The first official Wall to Wall event of 2020 took place at Benalla Art Gallery Friday night with the Sofles: Compendium launch.
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The exhibition is a retrospective of nearly two-decades of work from one of the most watched contemporary street artists of his generation.
From initial sketches to fully realised artwork, illegal tags to sponsored commissions; the exhibition showcases the life and art of internationally acclaimed artist, Sofles.
The Ensign caught a sneak-peak Friday afternoon and had a chat with Russell Henn, or Sofles as he is better known.
“I'm really excited about this exhibition,” Sofles said.
“It's showcasing a lot of my new work, but also referencing a lot of the graffiti and street-art that I’ve done over the last 20 years.
“So it goes through from the start of my career, with some old sketch books and some initial designs and concepts, and shows how I build some of my ideas.
“The wall to your left as you enter the gallery encompasses little snapshots and highlights of different things over that 20-year period.
“And the wall at the rear of the gallery shows a lot of my work from early pieces I did in about 2005 to ones I've painted this year.
“There's also video work, which plays archive of me getting up to some mischief.
“And it shows some of the professional projects I've worked on as well as some of my bigger projects.”
Sofles said this was the first Benalla Art Gallery exhibition he had been asked to be a part of.
“Obviously it’s a totally different environment from what I am doing most of the time,” Sofles said.
“It’s clean and everything has to be taped and done a lot more neatly.
“But then there's also some benefits in terms of having a space where you're in control of everything.
“I don’t have to worry about the weather in here or the sun beaming down, or stuff like that.
“I think it's good to see that people are very accepting of different types of art.
“This is art you don't see every day inside a gallery, and a pretty powerful art form, it’s got a lot of energy and a lot of people around the world put a lot of effort into it.”
The exhibition took about 10 days for Sofles to paint and construct, and he hopes it might inspire the next generation of street artists.
It represents the latest step in a career that was born out of expressive, but often illegal art.
“It’s been a long journey for me and there's definitely no strict rules as to how you become a professional street artist,” he said.
“It’s a bit of luck, a bit of skill, and a bit of just being in the right place at the right time.
“So it's a big combination of things.
“I’ve been lucky along the way to meet some of the right people.
“Plus I’ve always been completely obsessed with street art and that's something that has helped me along the way.”
This is Sofles’ second visit to the Wall to Wall festival, having painted the side of Beaurepaires in 2017.
Benalla Art Gallery director Eric Nash said he was excited to host such a well-known street artist.
“We discussed a few ideas with Wall to Wall, but to get Sofles, an amazing artist with a 20-year career, who's done projects all around the world, is great for the gallery and Benalla,” Mr Nash said.
“Exhibits like this, and showcasing different types of artist is vitally important to us as a gallery.
“We should be open and accessible, engaging for the broad population, not just one particular art set.
“And that’s something that we certainly strive to achieve in the diversity of our exhibitions.
“One of the really good elements of this exhibition is an augmented-reality feature.
“With six of the canvas works people will be able to download an app and in viewing those canvasses through the camera on their mobile device they will be able to see Sofles paint those works form start to finish.
“It really gives people that voyeuristic experience of seeing the process of making the art.”
That is done via the Artivive app, which can be downloaded from your app store.
Wall to Wall committee chair Shannon Tharratt said the exhibition was a great way to launch the festival.
“It’s very exciting as the Benalla gallery is such a prominent gallery in Victoria and we like to work with them being such a major art presence in Benalla,” Ms Tharratt said.
“And it's really exciting to see one of our Wall to Wall artists given the opportunity to take part in the festival in a new and unique way.”
Ms Tharratt said the exhibition would also act as a marketing tool whereby people who come by and see it might consider coming back for the Wall to Wall weekend.
“In the build up to the event, this weekend we also put on some street art tours.
“The idea was to give people one last chance to see some of the walls that might be painted over this year.”
The walking tours took place during the weekend and was good practice for Wall to Wall committee member and tour guide, local artist, Zach Blake.
He will be the festival's official tour guide once again this year.
Details of tour times during the festival, and how to book will be released later in the month.
The Sofles: Compendium exhibition is open until April 12.