The Portal
Audio description
Text description
- Title: The Portal (2023)
- Artist: Peque VRS
- Wall size: 4.5 metres by 10.5 metres
- Location: 379 Darling Street, Balmain
The Portal is nestled on a narrow street adjacent to the historic buildings within its depiction. Mexican mural artist Peque's street artwork is situated on the brick, sidewall of a restaurant, adjacent to an asphalt footpath and 4-hour parallel parking spaces. An old, reddish-coloured wall gives way to a different street view, with elements of past and present Balmain painted alongside one another.
The gaping, oval-shaped portal is ringed in grey as if the bricks are cracking open the wall. Tendrils of painted green vines hang down. Centred between them, above the other-worldly view is the word Balmain, in sharp, capital letters. Either side of the portal, as though disrupted by it, is the start and the end of a graffitied word in white and red bubble script PEQUE VRS – the artist's name.
At the centre of the scene is a grey cobbled-stoned street with tram tracks running through it from left to right. At the rear are stone buildings: the Balmain Post Office, the Courthouse and Town Hall, all built in the late 1800s, beige, cream and light grey austere stone buildings with pillars and monumental windows. Behind the buildings is a yellow sunrise, and higher up, the sky is streaked in royal and light blue. On our left, a brightly coloured parrot flies, its wings outstretched.
The parrot flies parallel with the clock tower of the courthouse. Below its wings is a wide stone balcony. In front of the clock tower is an older-style, green and cream tram. Its doors are open, and the tram has a distinct, maroon-coloured stripe right the way around its bottom edge. Closer to us, in front of the tram, a man in a great-coat and hat crouches, he has written Mr Eternity in chalk on a large piece of concrete with a red finish which has fallen through the portal from our world into his. His inclusion is a nod to Arthur Stace and his copper-plate Eternity script written in white or yellow chalk on the streets of Sydney during the 1930s to 60s.
The grey cobblestones and the stripes of the tram tracks in the central foreground of the work lead to the Courthouse entrance, its steps obscured by the large green clumps and shadows of a tree's leafy foliage. To the right of the tree the Post Office turret rises, cut off by the top of the portal. Blue sky comes through between the turret's balcony arches.
Across the tram tracks to the right is a street corner. A telegraph pole and part of a street awning both in shades of green, give the impression they intersect. They stand out the front of the restaurant, its cream sidewall decorated with a warm-brown dome-shape, which finishes above head height.
The restaurant has two windows each with a red awning. In front of the windows is set with chairs and tables for al fresco dining. It's a scene of the same restaurant Forli, which is just left of the street artwork wall!
A man with a substantial beard, a hat, modern clothes, and thongs on his feet, sits alone at the table closest to the street corner. Beside him is a seated couple in grey clothing. They are attended to by waiter in a grey and black striped t-shirt and black pants. He wears a serving uniform of a black apron with a white cloth slung over one, rounded shoulder. He rests one hand on the couple's table.
Closest to us, in front of the restaurant patrons are two girls in sneakers (modelled on the artists daughters). The pair run happily towards us. The oldest, in a royal blue dress and a light blue jacket, has a black backpack slung over her shoulder and held in place by her right hand. She wears a headband with a pink bow in her long black hair. Her left hand is in her sister's. In jeans and a pink and black polka-dot jumper the younger girl clutches a paper drawing with the words "Save World" and a globe on it.
If the old buildings are the past, the girls and their enthusiasm are the future.
This is the end of the audio description.