Outrageous art hits East Melbourne

A hotel manager has staged an art happening at her normally quiet East Melbourne apartment block to honour one of her guests, an outrageous painter who used to live on the streets.

The story of the friendship between Jenny Kerr and Painta Painter is an amusing tale of two creative personalities hitting it off.

The result was an artistic extravaganza over three levels on a Sunday afternoon in April.

Homeless people have had a rags to riches story during the lockdown when the government housed them in hotels but then turfed them out again when the health risks had dropped.

“I had 18 rooms for the homeless here,” Jenny said, who has managed the refurbished 1960s block as a hotel for 17 years. “It was very challenging.” Now there is only one of those guests left, the artistic and popular Miss Painter, who has a vast following on Instagram.

“She’s staying here until she finds something better and safe,” Jenny said.

Jenny befriended her guest when she discovered her artistic talent and was drawn to encourage it.

“When she first came in March or April she stood out,” Jenny said. “Her face had sores. She was in a bad way.”

“She used to go to Hosier Lane every day before COVID got bad. She came back one day and showed me what she could do.”

“’I’ve got plenty of canvasses’, I said. Because there were no cars or paying guests I put up a big sheet on the back wall and said you can do it there.”

Her painting style was a bit on the wild side. Painta uses a drop sheet, sprays and dances to the beat of music.

“I don’t really like using painting brushes,” Painta told Inner City News. “Some [paint] ends up on the canvasses, the rest elsewhere. The office was blue, Jenny was blue.”

Birches Apartments is a moderne brick place and the abstract works of swirls and drips work well against the architecture, creating the right kind of freeform accompaniments to the era.

East Melbourne locals approved and were at a reception in the car park complete with bubbles and hors d’oeuvres, along with street artist mates of Painta. Most of the works had red stickers.

Miss Painter (her real name) goes by her Instagram name of Painta. She is well-known in welfare circles such as the Living Room and her supporters were there to see the show.

“It’s all a bit much,” Painta told Inner City News as visitors traipsed through the apartment block. “I’m enjoying it. It’s somewhere safe to be.”

She said she was assaulted before moving into the apartment and that the show was never really a thing. “It just evolved.”

Painta is known for her colour, joy and inappropriate language.

“One of my painting’s a dick,” she said. “Jenny wants to hang it in a room. Will we call it a fertility suite?” •