A final look at street art from Darwin, Australia from my recent trip
The artwork is signed G Miles, but what makes it is how it interacts with the landscape around it, a cage made of shadows (I could say all cages are made of shadows, and you could take that as a profound statement about life and how we all build our own cages and about how we need to shine the light to free ourselves, but this is a examination of street art I saw which on holiday somewhere warm and free so let's just get on with it)
Australian's will know this this scene, maybe from the history taught in schools, more likely from the Paul Kelly song - This is Vincent Lingiari one of the pioneers of land rights from Aboriginal Australians and Gough Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister in 1975 when Vincent after 9 years of fighting was granted 'ownership' of his own Gurindji tribal land.
Symbolically Gough picked up a handful of dirt and handed it back to Vincent, it wasn't a photo op, but it is a famous photo by Meryn Bishop (who was working for the National Indigenous Australians Agency at the time)
Of course there are many sides to Darwin, It is named after Charles Darwin - even though he never visited Darwin. Weirdly it was 'discovered' by people sailing a ship called 'The Beagle' around 1832 - If that ship sounds familiar to you it's the same one Charles Darwin was on for his famous journey to the Galapagos island about 5 year previous. The Captain like him so much he named Darwin the place after him.
Whilst we are on a bit of a people phase there is this nice piece which seems a little spiritual
And finally let's discuss scale - one of things I really like about Darwin's Street art is not that it is hidden done alleyways and on the back of building like Melbourne's is, but rather this is big, it can all be seen from a distance, it's proud and it's out there.
This bird is about four stories high
This turtle likewise, easily five people high
This piece although on the rear of the building can be seen for blocks.
