28 December 2022 - BRIM SILO MURALS - AUSTRALIA

 

BRIM SILO MURALS

 - AUSTRALIA -

G'day folks,

These giant grain silo portraits capture elements of rural life in Australia. 

This project started as a happy confluence of needs. Street artist Guido van Helten was looking for a large-scale canvas, and the rural county of Yarriambiack Shire was searching for a beautification project. 

Large-scale murals can be tricky to coordinate, so the county worked with van Helten to select a location along a rural crossroads in Brim. Yarriambiack Shire coordinated with the Grain Corp to use four of their silos as canvases for the project.  

 

Before selecting his subjects, van Helten lived in the area for a few months getting to know the community. He then painted four tender portraits featuring several generations of local farmers. They were painted in a very detailed fashion, with a soft style that accentuated the wrinkles on their clothing and in their faces. 

This resulted in a stunning work of art that looms over the beige landscape. The mural became so popular that Yarriambiack Shire commissioned five additional murals from various artists. They are now spread over 124 miles (200 kilometers) of rural roads. They have become known as the Silo Art Trail.

 

19 November 2022 - CONTROVERSIAL MURALS IN MEXICO

 

CONTROVERSIAL 

MURALS

 IN MEXICO

G'day folks,

This artwork detailing the city's history features a few controversial characters. 

When the government of Aguascalientes commissioned a series of murals from Chilean artist Osvaldo Barra Cunningham, it never imagined the final results would become the most controversial artwork in the state.

“Aguascalientes in History” and “La Feria de San Marcos” are two of the most contentious works. This is because both these paintings featured Consuelo Elía, one of the city’s most well-known prostitutes at the time. In one of them, she’s shown in the center of a press dinner. In the other, she sits inside a restaurant called Doña Petra during the city’s most boisterous annual party.

 

Doña Petra is still located next to the Garden of San Marcos. In the 1960s, it was known for being a favorite haunt among the aristocratic, and also for its waiters, who were largely homosexual. You can see both of these details reflected in the mural.

But the most controversial painting is perhaps the one featuring a naked young man rising to the heavens, as people were aghast by the depiction of a penis on a public mural. A group of religious conservatives once entered the government building in an attempt to cover the scandalous nudity, but Barra Cunningham was able to persuade a bishop to calm their tempers. Barra Cunningham returned to Aguascalientes in 1992, when he was commissioned once again to paint inside the palace.

 

16 July 2022 - TASMANIA'S TOWN OF MURALS - AUSTRALIA

 

TASMANIA'S TOWN

 OF MURALS

 - AUSTRALIA -

G'day folks,

The once-dying town of Sheffield, Tasmania has reinvented itself as a village of painted wonders. 

Dams are blamed for ruining a lot of things. Their construction often leads to the destruction of wildlife habitats, the choking of a river, or even the flooding of a town.

But in the tiny Australian town of Sheffield, Tasmania, it wasn’t the building of a dam that caused problems – it was when that building stopped.

Sheffield, always a rural town, experienced a population boom when several hydroelectric plants were constructed nearby. Once that construction finished, however, large segments of the population left, leaving the town with an economy and infrastructure on the brink of collapse.

 

But sometimes, precipitous population declines simply aren’t enough to kill a town with a particularly plucky bureau of tourism, and that’s exactly what Sheffield has. Emboldened by the stories of other towns who reinvented themselves as tourist destinations, Sheffield’s leadership encouraged, commissioned and created murals on the side of every building and the face of every structure in town.

Almost immediately, Sheffield announced itself as a “Town of Murals,” complete with a comprehensive marketing campaign.

Of course, such an ambitious title commands results, and the murals have only grown in number and artistry since that time. The town got the results it wanted as well – it’s now well-regarded as a popular tourist destination and visitors flock to the rural hamlet not to work but to view the oddly engrossing and encompassing art that now decorates the town, and likely will for years to come.