About

Space Invaders

Jaklyn Babington

Space Invaders: Australian Street | Stencils | Posters | Paste-Ups | Zines | Stickers

Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2011

128 pages, 76 colour and 21 other illustrations, 25.0 x 25.0 cm.

ISBN 0642334110

Off the street and into the gallery. This exciting book looks at work from the past five years by some 35 contemporary artists from around Australia. Playful, edgy, clever, satirical and political, street art has significantly altered Australian visual culture over the past decade and has announced the arrival of a new generation of contemporary artists.

Space Invaders engages with these developments and the radically differing aesthetic offshoots of street art, from stencils to paste-ups, stickers, and zines. It also explores the legal and commercial issues particular to street art in Australia, and reveals the strategies artists have used to divide their practice between the street and the gallery.

Available from

The National Gallery of Australia Bookshop
phone: +61 2 6240 6438, fax: +61 2 6240 6628 or email

Distributed in Australia by New South Wales Books
Distributed in The United States of America by University of Washington Press

Table of Contents

• Space invaders by Jaklyn Babington
• Street art: past and present by Roger Butler
• Bypassing the system: zine culture in Australia by Eloise Peace
• Legal/illegal: street art in Australia by Alison Young
• The rise (and fall) of street stencils by Din Heagney
• Interviews: Mint Graff, Misha Hollenbach, Nails
• Director’s word
• NewActon south lift-shaft commission

Subjects

Street art; Art, Australian-21st century;  Australian printmaking; art-21st century