Melbourne Art Trams return for 2017

Melb Art Trams, Joceline Lee, tram 270Melbourne Festival, Creative Victoria, Public Transport Victoria and Yarra Trams have announced the fifth year of the Melbourne Art Trams project – a public art project that transforms Melbourne’s iconic trams into moving works of art travelling across the city.

This year they are inviting artists to propose a work that is specific to Melbourne’s trams as a site for collective engagement throughout the city.  Streets are theatres of life … the place where individuals and communities come together to celebrate, create, protest, and imagine new histories. Melbourne’s trams carry us through those streets, individuals and communities both ancient and emerging, distinct and inclusive, Victorian and proud, visiting and curious.

2016 brought together a collection of works from Damiano Bertoli, Eddie Botha, Jon Cattapan, Joceline Lee, Mimi Leung, Reko Rennie, emerging artist Eliza Dyball and the re-imagining of the iconic Smith Street Women’s mural by Megan Evans and Eve Glenn.

The project continues the revival and re-imagining of the much loved Transporting Art program which ran from 1978 to 1993 and resulted in 36 painted trams being rolled out across the Melbourne network. Artists such as Howard Arkley, Mirka Mora, Michael Leunig, Elizabeth Gower and Trevor Nichols participated in this program.

Eight trams adorned in eight artworks are to be rolled out onto the Yarra Trams network as part of the visual arts program of the 2017 Melbourne Festival. These include six artworks by professional artists, one artwork by an emerging artist and one community themed tram. Artworks will be generated as digital images which will be output onto adhesive vinyl and applied to the trams.

For more information and application process, visit: www.festival.melbourne for details. Submissions close 22 May 2017.

Image: Joceline Lee, tram 270 – courtesy of Melbourne Festival