The Girl with No Name
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Here’s a tale that I thought was worth sharing, proving you can find inspiration in the most unexpected places. You just have to keep your eyes off your phone and take in the world around you, especially in the gritty side lanes of the inner city.
UMM’s been fortunate enough to have its home in Redfern for the past 14 years, which provides an urban landscape that can excite and challenge you. Every wall and doorway can be a blank canvas for the many talented and provocative street artists in Sydney, with each piece a time stamp of the current artistic and often political climate.
This tale, however, is less political and more of a mystery that myself, my partner, Nikki, and a few friends are close to solving. It started on a normal work day when I was taking one of my time-off-screen walks around Redfern to clear my head before the next meeting when I spotted a mural of a girl painted on an abandoned mattress. As usual, I took a photo of the piece to add the hundreds of street art pics I have accumulated over the years and left it at that.
However, I couldn’t get it out of my head that day, probably because I knew this piece would end up in the trash. I couldn’t stand the thought of it being swallowed up by the next council garbage truck and had to save it. Over dinner, I said to my family, “That’s it. I’m going to get that piece!”. Naturally, Nikki’s first reaction was, “How the hell are you going to pick up a mattress, you’d better smell it first because I don’t want a disgusting urine-stained mattress in the house.” Fair point, but I had a plan. I grabbed my torch, secateurs and a pair of dishwashing gloves and jumped in the car. The mattress was still proudly propped up in the laneway, so I did a quick stain and smell test, which was surely an interesting sight to any passers-by that night and fortunately, all was good. So I literally cut the entire piece out of the mattress and jumped back in the car. I can’t deny it felt liberating, slightly criminal, but so satisfying that I was able to rescue a piece of doomed artwork to be forever forgotten in Sydney’s wasteland.
When I got it home, we spread it out and realised the piece wasn’t tagged, so who was the artist? Who was the girl that he or she had so beautifully portrayed on this transient medium? We had to find out and we had to get this artwork framed straight away, which is exactly what we did. We were recently introduced to a master framer, Cameron McMurray, also located in Redfern and thought he might also know the artist. He didn’t, but was equally as intrigued by this mysterious piece and, whilst framing it, was also on the case to find out who its creator was.
It was a few weeks of searching and finding lots more of the same artist’s murals all over the city on many walls and another mattress (this time, it was stained, so we left it). After talking to many of our fellow creatives, our good friend and artist, Gawaa Luunda, found out who the artist was via social media after spotting a tag on the train line. The artist’s name on social is Pharo and we were all so excited to find “him” (we presume). It was a great feeling and I was nervous but excited to reach out and connect. Then he deleted his feed.
Our mural is now proudly displayed on the wall at UMM, serving as a source of inspiration for us to continue exploring our wonderful city, filled with art and wonder. Hopefully, by the time you read this, we have found our mystery artist, had a beer or two looking at his fantastic work and can finally name this piece.
Written by Benoit Thorp.
