Naughty Gong in Little Vietnam

Audio description

Text description

• Title: Naughty Gong in Little Vietnam (2024)
• Artist: Christina Huynh (Stynabyna)
• Wall size: 4m height x 39m width
• Location: 278 Illawarra Road, Marrickville

This work of street art, ‘Naughty Gong in Little Vietnam’, was created by Christina Huynh in 2024. It is located at 278 Illawarra Road in Marrickville, and has been painted on a wall of a Vietnamese restaurant named ‘Hello Auntie’. The wall of narrow, pitted brick gives the mural its dimensions – 4m tall, 39m long. The work twines together six scenes reflecting Australian and Vietnamese culture. The images shift between times and settings, countries and centuries, moving from the quiet backstreets towards the bustling thoroughfare with its cafés and eateries.

The first image on the left shows a tree sparrow emerging from a birdhouse with a round door and pitched roof. Bird and house share sober colours – brown, tan, grey and black – which stand out against a background of pale yellow and soft green. Both are larger than life. The birdhouse nearly reaches the roof, and the sparrow measures more than a metre from tip to tailfeathers. His black eyes, rimmed with white, gleam with a mote of reflected light.

In his beak, the sparrow clutches a sprig of vibrant green herbs. At his feet tumble brightly coloured fruit – purple mangosteen, soft yellow langsat, water apples with rich russet skin, red rambutans with pale green spines.

Petals of gold and red drift to the right, towards the next scene. A street vendor wearing a rough-spun tunic of undyed cloth and a steep-sided straw hat, the Vietnamese nón lá, is lifting a carrying pole over their right shoulder. Balanced on either end of this bamboo yoke are greens and alliums, white in the centre, shaded purple and brown at the edges. The vendor seems to pitch rightward with the weight of their load, turning away from us, their face is hidden beneath the rim of their hat.

Close by, half a step to the right, stands a woman in an áo dài of rose-pink silk. She too wears a nón lá of paler, finer fibre, pushed back to show a round cheek and the curve of her jaw. She is also turning away from us, towards a pair of golden petals drifting onwards to next scene.

Take another step to the right. Here sits a large round drum with a silver rim, overflowing with bolts of fabric. The material shimmers with magnificent colours, and each cylinder of cloth offers a fragment of a different design. On one, there is a pattern of vivid red blooms and deep green leaves. On the next, whisps of purple and white. Next, a stretch of sky blue, then a darker blue rippled like sea water.

A woman wearing modern clothing strides past the fabric display, pulling a wheeled backpack with a shell of shiny laminated material. Her jumper and shoes are violet. Her trousers are a darker shade, the purple of grape skin. She is wearing a beige cap with black-ink characters around the band. Her gait seems relaxed, one foot raised forever over the next step. This woman, the picture of the Australian-Vietnamese auntie, is eternally window-shopping, her face tilted towards a display of otherworldly flowers.

These extraordinary blooms form part of the next scene. Pink cherry blossoms and yellow apricot blossoms, each as large as a human head, are arranged on an oversized tabletop of smooth dark wood. To the left, red Bao Lì Xì envelopes hang from the cherry blossom branches. In the centre sits a steel plate bearing a folded bánh xèo – a classic Vietnamese dish served at Hello Auntie. One side of the savoury pancake has been seared dark brown until crisp and flaking. Piled alongside are mixed herbs, rough-tongued mint and the toothed leaves of coriander. In the upper right sits a tray of bamboo wicker holding more herbs and fractions of sliced lime, the pulp yellowish green and shining.

This vignette is bordered on the right side by a gnarled tree in a rounded clay pot. Like the blossoms, this bonsai has been painted many times its real size, the miniature made giant once again. It is shaped almost like a cupped palm of tan bark streaked with white. At the fingertips cluster browning leaves and new shoots, deep crimson and shaped like buds.

At this point, the dining table becomes the desk of an artist. In the shade of the enormous bonsai, an older gentleman hunches over an inkstone and various brushes. With his left hand, he carefully traces the roofline of the One Pillar Pagoda in a small sketchbook. His grey hair is cropped close to his skull. The light brown skin of his cheek wrinkles as he bends over his painting.

Behind and beyond the desk bloom enormous lotuses of white, tawny yellow, and red banded with gold. Here we discover the source of the petals drifting in the background of other scenes. Here, the backdrop shifts to the grey-blue of a still, clear pool. The green curves of lily pads give shape to a shoreline. Between the water and the sky, the distant outlines of plants or buildings are lost in an amber haze.

In front of this dreamlike landscape bobs a wooden fishing boat, the bow weighed down with pots and nets. A woman stands near the centre, barefoot, balanced over the starboard side. She faces away from us, gazing over the water. In both hands she holds a long bamboo pole poised like a rudder over the stern. Her loose trousers are forest green, her shirt white, and her nón lá is woven from dark straw. A thick braid of black hair hangs down her back, fastened between her shoulder blades. Her pose draws our attention towards the vague shapes in the background, the gold-and-shadow scenery of the far shore.Spindly white capital letters in the upper right corner spell out LITTLE VIETNAM - STYNABYNA. Just beyond the edge of the mural is the sign for the restaurant ‘Hello Auntie’, written in white capitals on a black field.

Artist statement

‘Naughty Gong in Little Vietnam’ depicts an elderly Vietnamese gentleman in his nineties working on an ink painting of the One Pillar Pagoda, a significant Vietnamese monument, in his study. Alongside him are characters that include a modern-day Australian-Vietnamese ‘Auntie’ with her handy shopping trolley cart, a Vietnamese street vendor and a woman wearing the traditional áo dài. A tree sparrow nestles among well-loved fruits: mangosteen, rambutan, water apple, coconuts and langsat. Accompanied by the signature dish of bánh xèo, a crispy Vietnamese pancake served at Hello Auntie. The gentleman is adorned by red and yellow lotuses – the national flower. A traditional boat rider steers her boat toward a larger fishing boat in the distance, boats floating on water, an ode to the Vietnamese migrants who travelled to Australia in search of a new place to call home.

‘Naughty Gong’ in the title refers to the artist’s grandad, with ‘Gong’ being the Teochew name for ‘Granddad’.

This artwork was commissioned via Inner West Council’s Main Streets Local Placemaking strategy. Recognition of this precinct as Little Vietnam honours the stories of the many brave migrants who resettled here in the 1980s, enriching Australian society and helping to establish the Inner West as a vibrant multicultural hub.