I Hear Your Call
Audio description
Text description
- Title: I Hear Your Call (2023)
- Artist: Pilar Basa
- Wall size: Varying between 2.5 metre and 4 metres high, 22.2 metres long
- Location: 175-183 Trafalgar Street, Stanmore
'I Hear Your Call' by Pilar Basa is located at 175-183 Trafalgar Street in Stanmore. A modern four-storey apartment building stands at this address, its hard concrete façade now adorned by a colourful street artwork twining across the exterior walls of the ground floor.
On the far left, on a surface of concrete and brick wall about two metres across, Basa has painted a massive magpie. His sharp beak is closed, his eye russet-red and glinting with curiosity. Behind his white-and-black-ruffled breast, vibrant bands of foliage stretch out – the green of tea, then of jade, then of olive. Three tendrils of new growth, flushed red and pink, complete the vignette.
Just to the right is Mina's Café, taking up half of the ground floor. On a pillar beside the glass door is another explosion of colour. Gum leaves of deepest green, mottled brown and red, dangle from above. Beside them, pink and red eucalyptus flowers nod under the weight of their blooms, each tongue tipped with golden pollen. The lemon-yellow starburst of a Murnong, or yam daisy, wraps around the bottom of the pillar.
Moving a few more metres to the right brings us to the entrance hall, the centre of this sprawling work. On the left side, a wild tangle of foliage crawls across two panels of concrete, with crinkle-edged gum leaves blending several muted greens. Three yam daisies, each almost a metre across, unfurl thin yellow petals towards the ceiling. Down the entrance passageway, near the doors, a tendril of pink and red cuts across the medley of greens.
On the right side of the entrance hall, more red and pink tendrils stretch skyward. Their lower leaves darken to olive green and thicken, taking on the squat boat shape distinct to the red-flowering gum. Moving towards the street, another red flower with tongues of pink and yellow blooms across the concrete canvas. More flowers, two red and one golden, surround the shining steel faces of the letterboxes. Pilar Basa's signature appears in the lower right, in soft pink capitals.
Returning to the street, we find ourselves face to face with another enormous magpie. This one has thrown her head back, her beak open in perpetual song. Her body is angled so that she seems to look past us with one russet-rimmed eye. The tousled black and dark grey feathers on her throat are offset by the serrated edges of the surrounding gum leaves. On her nape and wings, white feathers flash. In a small concrete box set into the wall, painted tea-green, the numbers 175-183 have been stencilled in white.
Further to the right, more gum leaves curl and twine across the concrete panel above the garage, almost reaching the first-floor balcony. On the angled interior wall, between the edge of the building and the perforated steel of the garage door, a flying fox hangs head-down. Its folded wings are black and grey, the fur on its throat red and russet. Its face has been painted with great detail, bringing life to the quizzical brown eyes, the fuzzy cheek, the pale grey nose and black nostrils. Its ears are perked and pointing downward, past a final cluster of green leaves.
'I Hear Your Call' brings the striking colours of the bush into an urban streetscape, creating an impression of overlapping, overflowing vitality where there is only concrete. Pilar Basa notes that she was inspired by the songs of wildlife surviving in the city – the calls of the magpies, the faded flowers of the Murnong, and the twilight chatter of the grey-headed flying foxes. She wanted to honour what we have, what we have lost and what we should fight to save.