No matter how long Yulius Antares Taime decides to live on the 20th floor of the public housing flats he calls home, the neighbours will always see his face.
His is one of four images that now grace a city-facing wall of one of Melbourne’s largest housing estates. Completed on Friday, the striking mural is the tallest in the southern hemisphere, organisers say.
The splashes of colour are visible at street level in the suburbs of Collingwood, in Melbourne’s inner north, but they are also in eyeline for residents occupying the gleaming steel high-rise buildings that populate the city’s CBD.
“For tenants, it’s not just a picture or art,” said Taime, a West Papuan, who has only lived in the block for a few months. “It means that everyone can think … ‘we all come to Melbourne and live together’. It’s a community.”
Built in the 1960s as part of an urban renewal program, the Collingwood estate’s tower blocks are home to 2500 residents, including the mural’s four subjects. They were chosen to reflect the community’s cultural diversity.
The Labor state government is pursuing its own public housing renewal program, which involves the redevelopment of nearby housing commission estates. The mural, also a government initiative, offers a different approach.
“They’re massive iconic buildings that need to be splashed with colour,” said the artist Matt Adnate, who grew up nearby and has spent a month poring over the biggest canvas of his career.
“There’s certainly been a sort of stimga around this building over the decades I’ve been here. Putting such a positive spin and turning it into artwork has breathed new life into what was a dull, grey block.”
Adnate worked on the project with street art collective Juddy Roller of Silo Art Trail fame. He said murals similar to the one in Collingwood could be found in parts of Europe and the Americas but were not common in Australia.
Juddy Roller’s founder, Shaun Hossack, was hopeful the city’s neighbouring public housing flats would get a similar treatment one day.
“When we started the Silo Art Trail, it was difficult to get support and funding because no one really understood the impact and the power it had,” he said.
“Once we’d done it, it was like a beacon. Everybody jumped on board. I’d like to think this is going to have a similar impact … It doesn’t just make it look better, but it has a really great message.”
The mural’s other subjects are five-year-old Ni Na Nguyen, grandmother Badria Abdo, who is from Ethiopia, and six-year-old Arden Watson-Cropley.
Arden is now called “Fitzroy famous” by his school friends, an allusion to the neighbouring suburb.
When he learned his face was going to be on the mural, he told his mother, Liz: “I’m going to be six forever.”
“I know one of the ideas was to try and take away some of the stigma and I think that’s succeeding well beyond what we even thought,” Liz Watson said.
“It’s just really strengthened the community. People are feeling a little bit more proud.”
