“Welcome to Redfern” involved local Aboriginal kids who were taught different street art techniques, like painting, stencils and spray-painting, in workshops led by Aboriginal (Gamilaroi) Melbourne artist Reko Rennie. Reko is also responsible for the vivid pink-patterned mural unveiled last year on the T2 building in Taylor Square, now a permanent artwork.
Reko told the SSH how he got involved in the project: “I was asked by Hetti Perkins, who’s curating the program, as well as the community and the City of Sydney. They were interested in helping me organise workshops with local Aboriginal kids; looking at ways for the kids to express what the community means to them; looking at the past, the future and the present; and using imagery that would represent contemporary Aboriginal identity.”
The mural not only utilises the colours of the Aboriginal flag, it also includes paste-ups of famous figures of Aboriginal history, like resistance fighter Pemulwuy, as well as life-size painted portraits of young Aboriginal people. “They’re a very talented bunch of kids,” said Reko. “It’s been really amazing, because they brought a lot of ideas – about what the area represents to them, about history, about who they are as Aboriginal people today. I think it’s really important for the youth to have a voice, and it’s really important that public murals like this support the local identity, and support and nurture kids to express who they are.”
Nahdia Noter, Tyrelle McGrath, Trae Campbell, Ji Duncan-Weatherby, Brandon Phillips, Isaac Phillips, Josh Addo and Josh Nolan are the Aboriginal young artists who worked on the project with Reko Rennie. Seventeen year-old Trae Campbell said: “It’s a part of our culture, heaps of us have grown up here; it’s important for the people, just to remember where we come from and where we’re going in the future.”
Nahdia Noter said that “working on this project has been a big eye opener to our history and how important it is, and how important culture is and how we need to take pride; how we all need to come together to work on something like this to display our culture and our history”.
It’s a history that until recently has not been easy for the public to access, said Lord Mayor Clover Moore in her opening speech: “We have the world’s oldest continuing culture, a living part of our city with an extraordinary past and a vibrant present, and there’s a continuous thread in that story and that’s what we’re seeking to celebrate. Up until now, shamefully, the public monuments in the public spaces of Sydney have told very little of that story, and that’s what we want to change. We’re working with you to redress the balance, and we’re doing it through the Eora Journey.”
The terrace house on which the temporary mural was painted will eventually house a living museum of Redfern and The Block. Hetti Perkins, Eora Journey’s Curatorial Advisor said: “They [the young Aboriginal kids] will be able to show their kids and grandchildren what Redfern was like for them back in the day. I think it will be a significant contribution to Australia.”
