Can spray paint spark empathy? We chat to globetrotting street artist Adnate…

Interview and write-up by Meg Mundell.

Down a laneway in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD, Adnate is putting the finishing touches on his latest creation. Stretching eight metres high, it’s an eye-catching portrait of a mother and child. Snuggled together for warmth, they gaze out from the alleyway entrance. Against the bright backdrop, a hopeful message is scrawled in black spray-paint:  

Imagine, by 2030, a Melbourne where no one sleeps on the streets.

Occupying Albion Alley, just off Little Bourke Street, the mural fills an entire wall, bringing a vibrant human presence to this formerly bleak space. The image is amazingly realistic, from the lifelike glow of the child’s skin to the mother’s guarded smile. Pedestrians stop for a closer look, some holding their phones aloft to snap photos.

“With every new artwork, my first goal is just to have a big impact – be as loud as possible in the environment,” says Adnate. Honing his skills in Melbourne’s early graffiti scene, he’s now in high demand as one of the world’s top large-scale mural artists. His hyperreal portraits use vivid colour, high contrast and ambitious scale to capture attention. But beyond surface impressions, there’s always a deeper purpose.

“My work is really about emotions,” says Adnate. “If you can draw people in, get them interested in the artwork, then hopefully they’ll feel a sense of empathy for the subject.”

Months in the planning and six days in the making, this new mural was commissioned by Melbourne Zero, a grassroots movement of people and organisations working to end rough sleeping in Melbourne by 2030. Painting outside in Melbourne’s winter weather has been a chilly reminder of the campaign’s underlying message: that everyone deserves a safe place to call home.

“I want my work to contribute to positive change in society,” says Adnate. “So Melbourne Zero is an awesome project to be part of.” By putting women and children in the frame, he hopes this new artwork will help to put a human face on homelessness statistics. Women over 55 are one of the fastest-growing groups experiencing homelessness in Australia, while domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for both women and children.

Locally, you’ll find Adnate’s spray painted murals dotted all over Melbourne, especially around Fitzroy, his old stomping ground. Further afield, his larger-than-life portraits adorn the walls of cities all over the world, from London, Paris and New York to Guam, India and Singapore.

Not bad for a self-taught artist who struggled to pass high school art.

“I did really badly in visual art at school,” he confesses. “I scored about 25 out of 100 in the Year 12 exam.”

That exam result played on his mind for a decade: “I used to have this recurring nightmare where I was back at school, about to sit the Year 12 art exam,” he recalls. In the dream, he’d already failed the exam once, and the pressure was on. “I had that nightmare for years. It was so stressful!”

Ten years after finishing high school, with his art career in full swing, Adnate got a phone call. It was his old school, inviting him back to give a speech to Year 12 students preparing for their VCE art exam. Delivering a pep talk to the next generation of artists had an unforeseen effect: “After I gave that talk at my old school, the nightmare left me. It just went away! And it never came back.”

Since then, Adnate’s work has made the leap from the street to gallery walls. His portrait of celebrated Yolngu musician Baker Boy (Danzal Baker OAM) won the 2024 Archibald Packing Room Prize, which is judged by the gallery staff who unpack and hang the Archibald Prize entries. Titled Rhythms of Heritage, it’s the latest in an ongoing series of portraits featuring First Nations Australians.

“I grew up in a very white, inner-city population,” says Adnate, who’s part of that demographic himself. “At school we never learned anything about Indigenous culture.” In recent years, he’s set out to remedy that by travelling around Australia, working on public art projects with different Aboriginal communities.

“Building relationships with people, especially Elders, has been a really powerful experience,” he says. His striking urban portraits of Aboriginal children – some locals, others from remote communities – are amongst his best-known works.

“Sometimes the Elders travel into the city to see the murals,” says Adnate. “When they stand in front of the artwork, see kids from their community on the walls of the city, that’s a really special moment.”

Down a laneway in the heart of Melbourne, in a gap between the buildings, Adnate gathers up his spray cans. Where a grey wall once stood, a mother and her child now maintain a watchful presence. While art affects us all in different ways, it always carries an invitation: to feel something, to stop and wonder, to make room for imagination. To imagine, perhaps, a city where everyone has a safe place to call home.

Dr Meg Mundell is a writer and social researcher. Her books include The Trespassers, Black Glass and We Are Here: Stories of Home, Place and Belonging, a collection of stories by writers who’ve experienced homelessness. Meg curates the Big Thinkers series.

Add your voice to the Melbourne Zero campaign - be part of positive change today! We’re making Melbourne a world-leading city in ending homelessness, starting with ending rough sleeping by 2030. melbournezero.org.au