Type-based abstract artist Tristan Kerr has created a mural that reflects the importance of being together at Donald Street Reserve, St Marys.

Together 2022

Artist: Tristan Kerr
Project cost: $7,500
Location: Donald Street Reserve, St Marys
Installed: 2022 

The mural represents a moment in time where we need to stop and consider one another and spells out the word ‘Together’ in an abstract and playful way. The mural features warm, rich tones to reflect the natural elements of the reserve, along with cool blue colours and shapes to represent water.

Tristan says the work represents a moment in time where we need to stop and consider one another and reconnect in public spaces. “This idea of ‘togetherness’ in the community feels relevant right now as we move through two and half years of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he says. “I wanted the piece to feel uplifting yet represent natural elements of form and colour that surround the water tank infrastructure.”

About the artist

Tristan Kerr (born Melbourne, 1985) is an artist and typographer whose work reflects on cultural diversity, consumerism and advertising, and the tensions between subjects who exist within these worlds, as he combines fragments of street signage, mark making, graffiti and abstraction through his works.

Through his practice, Kerr interrogates the ever-changing face of the city and its typographic ephemera, portraying the disregarded surfaces of urban life in his paintings, sculptures and large-scale installations. His fixation with fleeting urban street views was fuelled by the several years he spent working and exhibiting in Paris—as he noticed the disregarded shopfronts with fading hand-lettered signage, the sprawling graffiti and the torn metro posters that adorn the cities walls, forming part of its cultural archive.

Kerr’s works encourage people to stop, look and question their surroundings, considering other possibilities for what public space might constitute. Kerr has exhibited locally and throughout Europe.