PENOLA’S Guy Detot has commissioned another artist to beautify one of the town’s blank walls following a similar successful initiative last year.
In 2018, South East artists April Hague and Charlene Riley painted a message of female empowerment on the side of Mr Detot’s gallery inspired by strong Penola women such as Mary MacKillop and Fiona Ralton.
Adelaide graffiti artist Zenobius Jiricek spent time in the Limestone Coast earlier this year and stumbled across Mr Detot’s Le Max gallery.
A working relationship then grew from a shared appreciation of graffiti art.
“I have always thought the alley and courtyard around the gallery would make a fantastic canvas for graffiti art,” Mr Detot said.
“Zeno came in and showed me what kind of art he was doing and I loved it – straight away I said this is your canvas and gave him the opportunity to paint one of the walls.
“I can give artists a canvas but I do not have money for supplies or to pay them, but graffiti artists are mostly looking for the canvas.”
Mr Detot said the only stipulation was for Mr Jiricek to respect and hopefully inspire the Penola community.
“Most importantly its about Penola – it is where I live and I want the artists to have respect for that,” he said.
“The art culture is strong in Penola and we have a great history here that should be celebrated.”
The wall – directly opposite Ms Hague and Ms Riley’s mural – was splashed with colour by Mr Jiricek who was inspired by well-known Penola poet John Shaw Neilson’s poem the Orange Tree.
The poem is a reminder for people to enjoy the world around them without complication or expectation.
Working in the graffiti style from a young teenager “running around with a questionable crowd”, Mr Jiricek said he had waited his whole life for an opportunity to work on a large scale.
“Guy said it would be great to be inspired by Neilson so I went through his poems and looked at analyses to get an idea,” he said.
“Neilson’s poems create a complicated imagery in your mind and that is pretty ambitious stuff to put on a wall.
“But I felt like the Orange Tree had a universal message that everyone could relate to and it would be relatively easy to translate to graffiti.
“I think graffiti has the ability to make people look at it and think differently – it is about breaking the thought bubble.
“Graffiti forces you to do that, it is like a flower growing on the Berlin Wall – it reminds them there is something else outside.”
The mural, which was completed over the weekend, is one of Mr Jiricek’s biggest works to date and he believes it could be a stepping stone to bigger things.
“Normally when I am travelling or in Adelaide, I find a store, buy some paint, turn up and paint,” he said.
“In those cases I do not care if someone goes over it or tags it, for me the point is not to create a statue that stands the test of time, it is to say I was there.
“But having a canvas like this all my own to create is amazing.
“There is a festival that travels around the country called Wonder Walls, it is a high calibre of entry and I have to do a lot more work before I make it to that point, but these kind of opportunities to get started are invaluable and I am so grateful to Guy and the Penola community to be able to share my story.”
