Shape Of Punk To Come

Adjacent to a used car yard and a petrol station, 28 Napier Street, Footscray lies in the heart of working-class Melbourne. The skyline is interspersed with shipping containers and iron cranes, as seagulls flail against a distant sea breeze. Further on the horizon loom city skyscrapers, the Eureka Tower and the disused Docklands ferris wheel. Napier Street's position is prime real estate for a burgeoning cultural precinct, a missing link between metropolitan Melbourne and outer suburbia.

Sitting here is the Reverence Hotel, the next chapter from the Bodiam family, owners and operators of the Arthouse from 1991 until its final show in April 2011. The Arthouse was an institution that hosted the country's, and indeed world's, finest alternative acts week in and out; owner Melanie Bodiam admits that calling last drinks for the venue was devastating, but came at the right time. “The closure was a combination of the lease ending,” she explains, “losing a few hours off our license because live music was deemed a high risk, and residents moving into the city. It was something we knew couldn't keep existing the way it was.”

The new venue, previously an “unloved old pub” known as the Exchange Hotel, was christened the Reverence in June and now boasts two band rooms, a public bar and kitchen. “We looked at every pub that was for sale or up for lease in Melbourne,” she says. “We'd been looking before the Arthouse had closed and found this place roughly four months after the closure.”

The new venue has inherited much from the Arthouse, including bar staff and the esteemed jukebox, but the Reverence offers more than the former venue could. “The Arthouse was purely a venue, but the Reverence is a public bar, a community space. The Arthouse was purely for music people, whereas this is for locals as well. Plus we're on one of Melbourne's busiest truck roads, so we can never make more noise than the traffic,” she laughs.

Her old hotel, now transformed into an Irish pub, has been imortalised in the form of a 200-page hardcover coffee table book titled Home Is Where The Arty Is. Curator and publisher Inga Liubinas says the project has been a two-year task. “Having taken photos of bands for ten years, predominantly at the Arthouse, I've always had the dream of putting together a book of images. Once I heard of the venue's impending closure, I thought there would never be a better time to produce such a book.“

Amongst the book's many contributors are Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music), Tim Barry (Avail), Gordy Forman (Frenzal Rhomb), Matt Maunder (Mindsnare), Steve Milligan (Mid Youth Crisis), Tom Read (Bodyjar) and Tom Lyncolgn (The Nation Blue). “I got a great response,” says Liubinas on the call out for contributors, joking, “it got to the point where I felt people were avoiding me at shows because I kept hassling them for stories and photos.”

Home Is Where The Arty Is will be launched at the Lithuanian Club in North Melbourne on Friday night with acoustic performances from many Arthouse regulars, as well as a speech from Lord Mayor Robert Doyle. The book, along with the short-lived Arthouse Recording studio, have been the benefactors of City Of Melbourne Arts & Small Business grants.

Naturally, the Reverence will also host events to launch the book including one-off reformation shows from H-Block 101 and Away From Now. Local resident and H-Block 101 guitarist Karl Mautner says, “it's a safe bet,” this will be their last show. That is of course “unless there's an Arthouse feature film in the works”.