User:Pantherburns/sandbox

Roar Studios was a avant garde artist run gallery space in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia. The former shoe factory gallery opened in June 1982, and was colonized by a group of rebellious and pioneering young artists. With difficulty to find a studio to work in, or gallery to show in, the space set up and run as an artists co-operative. Roar was a reaction to against the establishment, it gave a chance for emerging artists to exhibit and work outside the existing gallery system.

It was their raw, unrestrained and expressive use of paint which they used in reaction to the popularity of minimalism and conceptualism in the art market.

In 1992, the then art critic of The Age, Christopher Heathcote comments: "The Roar painters have been one of the very few vanguard groups to emerge in Australian art in the late 20th century. Not since the 1960's, have Melburnians witnessed an attempt by a small band of spirited younger artists to upset the complacent order of the contemporary scene. And they were able to bring about change not because of the art system, but in spite of it...Between 1982 and 1985 Roar Studios was the most creative irritant that has disturbed the Melbourne Art system for years."