This month as part of Outpost Project at Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, we’ve been working on a project known as The Ironlak Bus – a 1976 classic school bus which was a Police booze bus in its former life. The bus is our way of representing the beauty of letter-based graffiti in a primarily “street-art” focussed festival and is a homage to the art-form’s origins on public transport.
Every weekend we’ve invited a different writer to paint one side of the bus, meaning that every two weeks the older artwork is destroyed forever and a new painting is created – which in itself is a comment on the transient nature of graffiti and a reminder that often this type of work only lives forever in photographs.
First up to officially paint the Ironlak Bus was DMOTE. Given his history in Sydney, it was an absolute honour to have him involved in the project.
Below are some photographs I took of the process.
Photos: Luke Shirlaw.
More info:
– Dmote.net
– Outpost.CockatooIsland.gov.au
– Ironlak Bus Video