Wall Flowers: A Collection Of Australian Graffiti - Bruce Ridley

Bruce Ridley’s 1981 paperback is a strange little time capsule sprayed straight from the walls of Australia before graffiti became polished, gallery-framed, or tangled in Instagram algorithms. Instead of focusing on subway burners or stylised pieces, the book collects raw, funny, crude, political, poetic, and deeply Australian graffiti scrawled across toilets, pub walls, train stations, school desks, and public spaces. It captures the accidental folk poetry of the street, where sarcasm, boredom, punk energy, and working-class humour collide in permanent marker fumes. The result feels less like an art book and more like wandering through the back alleys of Australia’s subconscious.