different. Warm, friendly – probably a bit smelly after all the rain – each piece of crochet and cross-stitch is so obviously made by someone.

It’s glorious and wonderful.

A pair of eyes are ogling across at a bikini-clad pole (that’s at the pedestrian crossing where Darlinghurst Road becomes Macleay Street), and, as if to underscore the knitters’ take on public art, they’ve wrapped one of the discs in Dennis Wolanski’s Angled Wheels of Fortune in a relaxed, loose weave – “Chill out, ’80s sculptor.”

The police station has been drafted, too, and the entire spectacle now stretches a little further down Macleay Street and up Darlinghurst Road, though the focus remains on Fitzroy Gardens.

This is one of the most unexpectedly glorious things I’ve seen in ages. Walk by, if you can.

Brisbane via NYC artist Anthony Lister breezed through town a little while ago.

He left this face on a Little Oxford Street wall, near Ching-a-Lings.

Artists are trying all sorts of techniques to get by right now. The occupants of a top floor terrace on the corner of Forbes and Burton Streets, Darlinghurst, have paintings in the windows with a sign saying they are for sale.

Then these appeared.

Norman Pentzien, who’s based at 3 Darlinghurst Road, according to this, plastered poles around the neighbourhood this week.

If you need artwork on your wall, truck, clothes, or anywhere, small, big. Call me: 0406075108. Norman, I am experienced with any kind of architecture.

He’s on Facebook, and according to his Myspace page, on the road – Berlin, Goa, Sydney?