Agiant face peers through a door in a gallery wall - it's quite a shock when you realise that the giant face is your own. Turn the corner and a storm is brewing as artist and skateboarder Shaun Gladwell freestyles on the foreshore of Sydney's Bondi Beach. Take another turn and an über-cool Japanese break-dancer busts some moves on a busy bullet train in Japan.

This is "Streetworks", an exhibition that has brought the street and its youth subcultures into the conventional art gallery. The exhibition began in the streets of Yokohama in Japan, and is now making a mark in Bangkok.

"Streetworks: Inside Outside Yokohama" is the work of two contemporary Australian artists, Shaun Gladwell and Craig Walsh. It focuses on the use of public space and the ways in which urban architecture affects our daily lives. The artists use video projections and playful manipulations to take their audience with them, literally every step of the way.

"I feel dizzy," says one visitor, as he follows the skateboarder's feet projected on the floor  zipping through the streets. "I feel as if I'm travelling with him."

As you watch the board twist and turn, you glimpse a shop window or a moving car in the background. It turns a mere film into reality.

"There's such a sense of excitement," exclaims the now dizzy viewer, entranced with the skateboarder's artistry.

This is Shaun Gladwell's work, which gives centre stage to the Young Urban Hero.

These cool dudes swagger on the edge of crime and art, explains exhibition curator David Broker.

"There is an element of rebellion to Shaun's work," he adds, as we watch the artist swing on the handles of a train carriage, or see a police car glide past a dancer in an empty Sydney petrol station in "Woolloomooloo Night".

"Artwork that is produced on the streets often has a raw energy. When it's shown in the gallery, we're provided with an opportunity to consider details of everyday life," Broker explains.

"The excitement generated by work of this nature emanates from public space, where private lives are no longer entirely private."

Private turned public is taken to the extreme in Craig Walsh's "hyper-real portraiture".

A surveillance camera fixed inside a miniature model of the Yokohama warehouse/gallery records the viewer, or audience, peering inside. This is projected onto the gallery walls along with pre-recorded footage of moving images of people in Yamashita Park, also peering into the model.

This "complex network of interrelated technology" creates the sensation of a multitude of layers, bringing viewers from different times and spaces into one location.

"It becomes a truly international experience," says Broker.

Walsh claims his "Cross-reference" series generates an "unknown response".

"The notion of 'Cross-reference' comes as the audience is taken to a different location and environment," he says. "Now, a Thai audience is included and mixed with the documentation of the work in Yokohama."

The artist says he learns about people through his art.

"I'm really looking at what people do - reconstructing the everyday," he says.

A "Cross-reference" series shown in Singapore saw businessmen flashing their name cards to the surveillance camera.

"It became a monumental advertising space," Walsh explains. "There's no control over content, no direction. You are never sure what you will end up with."

Over a career spanning more than 15 years, Walsh has produced work in abandoned buildings, car parks, shops and railway stations. He says he is interested in how projection interacts with different surfaces and how living organisms relate with architecture.

His previous work has seen blood-sucking leeches devouring gallery walls, and rats projected onto shop front windows.

"The image of the rats started upsetting the restauranteurs across the road. I think it was putting the customers off their dinner," he laughs.

"Parasites co-exist with people. People want to eradicate them, but they are the great stayers and continue to co-habit."

Whether it is gigantic faces looking in at "shrunken" viewers at Chulalongkorn University's Art Centre, or skateboarders and dancers showing off their stylish tricks and "dizzying" their viewers, the audience of "Streetworks" will be taken on an amazing journey and find themselves involved at every turn.

"Streetworks: Inside Outside Yokohama" runs at Chulalongkorn University's Art Centre on the seventh floor of the Centre of Academic Resources until March 6. The gallery is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 7pm and on Saturday until 4pm. Call (02) 218 2965.

Alice Coster

The Nation