Wendy Murray

KING STREET, newtown - June- DECEMBER 2020

Newtown’s vibrant King Street is being drastically changed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Once a bustling and creative community of residents, visitors and business owners, the street is seeing its retail stores, cafes, bars, restaurants, galleries and performance spaces turn off the lights, close down and vacate the area. The dark windows and empty spaces are evidence of the economic and social breakdowns this pandemic is inflicting upon our famously creative and diverse community. With income losses, housing instability, the pressures on essential workers and the other constant stresses this health and economic crisis has wrought, we need no more reminding. 

The New Views Poster Project will commission a collection of contemporary Sydney artists with strong connections to King Street to paint and stencil large scale posters to be exhibited in empty storefronts along King Street. The artworks will show the community creatives are still at work, responding to our collective worlds. They will add life and colour to the streetscape that can be appreciated by people passing by on their way to providing or receiving essential services.

The New Views Poster Project pays homage to the work of the studio artists and writers of Telegraphic Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). While TASS forced its team of creatives to make WWII propaganda works, we are inspired by the way it brought the artistic works onto the streets of Moscow in the form of the large, hand-stenciled window posters (known as Okno TASS, or the windows of TASS). These posters would display in the windows along the streets. The quick style of works make them affordable to produce, and that they will be created by gallery exhibited artists for the streets of Sydney, makes them accessible.

Project ARTISTS

Photography

Joshua Morris
Joshua Morris walked, stumbled and then ran on a crooked path to becoming a photographer. He spent his youth with a camera in one hand and a guitar in the other, before forming a band and ditching the camera. Along the way he managed a record store, then a child care centre, and then a program for kids with special needs before realising the error of his ways, and decided to study photography at Sydney College of The Arts.

Garry Trinh
Garry Trinh is an artist working in photography, video, painting and works on paper. He makes art about the uncanny, unexpected and spontaneous moments in daily life. He is perplexed by the perception of artists as coffee-drinking loafers who work whenever they feel like it. He doesn't even drink coffee. His works are about a way of looking at the world, to reveal magic in the mundane. He is never bored and never late.

Project Team

Wendy Murray, Artist/PROJECT LEAD

Wendy is an artist curator who has recently assembled a team of Sydney creatives to collaborate on a project to address the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the cultural sector and local City of Sydney Newtown community which we serve and work within. Her artworks & projects are informed by her knowledge of street art, poster art and social practices.
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SHOP FRONTS

This project has been conceived to support artists and re-energise one of the most significant cultural areas of Sydney - Newtown. Famous for its street art, performance spaces, shopping precinct, restaurants, cafes and small bars, Newtown has a strong community with a passion for creativity, thriving business and vibrant shared spaces. We have the ability to unify when faced with change and adversity and this project will serve as a catalyst to unleash our collective strength and uplift our spirits during the challenging Covid-19 crisis – a crisis that has seen businesses vacate King Street leaving a strip of dark, unoccupied shopfronts in a once colourful and lively streetscape. 

This project will connect artists and shop owners with each other and the Newtown community of residents, workers and visitors during and beyond the restricted trading conditions. We want to provide the artists with a stimulating project that has a clear outcome for the community and physical environment: revitalise the once bustling streets of Newtown with new creative works in the windows of closed now vacant storefronts to inspire and uplift the community.