Art Meets MasterChef Meets Bar Fight at Art Battles

There's only 30 minutes left on the clock, and the anticipation amongst the beer-soaked audience at Name This Bar is starting to peak. Despite the fact French artist Enzo has been working away at something on a hidden sheet of paper for the past hour, his canvas is still completely blank. To his right, cartoonist and SCA graduate Leigh Rigozzi is steadily plugging away. Up on the scaffold, he's taken off his shoes and his business jacket and before our eyes, a colourful geometric figure is appearing, like the silhouette of a muppet filled with an endless galaxy of cubes all converging in on one another.

Sam Mercier is the proud owner of the unexpectedly comfortable den squeezed in amidst The Tool Shed and Coco Cubano on Oxford Street known only as Name This Bar.

"Art Battles evolved with the concept of Name This Bar,” he explains. “This place was initially a blank slate. We were in the process of trying to look for a name and what we were going to do with it. We thought, why don’t we get people to write their ideas of what to call it on these two walls? But not many people came by because nobody knew we were here yet. Then a couple of mates turned up, sort of friends of friends, and they started drawing pictures on the walls and everyone was watching it. We were like, whoa that's really cool. That's a really good idea, I wish we could do something like that.”

From these humble beginnings, Mercier has done something like that, and much, much more. Now in its fourth series, Art Battles is fast becoming the So You Think You Can Dance or The MasterChef of the art world. Built on a community that encompasses street artists and fine artists alike, the competition is a platform and launch pad for a new hybrid artform, and the artists that go with it. Mercier says there are even plans for an international touring team, and a partnership with an Art Battles team in New York, on the horizon.

This is how it works: Two artists, two blank canvases, 100 minutes. Three judges allocate points for creativity, judges' favourite and crowd favourite. Tonight is the second heat in a series of six. Artists are competing for prizes, and to enter the finals, happening at Circular Quay from May 4-5 in conjunction with the Tiger Beer Street Football festival. "There should be about four to five thousand people there. For any of these artists to be in front of all those people on an international stage is quite a big deal," says Mercier.

Rigozzi and Enzo represent perfectly the clash of street art and fine art in one place. Nobody knows who Enzo, an amateur street artist from France, is and his bio simply says, "This will be the first of hopefully many live art exhibitions to come." "We had one artist drop out at the last minute and he's been begging us to do it," muses Mercier. "This could be really good or it could be really bad. We really don't know."

Tonight's theme is 'what inspires me'. For Rigozzi, that means Sydney's small press and cartooning scene. He's never worked like this before — with a 100-minute countdown in front of a bar of barracking onlookers — but is confident he'll be able to come up with the goods. Meanwhile, Enzo is outside, having a cigarette by himself. He's got his headphones on, listening French trance music, his inspiration. He says he has a bit of a plan, but that he's pretty scared. "Scary is a good word," he laughs.

Now, with 30 minutes left, Enzo makes his first move. He pulls his paper up to the canvas and sticks it over the top. Then, with a can of black spray paint, a figure emerges through the stencil. It's a hooded guy crouching down. It's bold and slick and about as different in style from Rigozzi's colourful creation as a lemonade from a double scotch on the rocks.

Five, four, three, two, one: The votes are in and the judging is close, but the crowd response draws a clear winner: Enzo is the surprising victor. There are four more heats to go, happening each Thursday night at Name This Bar in April. Mercier says he’s looking forward to the finals.

"The finals are always the best because it's so loud. It's so exciting. It's a real buzz."

The next art battle takes place on April 25. Battles continue weekly until the finals on May 4. Images by Steven Lattuca.