THE RIGHT TO THE SURFACE IS THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
The Urban Visual Dialogues series is going out with a bang for 2025, with a panel on visual governance which includes artists, activists, buffers, academics, and municipal managers.
My project, "Visual governance in the city: rethinking graffiti and public images" won a three-year fellowship awarded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) for research innovation by early career folks.
A photo of me leading a walking tour has recently been featured in University of Melbourne's poster campaign for the Being Human Festival - which is all very meta, given that street posters have been one of my main research subjects in the past few years.
We are resuming our Urban Visual Dialogues event series with two presentations by my collaborators-friends-visiting PhDs, Tom Ward and Cecilia Brazioli. Cecilia and Tom are in Melbourne for 3 months and this is their main public-facing seminar.
Melbourne is full of framed bill posters and is arguably the best poster city in the world. How do these street posters work, how are they regulated? And what contributions do they make to the visual character of the city, alongside graffiti and other signage?
Are you a researcher or practitioner in the public or private sector whose work engages with urban surfaces? We are inviting expressions of interest to attend our 1.5-day workshop in Melbourne, Australia, on 3-4 December 2025.
Join Chris Parkinson and me to play with the surface of MPavilion Parkville on the University of Melbourne's campus. Chris and I have won an artist residency-project grant for our proposal SURFACITY, which will create new surfaces in the pavilion to explore urban character, identity and culture.Â
Three incredible weeks of fieldwork in Kampala, Uganda, for the Urban visual cultures project.
I am thrilled to announce that the Urban Surfaces Research Network has been awarded an Urban Studies Foundation seminar series award for the project ‘Walls speak. Are you listening? A research agenda for urban surfaces’.
SABINA ANDRON 