There once was a land of laughing trees.
So proclaimed a sequence of yellow block words, painted on the side of the old sawtooth warehouses (so called because of the jagged triangle rooves) located on the corner of Roe and Fitzgerald Street in Northbridge. Those words and warehouses don’t exist anymore – at current the site is being redeveloped into the precinct’s new $113 million Perth Police Complex, a 24 hour hub that will be home to the Perth Watch House, Magistrate’s Court and the Perth Police Centre.
At current the site is cloaked by a series of hoardings. Hoardings are makeshift walls which originated in medieval architecture, designed to keep the hoards out while the castle’s architects improved the field of fire along the castle’s exterior wall.
These days they still keep the hoards out, but also offer up a blank canvas for graffiti artists, although the more savvy developers offer the space to street artists to present a public showcase of talent. And a sharing of stories.
Such is the case with the new Perth Police Complex, where the hoardings currently on display are painted by Stormie Mills. For Stormie, the site specific artwork began with the phrase There once was a land full of laughing trees, an abstract slogan seen by everyone who caught the Perth to Fremantle train in the ’80s (the Joondalup line not being installed until the ’90s).
‘In 1984 artist Peter Clemesha (created) two print based works based on this text titled “Land of plenty†and another print of actual graffiti itself titled “Rural romanticism continuedâ€,’ Stormie told Perth Street Art.
‘Whether this graffiti was written by Peter Clemesha or members of the CSNF is unsure however both of these prints are now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
‘Mid 1986 saw the continuation of NYC styled graffiti letters begin to take over this space.’
However, Stormie’s personal connection with the site is something else entirely, and quite ironic considering the site’s future.
‘As a kid I used to hide paint in these then abandoned warehouses prior to night-time urban adventures in 1985.
‘I am somehow intimately connected to their history, the old warehouses “saw-toothed†rooflines, the trees & urban landscape itself whose longevity is eternally in question in the heart of any city as the ongoing redevelopment & latter demise heralded often by the development of graffiti and its urban text.’
Stormie’s contribution continues the story of this site through the representation of his iconic Magpie-men, gloomy humans playing dress ups with beak masks and imaginary wings.
Magpies themselves are hoarders, who gather together and swoop, squabble the dawn with supposed song, a din more akin to impatient chatter and territorial positioning. They are angry, anarchic and easily agitated, part trickster and part avian, bound to locale, their spring nesting sites avoided by anyone who isn’t wearing a helmet.
Stormie’s Magpie-men have a similar effect, creating a visual intrigue over a Burle Marx inspired landscape of shapes, yet agents who symbolically repel the hoards from transgressing the walls. Theoretically.
‘The Magpie-men are my characters (who) fly above all this without constraint or borders. There (were) 9 of them – 9 being a favourite number of mine – but since one was stolen there’s only 8 left now!’
With Stormie’s work fetching $10,000 + in galleries, such a theft is understandable. Plus it adds to the overall mystique of the site – part graffiti hiding spot, part abandoned warehouse, part future hub of enforcing law and making Northbridge a safer place to be. It’s a site of contradictions, haunted by the ghost of cackling trees who offer no respite or rest for Stormie’s Magpie-men.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
