Drawing attention to flora

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Wednesday, 16 August 2023

Visual artist George Rose is drawing attention to endangered local flora with her latest murals, created as part of Knox Council’s Boronia Arcade and Laneways Upgrade project.

Her artworks in Lupton Way, facing Boronia train station, are the last in a series of murals to beautify Boronia.

“Knox is home to several endemic and endangered plants,” George says. “For these works, I featured the Dandenong Range cinnamon wattle, green scentbark, Yarra gum and Yarra burgan, which are all found within a three kilometre radius of this location. There’s so many endemic species in Australia and they don’t often get a lot of air time. Quite often I’ll use endangered and rare plants in my works to give more exposure to those sorts of things.”

These final two works by George repeat the bright and vivid themes of a larger piece created last year at Play Park 257 next to Boronia Police Station.

“Murals are such an easily accessible art form — there are no barriers to entry, you’re passing by or you see a photo of it,” she says. “One of the beautiful things about when you’re painting a mural is that you’re also so accessible to the public so I’ll have a million different conversations with local people and really get to know and understand the area.

“It’s a way for me to draw attention to the environment in which we find ourselves. Murals are in urban environments and we’re all over these locations where these plants used to thrive. It’s creating a space where people feel like they want to spend more time. It becomes an identity feature of the area, which is really nice. It gives people something which is specifically theirs.”

The murals were funded through the Victorian Government’s Suburban Revitalisation program, and managed by Council as part of the Building a Better Boronia initiative.

See Boronia’s murals in Lupton Way, 217 and 257 Dorset Road, 163 Boronia Road, Craves Lane, AEC Arcade and Dorset Arcade.

Drawing attention to flora

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