Unfolding Memories

Audio description

Text description

• Title: Unfolding Memories (2023)
• Artist: Smackas (Sam McAleer)
• Wall size: Approximately 5.2 metres high on the left at its tallest, and 2 metres high on the right at its shortest, and approximately 25 metres across.
• Location: NOMAD Bouldering Gym, 12 Chester Street, Annandale

This large street artwork is a pastiche of scenes from the artist's memories of growing up in Annandale, through the lens of historical and contemporary scenes from the life of the area. Elements are drawn in a reasonably realistic style but are presented in this work out of scale and with creative distortions, creating occasionally surreal clashes of realism. They are depicted against a red background that extends across the full width of the artwork. The wall upon which the work is painted is set on a slanted street-front, with the wall taller on at its leftmost, at 4.5 metres, and just 2 metres tall at its right edge. The NOMAD Bouldering Gym, on whose carpark wall this work is painted, is on Chester Street in a small industrial area of Annandale but is located close to major roads Pyrmont Bridge Road and Parramatta Road.

Beginning on the top left of the artwork above a garage door, The Abbey, a grand historical mansion in Annandale, is visible against a red skyline, with a red wash across the image adding drama to the building's gothic façade. Beyond it in the background the spans of the Anzac Bridge are visible over Blackwattle Bay on the horizon, and in the sky above it, white fluffy clouds extend beyond the scene and interact with other elements in the artwork.

To the immediate right of the Abbey is a large curved brown shape, pocked across its surface by bright blobs of colour which are climbing holds from the NOMAD Bouldering Gym. Below these, past a metal grate window and a sign next to the garage door that says EXIT ONLY, a black and white scene from the Horse Trots, a harness race, depicts three black horses wearing harnesses tethered to unseen riders, and labels which number them 3, 4 and 5. The greyscale scene shows a light track upon which they run and a darker track fence behind them, and stands in contrast to the vibrant red background that surrounds the scene.

A cloud of this red fades over the right-most horse as the work gives way to the next element, tall, bold yellow text which says "TOGETHER YES". The letters have been stretched to be much taller than they are wide, and the text is written over a section of the red-painted wall that contains a doorway, the artist continuing the word across the interrupted surface with some resulting distortion of the lettering. Around this bright yellow text, the red background is dotted with squares of a darker red and teal.

Above these and the text, a brick viaduct taken from Jubilee Park slopes across the wall down and to the right, carrying a red and white Sydney Light Rail vehicle. As this vehicle continues to the right, it is obscured by the artist's tag, SMACKAS. Underneath one of the semicircular openings of the viaduct, an oversized illustration of a greyhound emerges, its long legs extended out in front of it, upon which it rests its long, forlorn-looking face. Above it and to the right, the brickwork of the viaduct surreally warps into the opening of a barista's metal cup of hot milk, which it pours, creating a latte heart and tulip with the foamed milk, on the surface of a coffee, contained within a red and white checkered mug below it. The mug is held by a hand, its enormous fingers grasping the mug on its sides, and the red squares of the mug's checkered pattern appear to be peeling off to its right side, suggesting an origin of the darker red squares found elsewhere on the artwork's red background.

To the right of the coffee, another surreal detail sees one of the two black legs from a yellow pedestrian sign emerge from the sign in great detail and increase in size, with the fabric of its pants showing visible pinstripes, yellow stitching on its black shiny leather shoes, and a sliver of red socks with a yellow smiley face pattern. In front of the shoe, a white sacred ibis flies towards the left, its wings extended by its sides casting a shadow over its underbelly and its slender white neck outstretched with a band of red around its face. The sacred ibis flies above leftward-pointing white chevrons, arrows which form the left edge of a one-way sign which emerges to the right. Above this sign and amongst the ibis and the pedestrian sign, a blue folded origami paper crane floats serenely amongst the other elements. To its right, partially obscuring the edge of the one-way sign, the large, sideways face of a surprised baby spans the full (now two metre) height of the wall. Its gaze is upward, to the left of the artwork, looking in surprise and delight at the elements that have appeared before it, its eyes catching the light, and the rolls of baby fat around its neck gathering under its open mouth.

A small stairway up to a carpark briefly interrupts the artwork before it arrives at the final element on its far right. This two-metre-tall and four-metre-wide section of the work depicts an open lotus flower, white with flecks of pink and a yellow centre, seemingly glowing with warmth. It is held lightly by a hand whose arm emerges from the top right corner of the work. Around it, interrupting the bright red background, a snaking path of a darker red is once again dotted with differently shaped and coloured objects – the climbing holds from the NOMAD Bouldering Gym.

This is the end of the audio description.