History and street art are not something that you would think would ever be on the same page, let alone sentence, yet Peter Drew has managed to combine the two into an amazing art form. Peter’s collection of Adelaide’s Forgotten Outlaws is the most amazing street art that I’ve ever seen, and I’m so fortunate that they have been showcased in my own home town. Not only are they images simply stunning in their own right, they really are. But to know that they are portraits of actual criminals from Adelaide in the 1920s adds a whole new level of fascination and admiration. I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually see an image of an reli 2.5m high on a street wall. No doubt very surreal, but I still think it would be amazingly cool. Sadly none of the images are of my reli’s Before I go on, here’s the story of the Forgotten Outlaws street art from Peter himself … Having made illegal street art for years without being caught I’d started to forget that it was a crime. So when I was finally arrested I began to think more seriously about its criminality. This interest grew into a ‘side project’ which quickly blew out into the largest street art campaign I’ve undertaken. I started by searching through the police documents at the South Australian State Records. The photography of the early 1920s stood out immediately for its technical qualities so I narrowed my search to the record GRG5/58/unit103. I began selecting criminal’s mug shots based mostly on the immediate impact of the image. Whether through their defiant pride, amused irreverence or shamed humiliation some faces drew me in and those where the ones I...
