White Plumed Honey Eater

Audio description

Text description

White Plumed Honey Eater
by Thomas Jackson, 2023
95 Curtis Road, Balmain

Inner West Council acknowledges the traditional custodians of these lands, the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation.

This mural of a bird is painted onto a cement block wall that runs along the inner side of an urban street pavement in Balmain. The wall is six metres wide and two meters high. Because the pavement slopes down from left to right, the wall is higher at the right end.

The bird represents a white-plumed honeyeater painted in exquisite realistic detail and enlarged to almost fill the right two thirds of the wall. The honey eater is perched on a slender branch running along the bottom of the mural, and is painted in profile facing to the right. Its head is in the top right corner of the mural. Its body and tail stretch diagonally down to the to the bottom of that mural.

The body feathers are painted a light fluffy grey with delicate darker grey shadows and white accents. The side of the head is pale lemon yellow with a distinctive band of white below the eye which gives the white-plumed honeyeater its name. The wings are yellow with grey tips, the long beige tail rests on the branch the bird sits on. Its short, gently curved beak, gleaming eye and legs are black. Three toes protrude forwards around the branch while its first hallux toe turns backwards.

Above and behind the bird hangs a branch with eight gum leaves that fan out, one draping over the bird’s tail. Each leaf is one third the length of the bird’s torso. The glossy dark green of the gum leaves contrasts with the soft grey and yellow of the bird. The light grey background of the mural  has an abstract pattern of darker grey shapes. Three slim gold lines arc up and splash across the picture.

The painted bird is almost as long as the cars that are parked in the street beside it. It looks very much at home in Balmain where the artist would like to re-introduce this attractive native bird.

This artwork was commissioned by Inner West Council through Perfect Match, a program matching artists with community to collaboratively produce site specific street art.

Audio description written by Vision Australia, and voiced by Nas Campanella.