Wetland
Audio description
Text description
- Title: Wetland (2023)
- Artist: David Cragg
- Wall size: Varying heights between 1.35 and 3.8 metres, and a length of 32.6 metres
- Location: 260 Unwins Bridge Road, Sydenham
'Wetland' by David Cragg is located at 260 Unwins Bridge Road, Sydenham. This enormous mural stretches along the whole block, beginning on the rendered brick wall of the corner store, continuing along a shoulder-height fence, then expanding again across the wall of a garden shed. The rich jewel-tones of Cragg's work create a dramatic, eye-catching contrast with the four-lane road in front.
On the left, the mural transforms the exterior wall of a corner store into a marshland by night. A background of dark navy with pinpricks of silver suggests a night sky. Below, rich red hills are silhouetted against the scattered stars.
Amongst these luminescent colours perches a double-barred finch more than a metre from tip to tail. The bird is naturally black and white, sometimes with a brown or grey hood. This one, painted in profile facing the right, seems ghostly in its grayscale plumes. Its delicately curved beak is as pale as nacre. Its black eye and rounded cheek are framed by a thin semicircle of black feathers. The folded wings are white at the shoulder but darken toward the flight feathers. Their tips are black and speckled with small, pale shapes.
Cragg notes that the Gumbramorra wetlands, now mostly hidden beneath the suburbs of Marrickville, Sydenham and Enmore, once overflowed with native plants and animals. Many plant species sprawl across this mural. Huge ferns in jade-green and silver cover the red hills. (The words DAVID CRAGG 23 have been slipped between their fronds). The bunched leaves and sharp stalks of Gymea lilies tower over the finch's perch. Delicate flannel flowers, their single corolla of petals silvered like the stars above, grow beside pea flowers of sandy yellow. Clusters of yellow lilly pilly berries dangle among the spear-shaped foliage of warrigal greens.
This radiant night-forest extends along the brick wall behind the store and spreads out on the side of the shed at the back of the block. A slice of a sky, a blend of deep blues, fills the upper left corner. Another patch of night shaped like a four-pointed star seems to descend onto the crimson hillside, coming to rest among feathery leaves and tawny-orange stems.
Just right of centre, a willy wagtail perches on overlapping crescents of dark green leaves. It has also been painted in profile, facing left. The white curve of its chest stands out against the intense red background. The black feathers on its head, wings and tail have been edged with grey and white, so they seem to shine despite their monochrome coloration. The beak, small and wickedly sharp, tilts downward, while its long tail-feathers poke upward at the jaunty angle which lends the willy wagtail its name. Its familiar silhouette dominates the final metres of the mural.
'Wetland' brings history to brilliant life, reminding us of the ancient wetlands still gurgling through concrete canals and holding basins underneath our feet, and the vitality of the Gadigal, Bidjigal and Wangal lands that these waters flow through.