Fisher's Reserve Waterhole
Audio description
Text description
- Title: Fisher's Reserve Waterhole (2023)
- Artists: Alex Bebbington and Saltwater Dreamtime
- Wall size: 13 metres: 30 centimetres wide and 6.4 metres high.
- Location: 69 Palace Street, Petersham
Fisher's Reserve Waterhole is a street artwork depicting two water moths and a dragonfly overlaid against a Torres Strait Islander dot-work illustration of flowing waters. Remembering the waterhole and waters which flowed in place of the house that the artwork is painted upon and Fishers Reserve Road from where the artwork is viewable.
The wall upon which this artwork is painted is rectangular, tracing the full left side wall of the Palace Street terrace. The wall faces the street of a laneway, Fisher's Reserve, which is located in a residential neighbourhood in Petersham. The artwork can be seen by people travelling through the laneway, or by people travelling north along Palace Street away from the nearby Petersham Train Station.
The background of the work is painted a solid brown tan, matching the paint colour of the rest of the terrace walls. Over the top of this, Saltwater Dreamtime has painted a network of individual radial dot-work shapes in shades of blue, white and turquoise, their curved forms and the negative space that runs between them creating the effect of ripples in flowing water. Each of the shapes have slightly different proportions, but the dot-work that fills them is common across them, with circles of large and small dots radiating out from a central point. This network of watery shapes forms a band approximately six metres thick, that runs diagonally from the bottom left to the top right of the work.
Alex Bebbington's moth and dragonfly illustrations are laid over the top of Saltwater Dreamtime's water illustrations. Occupying the top left quarter of the work is a large depiction of a mistletoe moth. It appears almost triangular, with its small head and two thin curved antennae forming the top corner, with the curved ends of its two wings forming the other two. It is black in colour with thick white irregular horizontal stripes forming a regular but imprecise pattern on its wings, and a band of thinner vertical white stripes lining their ends at the bottom of the illustration. Between the two large wings, a narrow cylindrical looking body is black with similar white stripes, and a flash of orange on the lower tip of its body – the sole colour shown on the creature. The furry texture of the moth is evident in the brushstrokes of the painted depiction.
To the top right of the artwork, the white-stemmed acacia moth is depicted in flight – it has four distinctly visible wings, two on either side, which are splayed outward from a its central body. The moth is furry like the previous one, and its body is white, with a pattern on its wings of white with brown stripes, patches of pink, and tiny brown dots arranged in a line between the stripes. Its body is curved slightly towards its front, faced away from us, and two thicker white antennae extend out from the top of the moth's head.
In the bottom-right of the artwork, the Adam's emerald dragonfly is depicted flying towards the right out of frame. It has a long, narrow cylindrical body of yellow with patches of brown and fine yellow dot-detailing running down the length of its body. It thickens at its upper half, from which four fine membranous wings extend out from it, with two on either side. The wings appear white and slightly translucent, and across their entire surface a network of fine black lines create a web of folds across them. At the tip of the dragonfly's head, two large bulbous green eyes span its full width. Beneath its face, the artists have signed AY.BEBBS & SALTWATER DREAMTIME in black text against the brown background.
This is the end of the audio description.