Dweeb City
Audio description
Text description
- Title: Dweeb City (2023)
- Artist: Indo the Artist
- Wall size: 17 metres wide and approximately 7.5 metres high on average
- Location: 1 Metropolitan Road, Enmore
Dweeb City is an expansive and vibrant-coloured street artwork that occupies the entire side wall of a two-storey terrace house at 1 Metropolitan Road, Enmore, depicting local self-described "girl band from space", Dweeb City. Indo the Artist has depicted the group in a graphic, pop-art style, using a limited palette of bright, contrasting colours: with only pink, purple, yellow, green, white, black, two shades of blue and two shades of a warm tan for the band members' skin tones. This hyper-colourful graphic approach mirrors the band's aesthetic in performance, which is similarly vibrant.
1 Metropolitan Road is on the corner of Enmore Lane, in a residential neighbourhood situated just behind the string of restaurants, bars, shops and live music venues forming the busy entertainment precinct along Enmore Road. The artwork takes up the full left side wall of the two-storey terrace and interrupted by four windows – two functional glass windows on the second floor, and one functional window on the ground floor, with a second window on the ground floor that has been painted over. The top edge of the wall is stepped, following the irregular pitch of the terrace's roof. Lining a narrow gutter of the street below the work are ten white metal bollards, each approximately a metre high.
At the top left of the work, one of the band members Abigail Franklin whose alter ego band name was Scabman (pronounced scab-man) is depicted with their hair extending out beyond them to the left, right and below, filling the background of almost half of the work with swirling psychedelic patterns of blue and black that contain within them text: Food, Music, Love, Culture, Inspire. Atop her head, a section of graphic linework extends upwards, resembling a hat or headdress, with a black thunderbolt splitting a yellow background, and swirls of pink and tan interrupting the blue of her hair. Three purple stripes radiate out left of her head, over the pink background, below which flashes of purple and green interrupt the blue of her cascading graphic hair. The right half of her face is illustrated with a flash of pink running from her eye up her forehead, and vibrant blue eye makeup that runs down her cheek like tears or a paint splatter, with her pink lips framed with a similar effect in black running down her chin. The left half of her face is obscured in shadow. Green lightning bolts and yellow circular beads dangling down to yellow diamond shapes frame her face, suggesting earrings, and a pink and black swirl of fabric around her neck gives way to a radial white and blue design on her shirt, which flows borderlessly into the blue text-filled swirl of her hair below.
Underneath her, lying horizontally across the bottom of the artwork holding her head up with her right hand, is another band member, Susan Warner whose alter ego band name was Suman (pronounced sue-man). Her black hair cascades down from her tilted head behind her arm. She has blue eye makeup that moves up and out from her eyes to her hairline, and bright pink blush on her cheeks, with blue lips. On her right wrist, she wears eight beaded bracelets, in pink, green, blue and yellow. Her ears are not visible amidst her black hair; however, four coloured circles descend from her ear's position, each with a letter spelling the world GIRL inside them. Immediately to the right, her shirt displays in small black text the word POWER. Her t-shirt is black with swirls of pink, blue, and yellow, and over a green patch at the centre of the shirt, is a bright pink illustrated alien face. As her body continues towards the bottom right corner of the frame, she wears a yellow, pink and green horizonal striped skirt, dark blue tights, and pink, black, yellow and blue legwarmers, with white sneakers splattered with more pops of colour.
Above her feet near the right-side edge of the artwork, a third member of the band Sarah Hansen whose alter ego band name was Steelman (pronounced steel-man) is depicted from the shoulders up. She wears a shirt of pink and green with a black jacket with blue sleeves. Unlike the other band members, her face is stark white, giving her coloured makeup a dramatic appearance. She has blue lips lined with black, and dramatic cheek contour and eye makeup that is blue on the right and pink on the left. Her black hair has highlights of blue and pink, and has two small daisies in her hair, echoed by three larger daisies on the lapel of her jacket. She wears a tall skinny crown of black and blue, the tall points of which are also lined with daisies. To the right of her, the background of the mural is painted with a black and white checkerboard, extending to the edge of the work.
Finally, above her is the fourth and final member of the band, Daisy Knight whose alter ego band name was Taxman (pronounced tax-man). She wears a large headdress which has many points, each filled with swirls of bright colour with black shadows. She wears purple framed clear glasses over her eyes. Her eye makeup is painted in pink, blue and black drip marks, similar to her bandmate. Her hair under this headdress is voluminous, and filled with text, including "Love", "Girl Power", "Happiness", and "Safe". Her shirt is pink, green and yellow with black shadows, and its folds display the text "Lucky" and "Kindred Spirits". She holds her left arm up across her chest, bent at the elbow as if flexing a bicep, her hand closed in a fist. She wears nine beaded bracelets on this wrist, of green, purple, blue and yellow. To the right of her, four stripes of yellow, purple, green and black check, and pink radiate to the top right corner of the mural.
Two large yellow smiley faces are also present in the work, one near the bottom left corner, and one near the centre-top of the work between the band members. In the top left corner of the work, Indo the Artist has hand signed the work on its pink background in black graphic writing, matching the psychedelic style of the other text in the work.
This is the end of the audio description.