Johny and Dave - the history by Robert Knapman

To my old, new and potential Red Bubble friends – especially those who have followed Johnny and Dave over the months and now years – here’s a bit of a Johnny and Dave explanation and context

Robert x

Recently I have been described as a visual poet. I have an arts background in design, photography and performance. I am also a writer and a community health worker. I am impacted by homophobia and see its effect around me daily.

I created ‘Johnny and Dave’ in 2009. They have helped me re-define myself as an artist in Sydney and have given me a voice which I endeavour to honour.
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This project began with a Red Bubble challenge in 2009 and quickly became a journey. The photographs are possibly the only permanent record of this ongoing inner-city love story between two fictitious characters – a young guy called Johnny (street poet and dreamer) and his young street-wise lover-buddy Dave (protector and lighthouse).

Johnny and Dave use random walls, hoardings and surfaces of inner city Sydney as street canvases for their love, passion, dreams, fears, joys and pain. Sometimes they use chalk, other times paper paste up images, but always the street to share their extra-ordinary and perhaps sometimes naive love for each other.

With the street as their belonging place, Johnny and Dave’s ‘private’ is the rest of Sydney’s ‘public’. And they are not oblivious to this fact. Johnny in particular is seeing more and more the potential for the street as canvas for messages of possibility.

Essentially this project is about claiming a belonging through the lives, eyes and words of these two young lovers. Over time, the project’s focus, themes and characters have shifted, yet at the core the project has remained focussed on the traditions of urban guerrilla street art.

As an essentially impermanent form of art, guerrilla street art fits well with the projects’ themes of love, loss and belonging – love itself is impermanent and fleeting…seeking a belonging place. This format is also a snug fit with a paucity of visible ‘public displays of affection’ between two men or two women, and so reveals an otherwise heterosexual assumed entitlement to public affection.

The project via Johnny and Dave reclaims and makes large a public space for ‘gay’ love and intimacy – repopulating it with acceptance, hope and honesty. They contradict fear and hate by replacing it with love and courage. They may be our conscience or even a kind of salvation. Whatever and whoever they are, Johnny and Dave offer a journey or passage for those aware of their words, inspired by their world or who stop to read. At the end of the day I guess J & D are me and I am them, they are also you and your lovers, they are anyone who has ever lived a hidden encyclopaedia of a story.

Look for them…the love continues…into the wet, city night.