His notorious paste-ups have been spread far and wide across high traffic areas of inner city Melbourne, often dominating the environment with their crude graphic approach. The monotone, larger than life female faces bare down upon passers-by.

We catch up with street artist Rone of the Everfresh Studios, as they prepare to gear up for the launch of the highly anticipated Everfresh: Blackbook. Dropping in September, The Everfresh: Blackbook provides a pictorial insight into the life of the iconic Melbourne studio, spanning from 2004-2010. With candid photography and rare and exclusive imagery, the book explores the artists and culture of the underground art collective as it’s never been seen before.

What and who are involved at Everfresh Studios?
It’s a space a group of us put together when we found that we couldn’t work in a traditional studio environment.
we didn’t want to be sectioned off rather a space where we can work together.
We are all artist who have come out of the Melbourne Graffiti art scene.
(Phibs, Sync, Reka, Rone, Makatron, The Tooth, Wonderlust, Prizm & Meggs)

A few of you are originally from other parts of Australia, what’s the appeal of Melbourne?
It’s a real creative city that’s open to other forms of getting up. Not just traditional graffiti. It’s a great bombing city. Everything stays up. The structure of the city, including the famous laneways, provide safer spots to practice your work. I think its Melbourne’s greatest attraction as a tourist. Melbourne definitely has the best scene within Australia. It even competes on a world scale too. Not bad for a backwoods country. ha!

The studio is set to release a showcase of the crew’s work over the past 6 years, in a nice book titled Everfresh: Blackbook. Sell it to us? 250 pages worth of dopeness? haha
Yeah it’s about 256 pages, full of pics we have been hiding from the net and other publications for the last few years. A great little insight to what makes us tick. We have been talking about this book for years. It was only a matter of time before we all pulled our fingers out and made it a reality. We weren’t going to rush into it. its was very natural and eventually it happened. We are all very excited about this book getting released.

Meggs is handling the design of the Everfresh: Blackbook. Does it help having someone in-house to design and convey the crews style?
Yeah I don’t think would have been the same if we outsourced the design. Meggs nailed the design, he was the best man for the job, the other hard part was the content. That was directed by all 9 of us which was a huge headache but made our content so much better in the end. Imaging culling 50,000 down to about 500 without any arguments…

Josh Robenstone took the majority of the photographers for the book, has he just been following you guys around for the last few years snapping pics?
Yeah we have known Josh for a while. Over the few years his level of involvement in documenting our work has increased due to his interest. He takes great shots and is a great attribute to the studio. It’s handy to have a photographer by your side so all you need to do is concentrate on your work and let him do the rest.

The Herald Sun have been on a bit of a war path, when we say war path, they ran a bullshit story criticising the book and the publisher etc. What were your thoughts on that whole situation?
That was the poorest piece of journalism I have ever seen, rehashed content, copy & paste our press release & irrelevant babble about trains… but what could you expect from the herald sun

The Everfresh: Blackbook showcases some great work done by not only you guys in Melbourne but around Australia and also overseas. Do you enjoy travelling and getting up at the same time?
Travelling is vital for being a graffiti artist and just an artist in general. It’s important to hook-up with other like-minded individuals and make contacts. Getting up in different cities is the best thing you can do. It’s like a clean slate – everything is new. Being artists that exhibit our work in galleries its important exposure-wise to travel and hold exhibitions round the world.

We hear there is a limited edition hardcover release of the book and a release in Tokyo?
Yeah we have 500 hard cover versions of the book that will be signed, hand finished and come with a bunch of extra stuff like screen prints, original photos.

allaussie hip hop being a hip hop site and you guys living in Melbourne, do any of you get a chance to check out the local hip hop scene?
A couple of us are hip hop heads. Most of the time we check out dj sets not so much live Hip hop MCs. Often Hip hop events get a bit sketchy with other writers etc. It makes it interesting though!!

Anything else you’d like to mention?
A big shout out goes out to all the haters. Cheers. Keep it coming. We feed of this shit. Much love. Hi Mum xxx

THE LIMITED EDITION BOOK
500 Hard Cover Limited Edition copies of the book.

Only available at everfreshstudio.com
EVERFRESH: BLACKBOOK – Limited Edition
By Everfresh Studio $80.00 254 x 204 mm illustrated hard cover.
Only available online.
Pre-orders available from 1 July 2010.
Shipping first week of September.
Limited Edition includes:
– Hand finished cover
– Duplex printed dust jacket
– 1 Everfresh Print
– 1 Photographic print signed and numbered by Josh Robenstone (assorted photos, editions of 100)

EVERFRESH: BLACKBOOK
By Everfresh Studio
The Miegunyah Press
978-0-522-85745-0
RRP $39.99
254 x 204 mm illustrated paperback