07 Jul Clean up our Backyard Completed

Posted at 10:00h in Public Art by admin

CLEAN UP COMPLETE

MARS Gallery is thrilled to announce the successful completion of Clean up our Backyard, a major public art commission intended to improve the local environment of Windsor, Melbourne, Australia.

Casey Jeffery, Grace Wood, Mysterious Al and collaborating artists Natalie Mather and Steven Rhall were among forty-six artists and artist collectives who submitted a proposal for a public artwork addressing the issues facing young people across the world today while considering the local area of Windsor, Chapel Street and The City of Stonnington.

All four commissions occupy the back of Chapel Street businesses and can be accessed via the Lincoln Street council car park located off James Street, Windsor.

Clean up our backyard is Proudly funded by City of Stonnington Arts and Culture Grant.

GRACE WOOD | MARS GALLERY

Clean Up Your Backyard. Wall work by Grace Wood in a Windsor car park on March 26, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. Image courtesy of Fiona Hamilton Photography.

Grace Wood’s proposal for Clean Up Our Backyard responds directly to the area of Windsor and the City of Stonnington. Her collage-based installation combines the concerns of the contemporary image with ideas of home, locality and a sense of belonging as they relate to young people in the area. Wood uses archival photographic images of the Windsor and City of Stonnington area layered with colours, paintings and other images taken and sourced from the artist.

Grace Wood is an artist from Melbourne, Australia. In 2014, she graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours). Wood creates collage-based installations that dissect eccentricities of art and the internet, whilst utilising images found on the internet, in her personal collection and in public archives. Wood considers the multiplicitous display methods of the contemporary photographic image, creating works that heavily engage with the spaces they are situated in and the materials they are made from.

‘I am honoured to be given this amazing opportunity to contribute to the vibrant artistic legacy of the area with my artwork and can’t wait to begin the installation process. I have been working on this collage for almost 6 months and am especially enjoying exploring the rich history of the area and sourcing archival images that speak of Windsor’s past. The work I am presenting blends these found images into a digital tapestry that explores the idea of home, location and belonging. The work is imbued with my pictorial impressions of the community and the people who inhabit the City of Stonnington.’ – Grace Wood

CASEY JEFFERY | PUNK CARLA

Clean Up Your Backyard. ‘Love and Life, Side by Side’ Mural by Casey Jeffery in a Windsor car park on March 26, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. Image courtesy of Casey Jeffery

Jeffery’s proposal for Clean Up Our Backyard responds to the area of Windsor and the City of Stonnington by bringing attention to its disregarded spaces. Her painted mural is designed as a means to draw passers-by to reflect on their surrounds for more than an instant, which can then ignite conversations with the nearby businesses and strangers. An issue many young people face is the loss of physical contact and communication, which Jeffery is hoping to revive.

Casey Jeffery is a Melbourne based painter who completed her Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) at The Victorian College of the Arts in 2018. Jeffery has exhibited both locally and internationally. Her recent solo exhibitions include: Seasons, {Suite} Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand (2019). Enter The Fold, LON Gallery (2018). From The Backyard, CAVES Gallery (2018). Her recent group shows include: WestSpace Gallery, Melbourne (2018). C3 Gallery, Melbourne (2018), The Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2018). She exhibited with Caves Gallery for the Spring 1883 Art Fair in 2018 and again in 2019 with {Suite} Gallery NZ in Sydney. She has been the recipient of The John Vickery Scholarship and Fiona Myer Award. Casey Jefferys works are held in private collections locally and internationally.

NATALIE MATHER & STEVEN RHALL | BLACK TORO & CISCO’S WORLD OF COFFEE

Clean Up Your Backyard. ‘Not about us, without us’ Mural by Natalie Mather & Steven Rhall in a Windsor car park, Australia. Image courtesy of Alana Seal

Rhall and Mather’s proposal for Clean Up Our Backyard responds directly to the area of Windsor and the City of Stonnington and its distant communities alike. Their chosen method is a proposition painted mural. ‘Not About Us Without Us’ employs a function where simplicity and, encouraging the question of who and what, curiously engages the viewer through their own subjectivity and personal narratives around voice inclusion and collectivity. Their strategy connects to the notion of empowerment through inclusion on a universal scale.

Natalie Mather is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Melbourne, and is currently a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts. Natalie uses her painting practice to engine speculative ideas about fictive or ‘other’ spaces and ‘the future’. Her practice uses text, trompe l’oeil forms and galvanic colour to expand and collapse a sense of the ‘real’ within a continuous frame. Through her working methods Natalie makes works that aim to slow the speed of viewing by using a language that reads as fast. By positioning the slow process and the slow gaze at the forefront of her practice, Mather tries to carve out ‘deep reservoirs of temporal experience’ through paintings, for both maker and viewer.

Steven Rhall (Taungurung) is an independent arts professional whose practice is concerned with the exhibition of art by First Nation peoples. This same concern drives his research as a Monash University PhD candidate, whilst tenured as a lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts. Steven’s creative practice centres on ‘exhibition as form’ via installation, public art and curatorial projects largely in interrogation of art institutions and associated systems of power. In 2019, Steven founded the experimental art organisation New†Agency†, in Kensington / Birrarung-ga in support of discursive practices, particularly that of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour.

MYSTERIOUS AL | CHACHOS WINDSOR & STUDIO LEGAL

Clean Up Your Backyard. Mural by Mysterious Al in a Windsor car park, Australia. Image courtesy of Alana Seal

Mysterious Al’s proposal for Clean Up Our Backyard replicates his current style and is then hyper-imposed for Windsor and the City of Stonnington. His painted mural do not have a direct focus nor concept, remaining open and subjective for each and every individual. This incites the mural to be a great opportunity to engage with the public and the space itself. Possibly leading to passers-by discussing their own responses to the mask.

Mysterious Al is an artist living and working in Melbourne. He rose to fame in London in the early 2000s through the explosion of street art, developing a notoriety for hiss wall paintings, paste-ups and street installations alongside his contemporaries, the Finders Keepers Crew.

Clean up our backyard. Public murals by Grace Wood, Casey Jeffery, collaborating artists Natalie Mather and Steven Rhall, and Mysterious Al. Accessible via James Street Car park, Windsor. Courtesy of the City of Stonnington.