Breakfast with a side of visual overload in Adelaide for Mural Monday

 

The pink and blue mural next door was almost as difficult to ignore as the one I photographed last week — although I have since discovered that my so-called gangster geisha may not have been a geisha at all.

Sitting on that little stool with breakfast in front of me, I had both walls competing for attention. This one is a riot of pinks, blues and cartoonish creatures, oversized sunglasses, strange expressions and layers upon layers of tagging. It has that wonderfully unruly language of Australian street art — part pop surrealism, part comic book, part graffiti, with every available inch apparently regarded as an invitation for someone else to leave their signature.

And perhaps that is part of the charm. The mural itself is carefully composed, yet the wall continues to evolve around it, each new tag and scribble becoming another accidental layer in the picture. In Australia, street art and tagging have long occupied this slightly uneasy space between public expression, vandalism and urban culture. Sitting there eating a very ordinary bacon-and-egg breakfast beneath all that visual noise, I found the contrast rather entertaining.

Another week to go before daylight saving arrives and once again decides that my circadian rhythm needs to be rearranged for the greater good. At least spring has already arrived, bringing longer days, softer light and the promise of getting out with the camera again.

I think I am ready for some landscapes.

After all the walls, faces, signs and concrete of Adelaide, I am beginning to crave something with a little more sky.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday