Denham Lane, Surry Hills

Denham Lane is a no hope refuge in a narrow corner of Sydney.

It’s in a quiet residential section of Surry Hills and often empty. The only objects there are stencils, longnecks, half-suckled goonbags and the odd dirty shot glass. All evidence of dead end lives lived in a dead end alley.

This disfigured poem looks like a bible phrase pastiche. It calls with painful urgency to “harvest, teach, intwine (sic), seed, time, learn”. Its incoherence could represent a struggle for unification; a struggle which is failing.

The NT intervention, implemented under the Howard Government, received criticism from indigenous communities for making problems worse.

This stencil could be an attack on the “no alcohol/pornography” signs posted around the NT.

From what I understand, Tjawa is a shortened form of Tjawa Tjawa, an area in the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. It’s anglicised name is Point Moody. It's one of the most isolated desert settlements in Australia and is also a hub of Indigenous art.

 

What do you get when you cross horses and spiders?

Who knows.

At one point we were in the Northern Territory, reading a bible on horseback, trying to escape spiders.

Now we're in a Columbian coke fight.

Shit. Wouldn't want to get blown away now.

This could just be me, but does this stencil look like Ronald Reagan? Not sure why anyone would make a Reagan stencil.

Practice?

Love the bottom-right skull. Love love.

This trail of turtles leads to the end of the lane. They symbolically walk with us as we find a gutter seat, pop open a 40 oz. and piss our pain away.

For more on Denham Ln check out Darlinghurst Nights.