Starting point - Smith Street, Surry Hills

In the ten years since I became obsessed with pavement inscriptions I’ve taken hundreds of photographs. With so many to choose from it’s not too hard to find examples to illustrate any point I might want to make when I write about the pavement as a medium for expression.

But what if I took a walk on an arbitrary route from an arbitrary starting point and photographed every picture, sign and scribble on the pavement along the way? Would that series of unselected inscriptions unfold as a coherent story?

I tried this as an experiment for the Open Fields forum at UTS (University of Technology, Sydney). I started in Surry Hills at a street with a very common name, Smith Street, and took a zig-zag route in a direction away from the centre of the city. I got as far as Waterloo, only about 2 km as the ibis flies, but I had taken more than 3 hours and photographed around 150 pavement inscriptions.

End point - Danks Street, Waterloo

I made a slide show of these Unselected readings in the order in which I found them. But here’s a confession: although I stuck to my arbitrary rules for the day pretty well, I did stop photographing every manhole cover and every wet cement inscription, because there were so many of them.

What did I find out from this experiment? Well, perhaps I will talk about that in future blog entries.

Bourke Street, Surry Hills, Sydney

Survey marks on the paving are like an irruption from beneath, disfiguring the surface with a disturbing reminder of what is going on below. The city’s skin blemishes are spreading.

Bourke Street, Surry Hills, Sydney

Wilson Street, Newtown

LOOK LEFT for motor vehicles. Oops! Sorry about the bicycle that just crashed into you from the right.

Bourke Street, Surry Hills

A month later I found an answer of sorts in Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, some three or four kilometres away. A notice chalked in the same hand for Surry Hills Markets, always held in Crown Street on the first Saturday of the month. So the notice in Glebe was meant for me … and everyone else. But I still don’t get the ant.

Every so often a large romantic message turns up on the pavement – sometimes on a country road, sometimes on a city street – turning private feelings into blaring headlines. Obviously premeditated and deliberately located so they will be seen by the object of affection (or disappointment), these messages can’t be compared with the miniature declarations of love made by wet cement opportunists. I believe they are generally written by males. Am I right?

Shane loves Bonnie was written in Wilson Street, Newtown, in 2008. I photographed Please come home I love you in Surry Hills in 2005 when it had been there for a long time.

I’ve written about public-personal notices in an article in the journal antiTHESIS.

Hicks, M. Hard feelings. antiTHESIS 19 Exhibitionism: 229-233.