By Ashleigh Fielding | posted on March 1, 2018
IF YOU are someone who pays close attention to detail, you may have noticed pops of colour appearing around Albany on the odd electrical transformer box.
Don’t worry, you aren’t seeing things.
These new and colourful displays of art are part of the FORM PUBLIC Silo Trail, which has travelled throughout regional WA for the past three years and reached Albany earlier this week.
The PUBLIC Silo Trail has painted murals on grain silos, transformer boxes and infrastructure in Northam, Ravensthorpe, Merredin, Katanning and now Albany, in an attempt to put regional WA into the spotlight.
FORM project officer Kim Kirkman said the trail was the brainchild of the Perth art group and was aimed at making WA a more creative place.
“We want to celebrate regional WA and ultimately, boost cultural tourism,” she said.
“We’ve chosen quite noticeable and prominent places to paint.”
Perth artist Rachelle Dusting is one of the artists commissioned to paint Albany and was allocated a transformer box opposite Dog Rock on Middleton Road, and one near the UWA Albany Centre on Stirling Terrace.
The 26-year-old said her childhood memories of her Albany-based grandmother’s garden inspired her floral designs.
“My usual style is realism and portraiture, so it’s quite the contrast with this project,” she said.
Ms Dusting said one of the things she had to consider when creating her designs was the distance from which people would view the transformer boxes.
“I’ve broken apart the patterns so you can still get the full impact at a distance.
“I really just wanted to bring more dynamic to the sites, so I stayed true to the colours of the flowers [banksia and spider orchid].”
The PUBLIC Silo Trail will attack the Albany grain silos with colour at the end of the month, and move to another secret regional location in April, so keep an eye out on the website for further details – publicsilotrail.com.
