Tom Civil
Tom Civil is an artist, muralist, community art facilitator and printmaker. His love of printmaking came about over 20 years ago through a passion for affordable and
accessible art and the DIY nature or printmaking. First through woodcuts, polymer prints and stencils and then on to lino, drypoint etching, aquatint and more. Tom is a self-taught and studio trained printmaker, and received the Dowd Foundation Scholarship in 2012 at the Australian Print Workshop.
Tom has been making art in the streets of Melbourne for over 18 years, and has painted
over 30 commissioned murals across town in the last twelve years. He has worked painting murals with kindergartens, courts, Indigenous organisations, councils, youth centres, schools, nursing homes, radio stations, prisons, zoo animal enclosures, art studios, parks, fish and chip shops and community gardens.
His stencil, street work and murals have been featured in various publications including Melbourne Stencil Art Capital, Street|Studio, Space Invaders (NGA), Street Art Now, Melbourne Street Art Guide , the film Rash, as a feature artist in the Melbourne Stencil Festival 2004/05/09 and the Cans Festival in London in 2008. He has also exhibited walk-through installations and worked closely with his brother Ned, who died from cancer in late 2010, under the guise The Evil Brothers. Tom has given workshops and talks in different communities about murals and the political nature of street art and printmaking.
He was also the co-founder with Lou Smith of small Melbourne-based radical publishers Breakdown Press who published the book How to Make Trouble and Influence People: Pranks, Hoaxes, Graffiti and Political Mischief-Making from across Australia (1788–2016) as well as the five Breakdown Poster Series. Tom is also a member of Everfresh Studio.