Art projects

Hide and Seek

Upon completion of the Devon Street carpark in Croydon in 2022 and following a public call for expressions of interest, the artist Damian Vick was selected by Maroondah City Council to design and fabricate two large-scale sculptures based on the McCoy’s Skink.

Vick is a Melbourne-based artist with extensive experience in large-scale sculptures in metal. His work has been commissioned by numerous local government authorities including the City of Casey and the City of Frankston. Affixed to the exterior walls of the building, the works have been created through a process of a laser cut components welded together and then finished with a powder coating. The works pay homage to the McCoy’s skink, a notable breed that derives heat from nestling in compost and leaf matter during the winter months.

Skinks featured strongly as part of the artist’s personal experience growing up in Croydon. Designed to match the material palette of the building, the sculptures appear to be camouflaged within the architectural context, playfully insinuating a game of ‘Hide and Seek’.

The Fruit Thief

The Fruit Thief is an interactive wall mural depicting the wings of a fruit bat. These winged mammals were prevalent when large tracts of Croydon were occupied by fruit orchards.

Local Maroondah artists Roger Archbold and Andy Drewitt created this interactive wall mural depicting the wings of a fruit bat.

The winged mammals were prevalent when large tracts of Croydon were occupied by fruit orchards. The fruit bat is native to Australia and plays an important ecological role by dispersing seeds and pollen of native Australian plants.

• The wings feature sawtooth edges as a nod to the town’s sawmill, while series of circles within circles represent timber growth rings
• The internal skeletal structure of the wings represents the arrival of rail to the region
• Asterisk-shaped tussocks illustrate the native plant Danthonia pallida, a pale grass that inspired the town’s initial name, White Plains
• A serpentine line illustrates the meandering waterway, Brushy Creek, a camping site for the region’s Indigenous population
• Patchwork patterns represent farms and market garden plots
• Geometric squares are indicative of a bird’s-eye view of the Croydon streetscape
• Tessellated patterns represent a bird’s-eye view of stalls at the once iconic Croydon market.

An important design feature of the mural is that its size is perfect to be captured with a phone camera and easily shared on social media. The mural helps to promote Croydon Main Street as an attractive destination. It was commissioned by Croydon Main Street Traders, with the assistance of a Maroondah City Council Arts and Cultural Grant.

Bloom

The Chemist

The Chemist, located on Main Street, is an artwork by Andy Drewitt that recognises the work of Croydon pharmacist Jim Burns. The band-aid motif symbolises Jim’s powerful work as a healer in the community. For 50 years, his methadone clinic has given a second chance to hundreds of people battling addiction.

Sound of Flight

Anthony McInneny’s perforated and shot stainless steel sculpture encourages the viewers to lift their eyes, and their thought, to the sky and to take flight. Located at 95 Main Street, Croydon

Artists

Roger Archbold is an award-winning creative who lives and works in Maroondah. Roger has worked for some of Australia’s largest advertising agencies and his design work has won Gold Awards in Graphis Design 2014 and Graphis Typography 3, and a Platinum Award in Graphis Logo 9.

Andy Drewitt is a multimedia artist living and working in Maroondah. He has produced work for Melbourne Museum, The Age, AFL, State Library of Victoria, and RMIT. His work has been recognised with two Walkley Awards, two Quill Awards, two Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Awards, and a United Nations Media Peace Prize.

Croydon Town Square Screens

Anna Minardo’s screens create an informal boundary between the Croydon Town Square and an adjacent parking area.

The Town Square screens turn a difficult interface into an artwork reflecting the area’s flora and fauna, its heritage, industry and culture. These artworks complement Croydon Town Square, which links Main Street to Croydon Station.

Gateway 3.0

Constructed from steel, Sam Songailo’s archway artwork has hundreds of patterned shapes cut into it that are filled with diffusion acrylic and backlit with LEDs that can be individually controlled and richly animated. Powerful wash lights complement the artwork by lighting the surrounding area and illuminating the length of the lane way. The arched form is an historical motif traditionally associated with symbolic meanings such as transition, transformation, and passage. In the context of the Reignite Croydon project, the archway artwork taps into these traditional symbolic meanings and provides a powerful visual representation of renewal and transition. The archway serves as an engaging art piece that also provides a volume of light that illuminates the lane way, enhancing perceptions of safety and increasing activity within the area at night.

Life Reflected

Consisting of eight illuminated circular convex mirrors, this installation is a response to life in Croydon and reflects aspects of the immediate surrounding space back to viewers. Designed by local artist Jasmine Grace, the form of the work is inspired by the kinds of mirrors often found in urban spaces. Configured here as multiples in a colour palette that shifts between animated patterns, the artwork symbolises the cellular structures of life. Like living cells the work imbues the laneway with its own pulse. Inviting interaction and play as passersby see their reflections, the work brings the space to life in an impactful and engaging way

Artist

Jasmine Grace is an emerging experiential installation artist currently living locally in Maroondah. She holds a Masters in Public Art from RMIT and boasts a background in event design and visual merchandising. The artist has been commissioned for multiple festival installations and exhibits throughout Victoria.

Render

Artist

Artist Matt Thompson worked with seven young local artists from Maroondah to deliver works that enhance our public spaces.

Light Stitches: Illuminating Croydon’s Indigenous Flowers

This collaborative work celebrates Indigenous local flora of the Maroondah area including the Twining Fringe Lily, the Golden Wattle, the Manna Gum and the Grey Parrot Pea. The two artists embarked upon a collaborative approach, researching local flora for realisation into the context of outdoor lightboxes threaded with fibre-optic cables. Echoing traditional handicrafts practiced indoors such as embroidery, the work transfers the craft into a large-scale public artwork with the aim of uniting technology with art. Unlike traditional fibre optic cable that transports light from one end to the other, side-glow fibre optic cable emits light along the length of the cable, giving the appearance of illuminated thread. The resulting combination of light and electronics changes colour and intensity over time.

Artist

Kirsten Baade is a highly skilled and passionate creator based in Meanjin/Brisbane.
Alinta Koehrer is a Woi-Wurrung Wurundjeri and Yorta-Yorta Traditional Owner through her mother and grandmother.

Whisperer

Melbourne artist Alexander Knox has created a kinetic neon light for the narrow lane that leads to Croydon carpark. The light work refers to the distinctive fields of Wallaby Grass that led to the naming of “White Flats” the original name for the Croydon area. The artist employs the aesthetic of the neon era to create a multi-layered graphic image of the distinctive species of Wallaby Grass. The image is animated to create a “wind through the grass” swaying effect. Below this moving grass motive the word Whisperer is spelt out in controllable neon. As the neon grass “sways in the wind”, the letters of the word “Whisperer” come off and on intermittently. The effect is to create a ghostly, glitchy form of anagrammatic poetry that hints at a mysterious underlying narrative. The word “Whisperer” is somewhat onomatopoeic, sounding both like the act of whispering and like wind blowing softly through grass.