Alien comic anthropologists landing in Oz would soon gravitate to Melbourne, home of the infamous ‘Silent Army’ crew of comic artists, animators, stencillers, sticker-makers, public art-ists and visual inventors. There they would find evidence of much Silent Army shenanigans : glorious public art, numerous official and un-official exhibitions ( see www.theemptyshow.org ), several Big Day Out murals, and of course, central to any art-in-sequence, comic-makin-folk – a whole shebang load of publications : the PURE EVIL series (1-6), endless appearances in other compilations and the forthcoming ‘True Fantasy’ contributor anthology being collated by Michael Fikaris, the ‘Sparks’ compilation being curated by Lachlan Conn, and ‘Trails’ – the first of a hopefully regular series of x-large newsprint size magazines being compiled by Kieran Mangan, who is still welcoming contributions (trails_at_silentarmy.com) of sketches, drawerings, doodles, scraps, drugged out art, visual poems, found art, design, brut art, graffiti etc.

Silent Army books, paintings and live drawings can be witnessed alongside Swedish, German, Polish & Tasmanian artists as part of the 2005 Melbourne Stencil Festival, at the Meat Markets – 42 Courtney St, Nth Melb


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