One of Melbourne's most quietly beloved cultural institutions is home again. Sticky Institute, the underground zine store tucked beneath the bustle of Flinders Street, has returned to Campbell Arcade after five nomadic years spent waiting out the Metro Tunnel works.
For 25 years, Sticky Institute has been the beating heart of Melbourne's zine scene — the world of photocopied, hand-stapled publications that are, as the City of Melbourne puts it, "part magazine, part artwork and entirely DIY". The council credits the shop with helping nurture the grassroots literary culture that earned Melbourne its status as a UNESCO City of Literature.
Its home is one of the city's odder and more charming corners: the pedestrian subway beneath Flinders Street, lined with the arcade's iconic 1950s pink tiles, granite columns and public art. It is exactly the kind of overlooked, underground space where a stubbornly analogue art form has always felt most at home.
Luke Sinclair, who has worked at Sticky since it first opened in 2001, said stepping back into the arcade was like stepping into a time machine. "Walking into the new shop is going to be an emotional moment for a lot of people who spent big chunks of their teen years here," he said. "This arcade has seen so many exhibitions, music performances and emerging zine makers who have gone on to do great things. It's going to be nice to get back into all that."
The homecoming ends a long stretch of couch-surfing. While Campbell Arcade was closed for development, the Sticky team kept the shop alive from a string of temporary homes — the Nicholas Building, the Edwin Herring Pavilion and a spot on Elizabeth Street across from the Queen Victoria Market — never quite settling anywhere.
The reward for the wait is more room to breathe. The old store was just two metres deep; the new one spans two shopfronts and double the floor space. One half is given over to selling zines — everything from first-time, self-published efforts to work by internationally recognised artists — while the other is a workshop where visitors can sit down at a photocopier and make their own. "More room for zines and zine makers," as Sinclair put it.
For a city that trades hard on its creative credentials, the quiet return of a grassroots icon to its rightful patch of underground Melbourne is its own small event — a reminder that some of the culture the city celebrates loudest still runs on glue sticks, staples and a working photocopier. Sticky's work has even reached the walls of the National Gallery of Victoria, proof that the humble zine remains a serious part of Melbourne's artistic life.
