The Big Picture
23 Mar 2018
World-renowned Australian artist Guido van Helten is in the process of transforming a 10-storey building overlooking North Kirra Beach at Southern Cross University’s Gold Coast campus.
Guido is a Southern Cross University alumnus who is an in-demand artist with over 50 large scale murals painted across the world. His work can breathe new life into industrial locations from wheat silos in America’s agricultural heartland to a 63-piece shipping container project in Dubai, but also inspires people in urban landscapes - whether it be a serene seven storey building surrounded by trees in Helsinki or a bustling cluster of apartment blocks in Dharavi, India.
He says he first began painting through traditional graffiti art: “it’s always been on the wall, it’s just gotten bigger.”
While Guido doesn’t take himself seriously his art is another matter. “I have a lot of responsibility. People are trusting me with their spaces, so I have to make sure that I create something special that’s sympathetic to the local environment. Public art is becoming increasingly popular, so the reaction is nearly always good. It’s interesting because it’s evolved from what was essentially a low brow form of expression of street art into a higher art form. It actually surprises me how much people enjoy my work.”
With such a large canvass to work from and the prospect of his work being seen from varying aspects and distances, Guido’s thought process behind each creation is driven by factors beyond the building itself. The surrounding environment, the local history and the culture of those who inhabit the space informs the subject matter for his murals.
“With an industrial space most people don’t see it as a human place but there’s a lot of people behind the functionality of that building and why that building’s there. For me it’s about trying to find an image that represents what it really is – to tell that local story and how it relates to the surrounding environment. I’m trying to blend a figurative form into the setting where I’m working within a localised style, idea, content or culture. A silo for example represents the farming industry and the people behind that.”
For his latest project at Southern Cross University there are a multitude of stories it could represent. “There’s a heck of a lot of functionality in that structure. People see it and they know it’s a university, but what it means and what it really is, is a place where people come together in some way to share ideas. It’s young people coming together, trying to better themselves for instance – so all of those ideas enter into my thinking when I’m designing the work.”
The first part of his latest work features a figure whose head is turned away, but we’re yet to find out what the second figure will be: “I’m trying to create a dialogue with the second figure that I’ll be painting next, so it’s more about the communication between the two figures. I want people to read into that without having to spell it out. There’s a lot more to a story behind something that isn’t so obvious. I’m very much into body language. People read into body language more than you realise. There’s a lot to be said about the direction in which a figure is looking or the way they’re standing for instance.
My intention is to create the best art that I can. What people read into it or what they say about it really isn’t my concern. The building is already a monument – it’s already part of the landscape here. The Gold Coast has so many big buildings, a lot of those just represent money, or at least someone’s desire to make a lot of money, but this building has a totally different functionality – it’s a place of learning. So from my perspective it’s an honourable thing to paint.”