ART SITES - Creative Hoarding Program
Creative hoarding installed in Salamanca. Artwork by Kat Scarlet. Photo credit: Andrew Wilson
Creative Hobart is running a two-year trial program to present art and design concepts as printed artwork on commercial and civil construction hoardings in Hobart.
Tasmanian artists, designers, and creative collectives were invited to propose engaging artworks to enliven our streets on a large scale. An expression of interest process held in May 2023 received 80 submissions.
The City of Hobart's Public Art Framework(PDF, 4MB) identifies Expression as one of its key strategic directions. Within this direction is an emphasis on activating city spaces and places with temporary and ephemeral art projects.
Commercial and civil development occurs across our city, with construction sites requiring solid fencing (hoardings) and/or mesh and scrim fencing to protect the public from work being undertaken. These are necessary for safety, but they often encroach on footpaths and roadways and impact the visual appeal of our city streets.
Four artists were selected for this trial to each produce a design.
If you are a commercial construction and development company and are interested in having a Creative Hoarding installed for an upcoming Hobart municipality project, please email publicart@hobartcity.com.au.
Artists
Robert O'Connor
Artist bio
Robert O'Connor is a Tasmanian-based artist working primarily in painting and installation. Since graduating from UTAS in 2007 he has consistently exhibited nationally and internationally.
His work is about meaning-making and ambiguity with the belief that artworks contain ideas but do not necessarily need to communicate them clearly – that is the job of advertising.
He has a strong personal distrust of people with clear and uncomplicated opinions and therefore his work is open to contradiction and complexity rather than being didactic and resolved.
Infinite Regress
Infinite Regress is part of an ongoing project that seeks to negate the role of a solo artist via collaboration and collage. The series of work began in collaboration with Stray Pages Press [Melbourne] and was further developed during an Arts Tasmania Education Residency at Hobart College in 2022 and the Poimena Gallery residency program at Launceston Church Grammar School in 2023.
The resulting installation is deliberately confusing bricolage of imagery. It shows the life as it is - a big harmless enigma that we complicate with labels and language. The paintings are not pre-planned and have no single focal point. Instead, the works form a bombardment of images akin to endless scrolling on social media or stupid AI generated content. This incongruous bricolage embodies an absurdity that exists in daily life, online spaces and, in particular, Australian cultural identity.
The individual works that make up this set of images are not arranged in any particular order and have no intentional relationship to one another. The aim is to let the viewer find or invent connections on their own with no single interpretation being any more nor less valid than any other.
Daniel Gray-Barnett
Artist bio
Daniel Gray-Barnett is an award-winning illustrator and author who lives in the Huon Valley.
Self-taught, he studied Medical Science before swapping his microscope for pencils when he realised illustration had a much lower patient mortality rate. Since then, he's worked with clients such as Jansz, Kiehl's, The New York Times, Sydney Opera House, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Facebook and Disney.
His first book Grandma Z won the Children's Book Council of Australia award for New Illustrator. It was chosen by the International Youth Library as a White Raven and has won awards from the Society of Illustrators NY, featuring in their Original Art exhibition, which showcases the year's best children's books published in the US.
His illustrations also appear in books by best-selling author Sally Rippin, Zoë Foster Blake and the Poems Aloud series by Joseph Coelho, who is the current Children's Laureate for the UK.
Small Things Like These
Small Things Like These plays with the scale of things that are easily overlooked, compelling us to take notice of fungi and the vital role they play in our world.
"I'm interested in exploring our changing relationship with the natural world. I'm particularly fascinated by Tasmania's wonderful variety of fungi - often small things which are incredibly diverse, colourful and intricate. We don't usually notice fungi unless we go out of our way to find them, but if you spend time in our forests, you'll discover an incredibly large world of beauty and life. Evidence indicates that fungi are intelligent - communicating, making decisions, capable of learning and possessing short-term memory."
Kat Scarlet
Artist bio
Kat Scarlet is a Huon Valley based artist whose practice includes painting, illustration, fabric design, tattooing and mixed media sculpture. Her work focuses on the natural environment viewed through a hyper-colour lens, with a particular emphasis on detail and pattern.
Kat has exhibited her work nationally. Her 2021 show titled Suspended Breath; a Hartz Journey examined and re-imagined the Hartz Mountains National Park. This exhibition was toured to both Huon Valley Council and City of Hobart. Kat was subsequently commissioned by Huon Valley Council to design a series of banners to celebrate pride week 2022. Kat was a prize winner in the 2022 Artfully Queer Exhibition in Salamanca and she founded and curated the first LGBTIQ+ group show in the Huon Valley which displayed prize winners in the Art Box in both Huonville and Hobart.
Suspended breath; a Hartz Journey
Suspended breath; a Hartz Journey is a love letter to Southern Tasmania's Hartz Mountain National Park. Over regular visits through the course of a year, the artist immersed herself in the wild beauty of this place; absorbing the majesty of the mountains, lakes and tarns and delighting in the tiny details, colour and texture of the alpine plateaus. Kat wants to transport the viewer away from their everyday life, out to the beauty of the Tasmanian mountains.
"I have interpreted the national park in a vivid, hyper-colour, patterned mosaic of layers using acrylic paint on board. These panels are a collage of several of my paintings for the Suspended Breath series, lovingly coaxed and cajoled together to form these continuous and joyous runs of colour and form."
Michelle Maynard
Artist bio
Michelle Maynard is a contemporary Tasmanian First Nations designer and artist. Her creative practice moves across digital design, print, collage, installation, creative production, fashion and textiles. Through her work, she accentuates visual acknowledgement, memory in place and untold story. Empowering the memory of her people and breaking down false and cruel perceptions inspires her approach and practice.
Michelle's work is often full of intense colours of country to evoke feeling that mirrors the truth that is First Nations people's beauty, vibrancy and playfulness.
Passionate about advocating for her people and country through art and design, Michelle is powerfully motivated from the core of her family and their history on the Cape Barren Island Reserve. Sustainable practice, maintaining cultural responsibility and respectful care and consideration for country and people, are central to her practice.
Thousands of Generations of Ancestors
Thousands of Generations of Ancestors is the imaginings of past generations, patterns and layers of story, dancing, ceremony. Vibrant and playful it echoes the thousands of generations of ancestors that stand behind us.