Emile Zile’s New Ruins is placed a little more ambivalently in the public space contention. Graffiti scrawls from the interior of the City Watch House are recontexualised in blue capital letters on an LED display, the sort usually used to announce street detours and miscellaneous public works, on the front of the Watch House itself. Things like “J 4 H 4 EVA” scroll in the firmest of public service announcement fonts across the grim facade. It’s classic detournment, questioning even its own origins in the debates over graffiti as art, just a tad affecting to boot, and it made me laugh until my obligatory Melbourne coffee came out my nose.

Zile’s work is in 100 points of light, a night-time program of diverse small scale intervention flavoured works in sundry nooks of the streetscape of Melbourne, in a kind of perturbing nocturnal under-layer to the city’s ascendant Shiny Public Art aesthetic. There are about 30 works at peak periods, though a couple fewer if you are checking immediately after the demolitionary weekend crowds.
– Dan Mackinlay, Realtime 73. Sydney, Australia.

New Ruins, Next Wave Festival 2006
Curated by Tai Snaith and Amy Sales