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We support and
house local artists

We are commissioning works from local artists to help create a sense of time and place; works that engage with the history of East Brunswick and the site’s industrial past, along with the culturally diverse community and urban environment of today. The artwork looks forward too, encapsulating our hopes and wishes for the future.

There will be artworks in a range of mediums including sculpture, painting, photography and murals spread throughout EBV, helping to ensure that art is a part of everyday life. Here are some examples.

Sculptor William Heathcote

Originally from Tasmania, Will Heathcote has shown nationally and internationally in group and solo shows, public commissions, collaborations and projects.

Sculptor William Heathcote

ARTIST BIO

Originally from Tasmania, Will Heathcote has shown nationally and internationally in group and solo shows, public commissions, collaborations and projects.
With a Masters of Fine Art and Bachelor with Honours from the VCA (2017, 2015), Will has been the successful recipient of the 2018 Wingate Fellowship and the Australia Council’s New Work Grant (2014). He has been selected to take part in curated shows such as the 2019 NGV Design Week, SPRING1883 (2018) and ART150’s 9x5Now at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery (2017). Will has also been shortlisted for the Darebin Art Award (2017), Deakin Small Sculpture Award (2018), Keith and Elisabeth Travelling Fellowship (2017), McClelland Sculpture Award (2012), Hatched 2011 at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and the Victoria Harbour Young Artist Initiative (2010).
Will has undertaken research and studio residencies at 1Shanthiroad in Bangalore, India (2016) and Watch this Space in Alice Springs (2014) and has also enjoyed collaborating on many funded public arts projects including 24crt Bluestsone – a recent public commission for Banco’s East Brunswick Village, Dwelling: that launched the 2015 Big West Festival and Now You See Me that was part Federation Square’s Light in Winter Festival (2016).

ARTIST STATEMENT

Will Heathcote’s sculptural works fix an experience of a place by taking impressions from specific sites and reworking them in the studio. Through site-specific mould-making and gold metal gilding techniques this work presents fragments collected from the site and spatially installed into the East Brunswick Village Display Suite. Cloaked in gold, cast in aluminium and propped on timber veneer bases the raw and uncut material forms become objects that resonate with the iconic use of bluestone in Melbourne’s architectural history and with the EBV site more specifically as it was extensively quarried.
With an interest in the ways in which we engage with the landscape and its material make-up, this work highlights the selected forms as both unassuming fragments of a quarry and a physically impressive material that has gradually formed over millennia. These spatial arrangements are a framework for encountering the geological make-up of a place and the mechanical processes used to transform the landscape into the architectural make-up of the city.
“I’ve been commissioned to be an artist in residence at EBV. Working with raw materials and cast impressions from the site; this project engages with the landscape through the process of making.”
“Basalt, or bluestone, forms a large part of the material makeup of the landscape of Melbourne’s inner north. I’m intrigued by the way volcanic rock – basalt – that was formed millions of years ago is now being utilised to inform the architecture of this city. At EBV, I’m working with the basalt that’s been extracted from the site. A lot of it is being milled up and turned into pavers for the village; I’m gilding a large raw fragment in 24 carat gold leaf. I’m also taking moulds from the site, and casting smaller sculptural pieces that will be part of the development’s display suite phase. Essentially, I’m taking and recreating impressions of a place working with geological material and formations from the location itself.”

@willheathcote_art
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Artist Al Stark

Al Stark’s artistic practice ranges from installation, wall painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, studio painting and tattooing. Operating outside of conventional art institutions he has been able to make his own space and a unique personal trajectory and living through commissioned painting, tattooing and exhibition practice.

Artist Al Stark

ARTIST BIO

Al Stark’s artistic practice ranges from installation, wall painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, studio painting and tattooing. Operating outside of conventional art institutions he has been able to make his own space and a unique personal trajectory and living through commissioned painting, tattooing and exhibition practice.
In utilising a diverse range of interrelating mediums Al is to form a broad visual language that can be applied to an array of different contexts and give his practice depth and momentum.
His work forms a personal theatre that explores gender, politics, religion, nature and more recently the collective anxiety of ecocide. It forms an exploration of the human psyche and its relation to the universe through landscape, the figurative and a heavy dose of abstract symbolism. Regardless of context or medium it is work that wants to say something.
Al has been central figure in the progression of the Melbourne street art movement since its inception in the late 90s, his public work more recently forming lyrical narratives in massive colour and symbolism that seeks to engage our environmental concerns and our responsibilities to them. It is work that serves as a spiritual offering and transcendence, addressing fundamental questions of what it means to be human in this point in time.
Currently maintaining an exhibition and commission based practice, Al has an extensive list of collectors and clients including Hotel Hotel, Sheraton hotel, Westfield and the National Gallery of Australia. He is currently represented by Backwoods Gallery and Creative road Arts projects.

ARTIST STATEMENT

‘Bush birds and mountains’
E.B.V wall painting Commission
March 2020.
This series of work is a continuation of Australian bush and landscape themes, combining new colour ways that explore the filters through which we view nature. With recent climate events the bush and our native animals are something that has occupied the collective consciousness, a signifier of concerning times.
As with all commissioned wall painting my approach considers firstly the space and how a work will feel and function in its particular context. As the corridors of the EBV apartments is a transitory walk through space and quite confined, the aim was to keep all elements of the work quite gestural and open.
The use of large sections of flat pastel colours seek to create a sense of soft light and space, whilst the energy in the line work maintains a painterly aspect. Gestural representations of Australian bush, birds and landscape form a floating narrative that also leaves the work suggestive and open rather than a specific narrative.
With these elements I hope to maintain a soft sensibility of floating pastel and a dream like narrative to compliment the subconscious of those that walk through, and live with the work every day.

@alstarkruins
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Fine Artist Vexta

Vexta is a fine artist from Melbourne, Australia. Vexta is recognized in the street art scene as one of the leading female artists.

Fine Artist Vexta

ARTIST BIO

Vexta is a fine artist from Melbourne, Australia.
Vexta is recognized in the street art scene as one of the leading female artists. This has been evidenced by the support she has received from influential players such as Banksy, who invited her to show along side him in London at the 2008 Cans Festival, as well as being represented and credited in his highly successful film, Exit Through The Gift Shop. She was also recently a feature artist the inaugural Outpost Street Art Festival in Sydney Australia in 2012.
Integral to Vexta’s practice is bringing art to the people on the streets and as such she has generated a large following in Australia, Europe & the Americas. She is most famously known for her stencil paintings and wheat-pastes which draw from cultural visual debris, herself taught aesthetic and an ongoing exploration of printmaking and painting. These works have been seen on the streets of Paris, Sydney, Mexico City, Bogota, San Francisco and New York to name a few.
Her iconic psychedelic, neon drenched artworks are influenced by a personal symbolism and a greater urban mythology which connect the dots between the personal and the universal, our waking lives & the dreams beneath them, between acute cultural commentary and aching beauty.
She has work held in major collections, including The National Gallery of Australia and recently she was included in the definitive Thames & Hudson World of Art: Street Art & Graffiti book (2012) as one of only 4 female street artists.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Title – Flight Sequence

This work aims to evoke a dreamy and joyful notion of freedom whilst acknowledging that within that idea of freedom we are still all connected to each other. The diamond shapes play and float down the walls representing the subatomic particles that make up all matter whilst also mapping the flight path of the birds. The constellations in the wings of the birds are imagined from another galaxy or perspective far away. A reference to the idea that birds can use the stars to navigate and a reminder to the viewer to remember to look up at the night sky.

@vexta
@east_brunswick_village

Artist Joanne Mott

BREATHE PLANTS – PLANTS BREATHE

Based in Central Victoria, Joanne Mott has been a practicing artist for the past 20 years. Her broad range of artworks include Collage, Sculpture, Installation, New Media and Site Responsive Art. Her works engage the themes of ecologies, environment, sustainability and placemaking, a perfect fit for her Breathe Plants – Plants Breathe living installation at EBV.

Artist Joanne mott

Breathe Plants – Plants Breathe is composed of two living art walls that convey messages relating our interconnectedness with plant-life.

 

Composed of 3 three layers, the first is a sculptural trellis depicting the silhouettes of Star Jasmine plants, the second is living Jasmine plants twining up and through the trellis and thirdly text which floats across the constantly transforming walls of vines.

 

The two artwalls can be experienced from different perspectives, allowing the circular poetics of the text to be interpreted in multiple ways. Depending on our path, we may encounter the words “breathe plants” or “plants breathe”, underscoring the connection between humans and the botanical world.

 

This site-responsive installation actively enhances the wellbeing of both the local environment and the people within it. By incorporating living plants, the air quality is improved, and the presence of Jasmine flowers, with their scent compound Linalool, which are known to alleviate stress and uplift moods.

 

The artist wishes to acknowledge the team, including Dr John Power and Rock Martin fabricators.

@joannemott.art
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Artist Robert Hague

WEST ELEVATION LARGE EXTERNAL WALL

Robert Hague’s lithographic prints bring together the feel and grandeur of antiquity with an often-biting commentary on the modern world. By embracing classical techniques, he manages to make the bitter into the sweet and shows us that contemporary art can be timeless.

Artist Robert Hague

ARTIST BIO

Robert Hague’s lithographic prints bring together the feel and grandeur of antiquity with an often-biting commentary on the modern world. By embracing classical techniques, he manages to make the bitter into the sweet and shows us that contemporary art can be timeless. His plate series ‘Porcelaine’ employs the metaphor of the domestic souvenir dish, a decorative object that speaks of the politics and culture of the collector, decoration as meaning, pattern as ownership and our desire for a cultural belonging.
All of the plates depicted are broken and of this Hague says that “against expectations it is our scars that tell the story of our lives and that it is this that makes us beautiful.”
Robert Hague is an artist who brings an impeccable skill set to the contemporary scene. Throughout his work he revels in ambiguity, conveying simultaneously elements of the heavy and light, the fixed and fluid, the brutal and the tender. He works across numerous media including, printmaking, video, painting and installation but with a concentration on sculpture, in both metal and stone.
From his studio in Newport, Melbourne, he has exhibited widely and is represented in major public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2019 his work was the subject of a retrospective at the Casula Powerhouse (Sydney). Recent exhibitions include ‘Common Ground’ at NGV International, ‘New Prints’ at IPC New York, ‘The Megalo International Print Prize’ (Canberra), ‘Porcelaine’ at Turner Galleries (Perth), the Blake Prize (awarded the Blake Residency), ‘CRUSH’ at Fehily Contemporary, the ‘Wynne Prize’ at AGNSW and ‘Inaugural’ at Nicholas Projects.
Robert migrated to Australia 30 years ago from small town NZ. He has two young sons.
All lithographs printed with the care and assistance of Lancaster Press.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Telling the Bees (after Troedel) 2020, lithograph on cotton rag, 56 x 72 cm, edition of 25 2020, paste-up, 450 x 600 cm
The sun sets over Merri Creek (Troedel, 1865) and the metropolis of Melbourne (2020) whilst a lone figure sits on the East Brunswick river bank Telling the Bees (Hans Thoma, 1863) – an ancient cross-cultural tradition of confiding important events with the hive.

Our love and emotional need for communion with nature here demonstrates our connection to place.
Blue Flax Lily (Dianella revoluta) frames this quiet moment of reflection. An Aboriginal Coolamon (bowl) lays beside him, empty. It is unclear what the news is, and this is an important unresolved space for the viewer to insert themselves.

@robert_hague
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Multidisciplinary Artist
Datsun Tran

LOBBY ENTRANCE BUILDING A

Datsun Tran is a multidisciplinary artist and first generation Australian from Chinese refugee parents. His highly personal work has been influenced by all facets of his life, whilst paying homage to his Chinese heritage with suggestions of ancient calligraphy techniques and motifs.

Multidisciplinary Artist
Datsun Tran

ARTIST BIO

Datsun Tran is a multidisciplinary artist and first generation Australian from Chinese refugee parents. His highly personal work has been
influenced by all facets of his life, whilst paying homage to his Chinese heritage with suggestions of ancient calligraphy techniques and motifs.
Tran’s animal-laden paintings of acrylic and metallic leaf that are self-investigative, yet political as he often reflects upon his own experiences of cultural diversity and explores issues of immigration, entitlement and ownership within Australia.
His animal subjects are often caught in surreal stillness, in the midst of chaos, and in awe-inspiring landscapes.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The mural draws from the artists ongoing creative subject matter, which mainly features animals, but the work is about us, the human story. It’s a story about the two sides to us: competition and community. The determination we have to better ourselves, and our ability to cooperate and form communities, which has seen us flourish.
The humble bee has been declared the most important living being on the planet. For the lobby entrance wall, the artist seeks to highlight community spirit, how our fate, and that of the bee are inextricably linked. The wall will feature a scene of sublime beauty to inspire. A visual manifestation of the cyclical nature of life, timeless and sustainable.
As well as the bee, the mural will be teeming with the flora and birds of the area. All of this will be depicted in a gold leaf over the dark background. It will be dynamic and full of movement, also, highly detailed so the residents can explore and find something new each time they decide to take a moment out of their busy days to ponder.
The finished work will foster community pride whilst encouraging visitors to make the wall a destination. It will be a symbol of our connection to one another, and an acknowledgement that we’re all on this journey together.

@datsuntran
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Painting and Drawing
Saffron Newey

Saffron Newey’s practice has long been painting and drawing as arbiters of historical narrative.

Painting and Drawing
Saffron Newey

RESIDENTIAL HALLWAYS
ARTIST BIO

Saffron Newey’s practice has long been painting and drawing as arbiters of historical narrative. Equally compelling to her are the ways in which painting absorbs the world of technology (photographs, digital media, the Internet). November, 2019 saw the completion of her PhD project in Fine Art by APA scholarship at RMIT University. Central to her PhD and current practice are art history and its representation in an online environment.
Saffron Newey lives and works in Melbourne.

ARTIST STATEMENT

At EBV Saffron Newey has depicted Brunswick’s local Merri Creek, as it was painted by Swiss-Australian artist, Abram Lois Buvelot, in the late19th Century. Buvelot’s legacy is most deserving of celebration. He was one of the first European-Australians to depict Australia’s unique light and flora accurately; unlike the Eurocentric visions recorded by many of his colonial forbearers. He was, in fact, a precursor to the famous Heidelberg school of which Tom Roberts and Fred McCubbin are famed – indeed Buvelot was a mentor to the group. Abram Lois Buvelot has been a pertinent subject of research for Newey in the recent completion of a Ph.D. in Fine Art at RMIT University. It has been a lovely opportunity to further her knowledge of his vast oeuvre. In homaging Buvelot’s paintings, Newey has chosen a contemporary palette of bright hues. The artist makes her own paint from Langridge powder pigments and applies them as both acrylic and oil layers upon the wall.
Saffron Newey 2020

@saffron_newey
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Street and Graffiti Artist
Elle

ELLE’s work is evocative, alluring, lavish, outrageous, purposeful and informative. Although she began as an illegal graffiti artist in New York, ELLE is now considered one of the top touring street artists.

Street and Graffiti Artist
Elle

ARTIST BIO

ELLE’s work is evocative, alluring, lavish, outrageous, purposeful and informative. Although she began as an illegal graffiti artist in New York, ELLE is now considered one of the top touring street artists. “ELLE has created some of the most memorable walls in all streetart” – Women Street Artists, book by Xavier Tapies.
Her work has been exhibited in the prestigious Saatchi Gallery in London, Urban Nation Museum in Berlin, and as a two hundred foot tall projection onto the facade of the New Museum in New York. Vogue Australia featured ELLE’s recent artworks in “32 pieces of Melbourne street art to see before you die,” and her graffiti is featured in the Tom Clancy video game: The Division. “She holds specific and hard to find creative talent which cannot be taught nor replicated.” The Taboo Group. Her artwork has been published in dozens of books on streetart along with hundreds of online publications and articles.
ELLE was approached to collaborate with sportswear brand Reebok. The brief was to take her energetic street style and apply it to clothing. The result, the ELLExReebok graffiti legging and subsequently, the ELLExReebok yoga capsule collection.
Within the New Nike Headquarters in Melbourne, one will find a 40 meter wrap around painting by ELLE. If in Berlin, one might see an Augmented reality installation with Samsung, as well as a 5 story wall along Gorlizer park commissioned by Berlin Mural Festival. She joined Steve Aoki headlining in an Asics Campaign “I Move Me” speaking on how her creativity is inspired by movement, and starred alongside Dani Leigh in an episode of a Graffiti Artists x Rappers TV show. She touts a past global collaboration with Ikea, invitations to work with Kanye West’s creative agency, Curio, and more.
Although ELLE spends most of her time painting buildings she has recently embarked on a number of exhibitions. ELLE was invited to be Artist in Residence inside of the Rialto Towers precinct in Melbourne where she had her first Solo exhibition in Australia in December of 2018, “A Space for Sinners,” followed by a joint Exhibition and painting of a large scale public sculpture with renowned artist Judith Wierseman in Amsterdam at Vroom and Varossieau Gallery in 2019.
“Brooklyn’s ELLE is at the front of a pack of female street and graffiti artists clawing their way into what has historically been a male-run art scene” -arianagneri.com.

ARTIST STATEMENT

ELLE references not only the natural environment of the Brunswick area but also the wider Australian landscape. Exploring the different shapes of the Australian Great Barrier Reef, ELLE creates a unique tropical floral world and creates new stories by collaging disparate images: flora and fauna, classical paintings juxtaposed with pop-culture and high fashion imagery.
Inspired by the rooftop gardens at EBV, ELLE plays with textures and hand paints and spray paints to create different dimensions in her collage-esque tropical jungle landscape.

@ellestreetart
@east_brunswick_village
@marsgallery

Artist Melanie Young

“I lived in the East Brunwsick/ North Fitzroy area for about 10 years in various share houses throughout the 1990’s. I must have ridden my bike along the Merri creek almost every day.”

Artist Melanie Young

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I lived in the East Brunwsick/ North Fitzroy area for about 10 years in various share houses throughout the 1990’s. I must have ridden my bike along the Merri creek almost every day.

Significant sites like the old quarry, Ceres and the old market gardens plots were very familiar to me. Even though the Merri is so close to the city, the native plants and birds that have remained connect people to the wider natural world.”

Young references the native flora of the Merri, the brick/pottery works and the multicultural nature of the Brunswick community. She uses pattern not unlike a tiled wall or hanging embroidery/weave. The ‘tiles’ are decorative using a stylized form of different wild flowers from the Merri creek, in particular the edible ones; Yam daisy, Chocolate lilli, Kangaroo apple for example. The embroidery design references, Italian folk design, Greek ,Islamic, Chinese and Victorian patterns.”

@east_brunswick_village

Artist Linda Sukamta

Linda Sukamta, an artist residing at EBV, uses Cyanotypes, one of the oldest photographic printing processes in the history of photography.

Artist Linda Sukamtag

Linda Sukamta, an artist residing at EBV, uses Cyanotypes, one of the oldest photographic printing processes in the history of photography. The inspiration behind this series came from her time as a garden club member, being surrounded by the rooftop’s vegetation. The distinctive feature of cyanotype is its shade of cyan blue, a result from the exposure of iron salts to ultraviolet light.
Her works include: Calling the Bees – Cyanotype botanical, Allen’s Artichoke, Happy Umbels, Swiss Chard, Onion Flower, Calendula, Our Sunflower
They can be found in foyer leading up to the rooftop gardens of 9 Village Ave

@lindasukamta

Artist John Aslanidis

John Aslanidis’ paintings occupy a space between vision and sound, an interdisciplinary approach, which has a correlation with music, mathematics and science.

Artist John Aslanidis

John Aslanidis’ paintings occupy a space between vision and sound, an interdisciplinary approach, which has a correlation with music, mathematics and science.

Sonic no.72 is the second wall mural that Aslanidis has produced since completing his first wall painting, Sonic Network no 18 at for Longchamp Omatesando Tokyo in 2017.

He painted the mural onto the wall of the display suite over a five-day period. John is helping to bring EBV’s spaces to life through his Sonic Network series, which evokes a sense of ore and wonder. John takes an interdisciplinary approach that correlates to music, mathematics, and science, and says his paintings occupy a space somewhere between sound and vision.

@sonictiger
@east_brunswick_village

Artist Maximillian Malone

Maximillian Malone is a cut and paste fanatic with an endless appetite for paper scraps. Collage is at the heart of his practice, as he combines a variety of source materials to create new worlds.

Artist Maximillian Malone

Maximillian Malone is a cut and paste fanatic with an endless appetite for paper scraps. Collage is at the heart of his practice, as he combines a variety of source materials to create new worlds. Malone was commissioned to create a live performance decoupage piece during EBV’s Meet the Creatives Conversation evening.

@maximillian.malone
@east_brunswick_village