Jonno Kong – King of the Park
Audio description
Text description
Jonno Kong – King of the Park
by Mulga, 2022
Johnson Park, Dulwich Hill
Inner West Council acknowledges the traditional custodians of these lands, the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation.
Jonno Kong – King of the Park is a large head and shoulders portrait painted on the back wall of a brick building backing onto the park. The wall is 9 metres wide and 7 metres high.
Jonno is a cartoon-like figure with bright pink hair and beard, and a yellow face with a slim black curled moustache above his grinning mouth. He wears bright blue heart-shaped sunglasses with two small palm trees painted onto each lens, and a dangling guitar-shaped earring in his ear. On his head is a lilac-coloured bucket hat the top of which is cut off by the top of the wall. The hat is printed with orange basketballs, red cricket balls and black and white soccer balls which reference the games which are played in the park. His pale blue open-necked shirt is also patterned but with a print of foxes and chickens which reference the local feral foxes that prey upon backyard chickens.
A kookaburra which is a regular visitor to the park sits on Jonno's shoulder reaching to the bottom of his hat. The bird is coloured yellow, pink and blue and it also wears sunglasses which are black-rimmed with bright green lenses each with the silhouette of two small palm trees on them. Jonno and the kookaburra both look out to the right.
The background of the portrait is smoothly painted with a series of broad wavy lines of alternating pale and dark pink. They fan out from behind Jonno to the edges of the mural.
The portrait of Jonno Kong, with a clashingly vibrant palette of pinks, yellows and purples shows an arresting, cheerful and guardian of the park.
This artwork was commissioned by Inner West Council through Perfect Match, a program matching artists with community to collaboratively produce site specific street art.
Audio description written by Vision Australia, and voiced by Nas Campanella.