“Around 2004 or 2005, the National Gallery of Australia gathered some pieces for the Works On Paper Collection,” explains Oeltjen. “That had been sitting in the collection for a while and now the intention is to exhibit that finally, as well as commissioned some new works to go with the show. It was launched in Canberra last year and it’s been to Brisbane in the meantime – now it’s our turn here in Melbourne.”
Of those 50 artists to exhibit as part of Space Invaders, Oeltjen was also commissioned to produce a work specifically for the collection – something that he was more than happy to contribute after experiencing a relatively quiet period in mid-2000. “I’m displaying just the one – ‘S.I.’,” he states. “It’s a work on paper, obviously, because that’s what they were after, but at the time they contacted me in 2005 to make something, I actually hadn’t been doing a lot of work on paper. I’d just done some paste-ups here and there, but they wanted to see some new works. It’s quite a large piece, I just called it ‘S.I.’ for ‘Space Invaders’, and it’s essentially a whole bunch of stencilled patterns done onto odd pieces of paper which I composed on-site in Canberra for the launch. In size, it’s 1.8 metres tall. I’ve already been to the launch in Canberra so I’ve seen everything that’s getting featured, and I can tell you there is a variety of work. There’s lots of stickers and stencils, there’s also some photographic works and printed stuff, it’s looking great.”
In the sense of street art, Oeltjen claims Space Invaders also marks the end and the beginning of a new era. After experiencing something of a dip in the early 2000s, street art is now starting to pick up again, he claims. “There was a really strong energy buzzing around street art up until about the early 2000s. It was still a very new thing and people were still experimenting heavily, but then it kind of reached a bit of a plateau for a while. The guys who had been practicing it, like the guys who are my peers, started to work more in the art world and they were starting to grow up more and now had adult responsibilities. There was just a period of quiet and at the same time the profile of street art wasn’t becoming much bigger. The work that has been collected for Space Invaders comes from a period of high activity from 2005 up to now. It’s definitely starting to pick up again and I hope it will be inspiration for a new generation of people heading into street art. Hopefully it’s a new chapter.”
As far as inspiration is concerned, Oeltjen cites U.S. artist Barry McGee [aka Twist] and local guys Burn Crew, as well as his friend Twoone. But it was a jaunt across Europe at age 19 that gave Oeltjen first-hand experience in the world of street art, as he recalls. “As a kid I’d always been interested in street art because I grew up skateboarding in Tassie,” he says. “So I’d be buying all these skate magazines and in in the back of them there would always be graf’ photos which I’d stare at almost with a magnifying glass because I was fascinated by it. I never really had access to it in Tassie so I was always traveling to Melbourne and Sydney and also taking lots of pictures. Then when I was 19 years old, I got the chance to travel to Europe so I did that as a solo mission. I went to Germany, Holland, the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic and I got a whole new look at what was going on there. At that time graffiti was really starting to evolve in the mid-to-late-’90s. It had gone from a period of stagnation to a burst of new energy and it really inspired me to get into graphic design too.”
Which is what is primarily keeping Oeltjen busy these days. Among many of his other artistic endeavours, he lists his collaborative project with his wife as well as his involvement in an art group with Twoone as the ones keeping him busy the most.
“I guess it’s not really even graphic design anymore as much as it is web design,” he says. “I do a fine art project with my wife in online print, it’s called Wilkintie. I’m also a part of an art group with Twoone and guys called Bonzine and 054 where we hang out and do graffiti together. I had a kid about a year and a half ago so that’s been taking up some time recently too. Like I said, at one point adult responsibilities come into it as well. I’d say that I’m only just easing back into art now.”
