How many of the words displayed upon the surfaces of your local high street can you recall? The places you shop, the name of your tram stop, that graffiti tag you see everywhere, your favourite coffee place…

What would a portrait of your street look like, if you composed it of all the words displayed upon its surfaces?

Discover Melbourne’s messy and inspiring public markings at UNREDACTED CITY, a new exhibition by urban surfaces researcher and photographer, Sabina Andron.

UNREDACTED CITY is an exploration of the overlooked writing cultures of city surfaces. Over three months in 2023, Andron meticulously recorded every visible name and message along a 2.5km stretch of Sydney Road in Brunswick. The result is an extraordinary list of 2,528 inscriptions displayed on this iconic Melbourne street – brought here into the gallery space as a site-specific vernacular archive.

The records include utility providers, real estate agents, manufacturers of street furniture, global brands, politicians and historical figures, music gigs, graffiti tags, and many stickers with fun, confronting, and informative messages.

Unmoored from the streetscape of Brunswick, the archive is presented as a series of A0 posters to honour one of Melbourne’s most emblematic urban expressions: the street poster. For the exhibition, Andron invited artists and collaborators to create original posters using the 2,528 notations as a shared language, to explore the scripts and voices that shape our shared spaces.

UNREDACTED CITY mirrors our textual coding of the city, reminding us that urban surfaces don’t just hold a record of transaction and exchange, but they are the keepers of our collective values.

Visitors are invited to alter, enhance, or deface the posters – such as the city does unto itself.

Do you see it? The city already wrote itself.