Street Art in Newtown (Sydney): a Guide to the best Hotspots

Some time ago I wrote about the porticoes of Bologna, where I was born and grew up. With its art in every corner, in every alley, from the porticos, I wrote about, to the historic medieval buildings with arrows still stuck in the original wood, to statues and fountains in the many squares of the center, to small windows in hidden walls that show a "little Venice", to churches that play like matryoshkas one inside the other, to murals. Yes, because even murals are considered art, "street art" by real artists, sometimes not considered as such, but with their imagination combined with color and spray cans, they transform a gray, sad and empty wall into an explosion of creativity and color.

Although Bologna, which I have always considered home, is full of murals around the city, from the bridge in Via Stalingrado, to shutters scattered throughout the city, to the historic center in the famous Pratello area, today I want to talk about another place, my second home, which has hosted me for a few years, almost 17,000km from here: the Newtown neighborhood, in Sydney, Australia.

Mural: Welcome to Newtown - Ph. Credit

Newtown is a suburb about 4km southwest of Sydney's central business district (CBD), born at the beginning of the 19th century as a residential and agricultural area, (previously inhabited by Australia's original landlords, the Aboriginal community), it went from being a low-income working-class suburb, often denigrated in the mid-20th century to an increasingly young neighborhood thanks to the proximity of the Sydney University and the low rents that transformed the area, gaining a reputation as a bohemian center, where even the LGBT community has increased over time.

One thing that struck me about this district from the first day I set foot there by pure chance, (I booked my first hostel in Newtown as soon as I arrived in Sydney), was the amazing amount of murals and graffitis that Newtown proudly displayed, especially on the main street.

Yoga Studio in Union Street - Artista: Mike Makatron - Ph. Credit

Day after day, week after week, year after year that I have walked, ran, biked, Ubered, lived, and breathed this neighborhood, I have found true art works on the walls of every street and building. Almost every house, warehouse, storefront, restaurant, cafeteria, the gym had a mural, making this suburb so colorful, picturesque, and unique, capable of making you daydream, leaving you enchanted, wondering most of the time how they made drawings so large and beautiful that you could almost enter them as Mary Poppins did with the paintings of her chimney sweep friend. Even my house had the entire wall completely drawn portraying a young girl with light eyes, wearing jeans. I've often thought "that's totally my place".

My building's mural between Newtown and Enmore - Enmore Road - Photo Credit: Ilaria Puddu.

The Newtown area is really known in Sydney for its creative murales and "street art". The most important ones were made between the late 80s and early 90s. Initially, they were perhaps simple writings or signatures that many said only "dirtied" the wall, but over the years the techniques, colors, and materials used have changed and the quantity has definitely increased and the style has undoubtedly become much more elaborate and sophisticated.

Mural "live Outside" in the Wilson Street parking lot - Image by JAM Project on Flickr under Creative Commons License - Artists: Shannon Crees - George Rose - Rus Kidd

Public visual art in the Newtown area and its surrounding suburbs (Enmore, Erskineville, Camperdown, and St. Peters) consists of a variety of styles and methods of execution, including large-scale painted murals, hand-painted (or spray-painted) political slogans, hand-painted figurative drawings, semi-abstract spray-painted designs (including elaborate and large-scale semi-abstract "tags"), and other stylistic developments such as stencil art and street poster art (known as "grain pasting"), " Yarn Bombing " and sculptural objects made of plaster and other materials.

Mural "The Housing Bubble" in Enmore Road - Artist Fintan Magee - Photo Credit: Ilaria Puddu

The most famous and celebrated murals are:

The mural that made you realize you had arrived in Newtown was the one depicting American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in King Street (painted by Andrew Aiken (Seems) and Juilee Pryor), painted over two nights in August 1991. This is the largest, most important, and longest-lived of the many large-scale murals created around Newtown.

Mural "I have a Dream" Martin Luther King Jr in King Street- Photo Credit: Ilaria Puddu

The "Great Wave" mural in Gowrie Street is one of the largest and most enduring ones, painted on the side of a house located at the corner of Munni St. and Gowrie St. in south Newtown. Created in 2000, it features a combination of abstract 3D-style pieces and Japanese-themed pictorial images, including a huge image of a crashing wave.

"Great Wave" in Gowrie Street, - Image by MediaServicesAP on Wikimedia under Creative Commons License.

The "Africa " mural in King Street, was originally painted in the early 1990s then modified and updated in the 2000s. The large work, entirely the map of Africa, occupies the entire sidewall of an African restaurant, located between the Newtown Mission and Commonwealth Bank.

Mural "Africa" in King Street - Image by MediaServicesAP on Wikimedia under Creative Commons License.

Andrew Aiken's "Mona" ( intended as the Mona Lisa) mural in Erskineville Rd in front of the Newtown Post Office which is still extant, but in very poor condition.

Mural "Mona" di Andrew Aiken, in Erskineville Rd - Image by MediaServicesAP on Wikimedia under Creative Commons License.

One of my favorites that I used to see every single day on my way home along Enmore Road is the "Jungle" mural painted on the side of a doctor's office at the corner of Bailey St. and Enmore Rd. near the Caltex gas station. Created by the retired artist, Colin Bebe, it represents various African wild animals running free around the intersection of King St. and Enmore Road. In the years I've lived there it has been modified at least 2 times. Which version do you guys prefer?

Mural "Jungle" at the corner between Bailey St. and Enmore Rd., close to the Caltex petrol station. Artist Colin Bebe - Photo Credit: Ilaria Puddu.

Unfortunately many other important murals, also because they represented pieces of history, have now been erased, such as "Deja Vu 1" (1992), made out of anger at the war in Bosnia. The theme is remembrance and the futility of war.

Many of the largest and most important murals in the Newtown area, dating back to the early 1990s, no longer exist, sadly.

The Council of the City of Sydney tries to administer much of the northern area of Newtown and apparently recognizes that these large existing murals are public domain assets worthy of preservation and maintenance although, for some of them apparently nothing has been done to prevent their removal. Many were created illegally and in times of guerrilla warfare and as the years have passed and buildings have been renovated or demolished, many murals have been destroyed, removed, or are being replaced weeks or months later by newer murals by other artists.

Mural "Bracing a Falling Sky" - Artista Fintan Magee - Photo Credit: Ilaria Puddu.

It is literally impossible to list every single painting, mural, graffiti, stencil, poster, or other because from every street or building in Newtown the artworks have proliferated to neighboring streets and suburbs defining that area southwest of Sydney as the most picturesque and artistic.

Mural by Artist: Steven Nuttall aka Ox King - "Wyrd Sisters" at the corner of Eliza Street. and "Promise" in Lennox Street - Ph. Credit - Scroll through the slides by clicking on the >

Traveling a lot, Newtown made me think of some districts in Melbourne, London, San Francisco, and coming back to Italy, I was really happy to have somehow found a little Newtown in my hometown, Bologna, in the Pratello area, that reminds me to walk around paying more attention, and not always getting distracted by my phone, because sometimes you just need to look up, and be surprised about how much art surrounds us, how much beauty is around us every day, free in every corner, without having to necessarily enter a museum or a gallery. Let's open our eyes!

Murals in the Pratello area of Bologna - Photo Credit: Ilaria Puddu - Scroll through the slides by clicking on the >