Bio / Propaganda

Makatron is an emerging Melbourne artist who works across a variety of media. A prominent street artist and member of the notorious Everfresh Studio, he is equally at home in canvas painting and illustration. He works with all types of paint – aerosol, acrylic, oils,  and also has a passion for illustration.

Originally travelling to New York to study Fine Art on an full scholarship at the age of 20, Makatron has spent much of his adult life travelling, completing six round the world trips,  bike couriering in 9 cities and picking up work from construction to surfboard repair, bicycle mechanic to retail management, and painting anywhere he could.

Makatron’s street art enlivens many inner-city walls throughout New York, Berlin and Melbourne. He has also left his mark in Los Angeles, Glasgow, Mexico, Sydney, Barcelona, Toronto, Indonesia, Paris, Copenhagen and many more. In 2007 he travelled to India to paint along the River Ganges and 2009  saw him travel to  Brazil, to exhibit  and take part in the Usina Urbana Hiphop festival.  Bringing home a bag full of inspiration, he accomplished a successful solo show later in the year  “Makanikal Gardens” at Hogan Gallery.

The themes and inspirations of Makatron’s work are as eclectic as the media he employs, but they tend to reflect a few signature dichotomies. The name “Makatron” itself is a paradox, combining a prefix meaning “from” (carrying connotations of place, history, tradition, and regeneration) with a suffix that suggests the machine-like, the virtual, the promise and  threat of technology.

Makatron’s work, too, often pulls in opposite directions. His street art is by its nature rooted in a particular place, inscribing itself palimpsest-like as an element in a site’s history, yet it also reflects the artist’s own nomadic existence, consciously participating in a global culture with a significant extension in the virtual realm. Similarly, his work is preoccupied with the interface between human and machine, reminding us that in a digital age, human nature itself is becoming ever more machine-like.

At Everfresh Studio’s Backwoods exhibition  in ‘07- the most successful studio exhibition of street art ever held in Melbourne – Makatron’s work sold old completely, confirming his growing reputation as a young artist to watch.

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