Gone bananas

Gone Bananas

2020 137 x 114 in / 350 x 290 cm
Printed in Sydney, AUS

Wendy Murray was a recent recipient of one of the City of Sydney Covid-19 relief grants, the Creative Fellowship Grant. Her work The New Views Poster Project @newviewsposters will see Murray guide eight artists through the process of creating large site-specific posters for the windows of vacant, closed or partially operating businesses on King Street in Newtown. Each New Views Poster will be handmade using traditional poster making methods – paint, stencils and drawing. Collaborative artists include Tina Havelock Stevens, Jackson Farley, Molly Wagner, Sarah Edmondson, Toby Zoates, Thea Perkins, and ZAP.

Murray says many artists have lost access to their studios or can’t afford to rent them, so the project is making use of tiled methods rather than large single posters. She says this lack of access to workspaces is just one of the profound ways she and her peers have been impacted by the lockdown. “As an artist and educator, my practice centres on building connections with people, so the impact of Covid-19 on my work has been devastating. Classes, exhibitions and residencies were all cancelled. “Seeing my colleagues and networks in the creative sector suffer in the same way inspired me to design an innovative way to maintain our arts practice.” King Street is also home to the site of the Tin Sheds Art Collective. From the 1970s, Tin Sheds, just down the road, at from the University of Sydney, was the originator of some of Australia’s most renowned and original political poster art.