Subiaco Library (Evelyn H. Parker Library) is located on the corner of Bagot and Rokeby Rd, Subiaco, Perth. It is a beautiful library and has a great selection of books. A striking mural can be seen high up on the wall above the service area. It is by artist, author, film director and designer, Shaun Tan.
Shaun Tan grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In school he became known as the 'good drawer' which partly compensated for always being the shortest kid in every class. He graduated from the University of WA in 1995 with joint honours in Fine Arts and English Literature, and currently works as an artist and author in Melbourne. The artist says this about his 2004 mural, "The Hundred Year Picnic", in the library:
"...I visited the nearby local museum, which houses a vast collection of old photographs, mostly drawn from private family albums donated to the museum. I thumbed through some two thousand images of streets, houses and people before finding a small photograph that seemed to capture the mood I was looking for; a family having a picnic somewhere, probably around 1920 or 1930, when Subiaco was a relatively undeveloped suburb.
...Rather than simply scale up and reproduce this image I wanted to abstract it in some way, particularly using colour to evoke a certain meditative mood. I imagined that each character was showing a different reaction to their environment, as if they were each living in different personal universes that happened to intersect - some are green, some pink, some white, and seem to be fading in and out of the background like fragments of memory."
This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme,
Shaun Tan grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In school he became known as the 'good drawer' which partly compensated for always being the shortest kid in every class. He graduated from the University of WA in 1995 with joint honours in Fine Arts and English Literature, and currently works as an artist and author in Melbourne. The artist says this about his 2004 mural, "The Hundred Year Picnic", in the library:
"...I visited the nearby local museum, which houses a vast collection of old photographs, mostly drawn from private family albums donated to the museum. I thumbed through some two thousand images of streets, houses and people before finding a small photograph that seemed to capture the mood I was looking for; a family having a picnic somewhere, probably around 1920 or 1930, when Subiaco was a relatively undeveloped suburb.
...Rather than simply scale up and reproduce this image I wanted to abstract it in some way, particularly using colour to evoke a certain meditative mood. I imagined that each character was showing a different reaction to their environment, as if they were each living in different personal universes that happened to intersect - some are green, some pink, some white, and seem to be fading in and out of the background like fragments of memory."
This post is part of the Monday Mellow Yellows meme,
and also part of the Monday Murals meme.
It's wonderful!
ReplyDeleteI love it!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is so wonderful. Nostalgic and historical at the same time. Thanks for contributing to this week's Monday Mural.
ReplyDelete