There’s a moment in every artist’s life when they stop looking for permission and start following something deeper. For Kiama artist, Mikey Freedom, that moment came in his mid teens, armed with spray cans and a restless need to create. Although he couldn’t yet define this feeling, that early exploration into artistry left a mark that lasted.
The streets of Sydney in the 1980s were a different kind of classroom from the ones Freedom later found himself in as a student, teacher and mentor. No digital distractions; just “walls, trains, and the strange magnetism that pulled scattered teenagers into a kind of secret fraternity.”
While the world still viewed graffiti artists as anarchic troublemakers, Mikey and his crew were on a different track. “Maybe we were [unruly]. But we were also chasing something true,” he explains. ”Skill, form, expression. A kind of nobility in the mess of it all.”
This early pursuit of truth ignited a spark that Freedom has honed over the decades. But, from Sydney’s underground scene to a thriving creative practice spanning collages, murals, oils, sculpture and commercial commissions, Mikey’s multidisciplinary approach still retains its rebellious heart and hunger for meaning.
“You tell yourself you made choices, but mostly you followed something. A pull. For me, with art, it’s always been resonance. The thing that stayed with me,” Freedom explains. This has driven his fluid approach to mediums and form; an instinctual refusal to be pinned down.
Now based in Kiama with growing ties to Port Kembla’s emerging creative scene, Freedom has left a trail of exploration in his wake, with his art adorning the walls of iconic hospitality venues, galleries and local landmarks.
“Charles Eames once said, ‘Eventually everything connects’,” Mikey explains. “I don’t see divisions. I see transmissions. Line to word, shape to sound, cave walls to printing press to subway car. The message carries.” This philosophy has made him equally at home creating commissions for Sydney venues like Shell House (The Point Group) and Bastardo (Porteño Group) as transforming a Melbourne coffee showroom into an unlikely gallery space.
I’ve seen how life can turn. I know how it can look when it falls apart. So I look for beauty where it ’s not expected. In small things. Ordinary places.
This project with Sanremo Coffee Machines particularly captured the power of art to connect communities on a deeper level. “My work on the walls, Italian machines gleaming beneath them. People came. Coffee was poured. Food passed from hand to hand. Whatever usually happens in galleries didn’t happen there.” For Freedom, it represented something rare: “It wasn’t commerce. It was cultural – people wanting the same thing at the same time. That felt right.”
This tie to community is central to Freedom’s creative practice, as well as his dedication to mentoring and enabling access for others. For the past eight years, Mikey has partnered with The Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation, delivering interwoven art and literacy programs for refugee and new immigrant children. “As much as it is to improve literacy, it is also to unlock one’s understanding of their own potential,” he explains. “The sense that more is possible than they, and we, have been told.”
Freedom’s search for more, and its potential to be found in the spaces we inhabit, was also at the heart of his move to the Illawarra in the early 2000s. With memories of happy weekends spent on the coast during childhood, he now sought greener pastures for his own family. “What I’ve found here – community, friendships – isn’t something I’d trade. And I don’t think it’s something you find twice.”
Now, as both Kiama and Port Kembla experience cultural shifts, Freedom watches with an understanding of authentic creative community building. You might spot his work around the Illawarra – a mural at the bottom of Keira Street serving as a reminder of the 2015 Wonderwalls festival, pieces in Kiama at Black Beach and Beck’s cafe, and a recent work bringing colour to Kiama Village Shopping Centre. Some have faded with time and weather, creating a sense of nostalgia that is as much the point of the work as the original purpose.
“I don’t want to forget what came before. The joy. The damage. It’s not decorative. It’s structural,” Mikey says. “As we move forward, we look back – maybe to remember what mattered.”
However, Freedom is quick to remind us that the past isn’t a place to live, instead funnelling nostalgic energy and life lessons into refreshed ways of seeing the world. “I’ve seen how life can turn. I know how it can look when it falls apart. So I look for beauty where it’s not expected. In small things. Ordinary places.”
As for finding the meaning of life? “There’s a part of me that still believes in something larger – something worth pushing for. A way for people to notice what’s right in front of them.” Instead of a resolution, Freedom offers something rarer; the courage to keep searching, to keep making work that resonates with something true.
“I have vision. I have hope. And so far, it holds.” In a career spent refusing to be categorised – and in a world obsessed with simple answers to complex questions – that may be the closest thing to an answer we’ll get. And perhaps that’s exactly the point.
See more of Mikey Freedom’s work at thefreedomsuite.com and follow @mikeyfreedom71 on Instagram for upcoming exhibition announcements.
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