The PUBLIC Silo Trail is an initiative which aims to transform rural Western Australia’s infrastructure into sites of high-calibre mural art, and increase the region’s profile through a program combining street art and local stories as well as the social documentary project ‘Homegrown Stories’.
The project represents a collaboration between FORM, CBH Group and Western Power in the creation of an outdoor gallery comprising murals on grain storage silos, transformer boxes and large-scale infrastructure throughout the state over the past three years.
Yok and Sheryo, Seadragon Mural, 2018, Albany Port. Photograph: Bewley Shaylor. Courtesy of FORM
Internationally renowned Australian/Singaporean street artists Yok and Sheryo were selected by a panel of judges from FORM, CBH Group, the City of Albany and Vancouver Arts Centre to paint silos at CBH Group’s Albany Grain Terminal, which was completed over the last few weeks and launched on Monday 26 March. The impressive all-encompassing depiction of a multi-coloured seadragon spreads across four silos, 35 metres in height, in an endeavor to showcase the unique marine life to the south-west region.
Previously, local artists Helen Ansell, Rachelle Dusting, Nick Zafir, Andrew Frazer and Glenn Hegedus have utilised transformer boxes as their canvas within Albany. In addition, American-artist HENSE and the UK’s Phlegm have decorated silo murals in 2015 at Northam, while local artist Amok Island who painted Banksia baxteri at Ravensthorpe; and finally in 2017 WA-based artist Kyle Hughes-Odgers worked on a silo in Merredin.
FORM’s Executive Director Lynda Dorrington says, ‘We genuinely believe in the transformative power that art and creative expression can have on individuals and communities.’
