Memory Lane
Audio description
Text description
- Title: Memory Lane (2023)
- Artist: Hugues Sineux
- Wall size: Between 2.2 and 4 metres high, 22.13 metres long.
- Location: 346 Young Street, Annandale
'Memory Lane' is a vivid mural by Hugues Sineux, located at 346 Young Street, Annandale. The street is wide and steep, rising towards an intersection. A huge, white-barked eucalypt stretches overhead. A two-story terrace house stands on the corner block, and its tall brick façade provides the space for Sineux to create a kind of cross-temporal gallery wall, offering glimpses into the history of the Annandale area. The mural covers the side of this two-story terrace house, reaching the sills of the first-floor windows. Windows, vents, ducts and doors interrupt the painted murals, resembling extra paintings in the gallery. A garden wall, roughly half the height of the house and descending in tiers with the slope of the street, extends to the left. The mural continues along this fence as well.
Sineux has painted an eye-catching geometric pattern as a background. Light blue diamonds with dark-blue borders interlock to form a pattern of larger octagons. In the centre of each octagon, there is a light blue square where a gold and silver flower blooms. This complex motif provides a backdrop for a series of five paintings with. Around each one, a gilded frame has been painted so as to give an impression of 3D depth on a two-dimensional plane.
Three of the paintings are sepia. One is brightly coloured. One more frame peaks out just above the pavement and seems to continue underground.
The leftmost painting, in landscape orientation, shows the sewer aqueduct arching across White's Creek as it was around 10 years ago. The sepia-toned image is immensely detailed, showing the land slanting down to the creek, the pitched roofs of an early housing settlement, the pickets of a long-lost fence, and the decorative vaults in the concrete of the aqueduct itself.
Beside it, in portrait orientation, appears an image of two "witches' houses", so named for their steep roofs, towers, arched windows and decorative façades. The witches' houses are set back from the street, protected by tall brick walls. Out the front, kerb-side, sit two cars from generations past – a distinguished motorcar with a cloth cabriolet, and the ancestor of a ute with a curved cab and a paint-job that was peeling even in the 19th century.
On the right side of the building, Sineux has painted the largest image in this gallery, depicting Johnston Street in 1880. In this image, the thoroughfare is wide and smooth. One horse-drawn cart pauses at a corner; another slowly approaches us. A third horse, still fully tacked, pauses to drink at a public water pump on the left. Behind its white flank rise steep-roofed houses in dark brick. Further back, the freestone spire of a church darts towards the sky. On the right side of the street stand several two-storey commercial buildings, their deep verandas trimmed with iron lacework, their corrugated iron roofing alternating sheets of silver and rust. Two large windows and the doorway into the terrace house punch through this painting, but they also seem like a part of it, suggesting a portal through time.
Between the sepia-tone paintings, close to the centre of the gallery, Sineux has placed a modern scene in vivid colour. One pillar of the aqueduct, the cement faded to shades of silver and cream, stands in the centre. At its foot, on the lush grass, local resident Eloise keeps watch on a small crowd of children. She crouches to help Wren, a toddler in a multi-coloured jumpsuit, to ride on his trike. To the right, a brown-haired boy named Renzo balances on a small red bicycle. To the left, a boxer dog with tan fur and a red collar sits back on her haunches.
Just above them, three children are climbing up the aqueduct. Archie, wearing a red jumper, is standing on top of the pillar, leaning forward, his knee crooked for balance. Lulu, wearing a pink jumper and a pale blue skirt, is sitting beside him with her knees drawn to her chest. Alfie, wearing a maroon cap and tan trousers, is leaning on a support beam partway up the vault.
Behind, around, even above the aqueduct twine the branches of verdant trees, white-fingered gums and tasselled reeds.
Just below this centrepiece, another golden frame peeks above street level. In the top left corner are the words PLAN OF NORTH ANNANDALE, to the right, a wash of pale water. The painting seems to sink below the pavement, extending below the ground.
If a visitor were to turn around, they would find the fully functional Annandale aqueduct stretching over Whites Creek, just across the road.