In 2019 my artwork was selected for the Melbourne Art Tram series as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.
It was an honour for my work featured on such a unique canvas, and for it to be accessible to such a wide audience throughout Melbourne.
The artwork I created is compiled form a series of colour etchings I made entitled ‘I think we were friends once, maybe’. The original works looked at relationships between friends. For me, the individual artworks told a story about a desire to connect to other people but also the fear of reaching out and potential rejection.
The work I made for the Melbourne Art Tram took these individual pieces and layered all the structures on top of one another to create a giant collage. Their meaning changed from one of longing and isolation, to representing connection and community.
The composition is a balance of shapes, just like a democratic and multicultural community is a balance of people, with no one part dominating the others. A community is made of many different people and it is the uniqueness of each of these people that makes a community stronger and more beautiful.
See the video below for an insight into the creative process behind this project.
Photos by James Morgan