Bar Democratico by Di Stasio will redefine socialising in the city

Restaurateur Rinaldo Di Stasio cares about art and hospitality enough he once stormed out of a poorly-decorated Italian hotel and slept in the piazza. With Australia's arts and hospitality communities on their knees, knowing the founder of two eponymous provocative institutions is plotting a new bar and galleria with partner Mallory Wall, is good news for dark times.

Bar Democratico isn't due until 2021, but it is the sort of project that takes a good run up. The split level space at 17 Spring Street, part of the Cbus Properties development, will be a split level bar, cafe and galleria just 50 metres from two-hat powerhouse Di Stasio Citta.

Just as Bar Di Stasio in St Kilda brought a fresh audience and energy to the established Cafe Di Stasio when it was added in 2012, Di Stasio hopes that Bar Democratico will be a low-key, high-octane counterpart for Citta. "The two places will work in conjunction," he says. "You might have dinner at Citta. A drink there. I picture our waiters walking back and forth."

The name will reflect the "more egalitarian," nature of the bar. "Coffee will be cheap. There will be a full American bar, a little panino. In the private dining room, you will just be served one meal. Simple, but beautiful."

Shaping the project will again be Di Ritter of Hassell Studios whose austere-yet-imposing brutalist work on Citta scooped three prizes at the Australian Interior Design Awards on June 2.

Like Citta, the bar will have projected against its ghostly grey stucco walls a new, collaborative video artwork by artists Shaun Gladwell and indigenous artist Reko Rennie. They are separately responsible for the videos that bring Citta roaring to life.

Di Stasio has made #Italianality his signature since launching Citta, assigning the label to all things that mesh with his vision of what hospitality, food, drink and art should be. He has also rebirthed Spring Street as "the Milan end of Melbourne", an avenue of conviviality that will run from the European to Democratico, ousting the long-held Parisian claim. But his art collection has always been focused on the Australian.

From 2006 to 2015 Di Stasio agitated for the creation of the Australian pavilion in Venice, and plans to launch new artists for future biennales at Democratico.

"All the art I've ever owned, I've known the artist," says Di Stasio, whose first major purchase was from a then little-known Bill Henson. Displaying those provocative works in a restaurant was and remains exciting. It led to artists and collectors such as Jenny Watson and Peter Booth becoming restaurant patrons, furthering Di Stasio's own patronage of the arts and giving him "the luxury of enjoying something better than religion."

Melbourne has a proud history of such a union. In the early 1950s, artists Mirka and Georges Mora, founded some of the city's most dynamic eateries and hubs for the artist community in post-war Melbourne. As the hospitality industry grapples with reopening and its relevance in a recession-struck city, the promise of a space to celebrate creativity has great appeal.

Di Stasio argues that "tempismo," or timing, has always underpinned his success and with the pandemic giving restaurants and diners pause to consider whether we want to now eat takeaway on our couch, or "perhaps be part of the kitchen, perhaps look at exciting new art, especially indigenous and the avant garde". The timing certainly seems right for that.