The latest mural on the iconic Bondi Beach wall has been completed this week, and it’s a direct – and jarring – comment on Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers in immigration detention facilities both in Aus and offshore across Manus in Papua New Guinea.
[jwplayer LI1qGZ3A]
The graffiti walls facing Bondi Beach have famously been a space for artists to express themselves on a large scale; street artists and muralists alike show off their best work in a space that gets gawked at by an incredible amount of people, locals, tourists, and 4000-odd backpackers trying to get a slice of the Aussie life.
Instead of being greeted by a cute, positive “welcome to Bondi #blessed!” mural, beachgoers and sightseers are now confronted with a stretch of 24 border security officers in full combat garb, with “NOT Welcome To Bondi” pasted above in an aggressive, cold font.
Artist Luke Cornish (who’s also an Archibald Prize finalist) put up a few pictures during and after the creation of the mural, noting that each of the stencilled Border Force officers represents each of the 24 suicides in Australian-owned and operated facilities in the last nine years.
Acknowledging that he’s had a divisive response to the large scale piece, it doesn’t look like it’ll be getting taken down anytime soon, with Bondi wall murals typically staying up for six months at a time.
There are only two pieces that have been approved by the local Waverley Council to stay up for an extended preservation – a memorial to a victim of the 2002 Bali Bombings, and the ANZAC commemorative piece.
It’s generally accepted that the Bondi Beach wall murals aren’t to be tagged over by other graffiti artists, but let’s all set out stopwatches and see how long it takes before this one gets a voluntary paint job from a disgruntled local.
‘Welcome To Bondi’ is not his first piece on the graffiti wall, either. Cornish – who works under the name E.L.K – also worked alongside another artist on 2016’s ‘Capitalist Pig’ piece, and a pair of gothic-style wings that were part of the works defaced with swastikas earlier this year.
