Wonder Walls
Since 2017, Darwin Street Art Festival (DSAF) has seen an entourage of local and visiting artists take to the streets to splash licks of paint across town, beautifying Darwin from the CBD to the ‘burbs. This month, it’s back, baby, and it’s the up-and-coming local artists DSAF organisers are particularly excited about.
WORDS TIERNEY WHITE
STREET ART ROSE to popularity in the 60s as a movement of free creative expression, where abandoned walls were given new life, transformed into epic works of art. Thanks to the likes of Banksy, Cornbread, Shepard Fairey, et al., its popularity has soared, with walls around the world adorned with original, large-scale artworks.
Since the inception of DSAF in 2017, more than 120 walls across Darwin have been transformed, with 20 more pegged for the 2025 iteration.
Thanks to a special collaboration between DSAF and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory’s (MAGNT) Exit Art exhibition – which sees the work of 2024’s Year 12 students from across the NT exhibited at the institution – one young artist is set to have a crack at her own pop-up wall.
Sophie Kerr took out the inaugural DSAF Prize at this year’s event, and says the opportunity is surreal.
“I’m really excited, honestly … Obviously, that painting that I did, that’s probably the biggest one I’ve done, but I think I’d like to paint bigger … so I’m really excited to be able to paint something that big,” she says.
A selection panel from DSAF, including the festival’s founding father David Collins and revered local street artist Jesse Bell, saw the potential in Kerr’s work, something she says she didn’t expect at all.
“I’m really surprised, to be honest, that it’s got as much attention as it has, because when I finished it, I thought I’d put a lot of work in, but I thought it could have been better – I thought it was just gonna be a school thing, so it’s really cool that it’s got so much attention.”
The wonderful thing about the award, a first-time collab between MAGNT and DSAF, is that it’s got the young artist thinking about pursuing art as a career.
“I feel like this could open up a lot of other opportunities for me. I didn’t ever really think art was gonna be a career, I thought it was just gonna be a hobby, but I find now that I’ve got this opportunity that it could open up, sort of, a career path for me.”
Collins says collaborating with MAGNT on an award for DSAF through Exit Art has been on the cards for some time.
“We’ve been watching Exit Art over the years and watching the quality of artwork produced by high school leavers, it just gets better and better every year,” he says.
“One of the previous years we looked at it and thought about offering an award – and we had the young person apply [for DSAF] on their own, so we’ve worked with people that have come straight from Exit Art in the past – but this is the first time we’ve decided to make it official,” he says.
With 60 percent of artists involved in this year’s DSAF locals, it’s clear we have talent in spades. And whilst the festival showcases local artists, it also gives them access to visiting artists, and the opportunity to grow their networks.
“With a development lens on, Darwin Street Art Festival was born from a need to run a street art festival, by locals, for locals, while working with internationals and interstates, but at the same time developing local artists’ skills. We want to train young people up into mural paintings,” Collins says.
“We’ve done this with a lot of Indigenous artists that have come through, like Jason Lee, Trent Lee … Through those artists and other young artists, like Caleb Schatz – Caleb Dude – he’s come through at 17, now he’s 22, and we grown ‘em up, ya know?
“You need the national and international platform, so that young artists here don’t just see a local artist that paints the local school or craft fair, they see people that travel international, and they make networks.”
An exciting new addition to DSAF this year is an immersive nighttime art projection experience. Young people have the chance to participate in workshops before their work is projected onto the walls alongside established artists at the old RSL carpark in a special closing weekend event.
Shay Jayawardena leads the project in cahoots with LAUNCH Darwin and Darwin Emerging Creatives, a sister projection event to another in Kenya, that features an international artist and another from Melbourne. She says the theme addresses issues affecting young people.
“A lot of their work is around culture and identity, and the feminine identity within the world – not specifically about women, but the feminine in general,” she says.
“We’ll have five large venue projectors, one of the walls is for young people and their digital art … It’s a pretty emerging art form for Darwin, and the workshops are around how you can take your digital art and enhance them for projections, and how to animate them using AI – how to bring them to life in a different way.”
Artists take to the streets late this month, with all work set for completion mid-June. In the meantime, if you’re keen to see the next wave of local talented young things coming through the ranks, make tracks to MAGNT to behold a diverse range of creativity and expression from the Class of 2024.
Bring on the beauty!
Darwin Street Art Festival
WHEN SAT 24 MAY – SUN 15 JUN (TOOLS DOWN)
AT DARWIN & SURROUNDS
INFO darwinstreetartfestival.com.au
Exit Art
UNTIL SUN 25 MAY
AT MAGNT
INFO magnt.net.au
HEADER: Exit Art, Darwin Street Art Festival Award winner, Sophie Kerr from Palmerston College, 'City 107' (detail), 2024, synthetic polymer paint on canvas 120x120cm. Photo: Georgina Campbell
THUMBNAIL & INSET TOP: DSAF2024 Caleb Dude Art
INSET BOTTOM: DSAF Darwin High School Pop-Up
