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Public Art Trail Highlights

The Highlight Trail features larger scale, iconic artworks that are often associated with major redevelopment projects, as well as socially engaged arts that support cultural development and creative placemaking. More will be added to this trail as relevant new public artworks are completed.

This trail is a 35 km circuit ideal for vehicle touring outside of peak hour traffic times.

1. Aeroplane Boy sculpture, 2020

Aeroplane Boy sculpture

  • Artist: Matt Calvert.
  • Location: Bayswater Station, 750 Mountain Highway, Bayswater.

Aeroplane Boy was commissioned as part of the Bayswater Level Crossing Removal Project with funding from the state government. The artwork was created using recycled glass and steel, and depicts the image of a boy with his arms outstretched. The prevailing silhouette is captured in the skyline and can be seen from different vantage points across Bayswater.

2. Waiting in the Wings mural, 2020

KCAC mural

  • Artists: David Booth (aka Ghostpatrol) and Carla McRae
  • Location: Knox Community Arts Centre, 790 Mountain Highway, Bayswater

A mural by Ghostpatrol and Carla McRae that references the work of Ikko Tanaka, a well-known 20th-century Japanese graphic designer. They pay homage to his 1970s and 80s theatre posters and have added a fresh look to the Knox Community Arts Centre. The mural is almost like a stage. It is playful and joyous with layers of bold shapes and mask-like images that encourage the viewer to discover more about the theatre program on offer within.

3. Tanz sculpture, 2014

Tanz scuplture

  • Artist: Martin George
  • Location: Knox Community Arts Centre, 790 Mountain Highway, Bayswater

This modernist sculpture stands proudly at the entrance to the Knox Community Arts Centre. Created with corten steel, the sculpture is part of George’s ‘Dance’ series. The Yiddish word for dance, Tanz, captures a moment of charged intimacy between two performers as they turn into one another and begin to move together. With curves that suggest balance and movement, this work considers the inherent beauty of humans in motion. It is a deliberate and sensual narrative, embodied in the ever-rising vertical entanglement of its two curves.

4. Morning sun mural, 2022

Coachella mural

  • Artist: Christian Vine (aka VEINS)
  • Location: 22/163 Boronia Road, Boronia. Exterior of Coachella Coffee Co.

This mural features local flora inspired by the enchanted surrounds of the Dandenong Ranges. It highlights the dense, lush scenery and gorgeous light that filters through the trees. The work features a magical patchwork of colour and form to create the overall effect of the beautiful pockets of vegetation that have inspired the artist.

5. Nigh murals 1-3, 2022

Lupton Way mural

  • Artist: George Rose
  • Location: Playpark 257, corner of Lupton Way and 257 Dorset Road, Boronia. Exterior of Boronia Police Station

This series of three murals explores the artist’s interest in endangered local flora. The largest mural appears prominently on the rear walls of the police station with two smaller murals that are visible from Boronia Station. Knox is home to several endemic and endangered plants that are represented in the murals, including cinnamon wattle, green scent bark and Yarra gum. Drawing attention to the local natural environment gives the community an artwork that is specifically ours.

6. Metro mural and light box gallery, 2015

Cinema Lane light box and mural

  • Artists: Leigh Ouwerkerk (aka ASKEM) and OG23.
  • Location: Cinema Lane, laneway between Dorset Road and Dorset Square

The large-scale abstract Metro Mural by Leigh Ouwerkerk (aka ASKEM) and OG23 was completed as a permanent installation as part of Immerse 2015, Knox’s biennial festival of arts and culture. The laneway locally known as Cinema Lane also features one of Knox City Council’s curated light box galleries where exhibitions are rotated annually.

7. Superb Fairy Wren mural, 2016

Superb Fairy Wren mural

  • Artists: Leigh Ouwerkerk (aka ASKEM) and James Beattie (aka DVATE)
  • Location: Cinema Lane, laneway between Dorset Road and Dorset Square

A large superb fairy wren and abstract motifs make up this large-scale mural created by ASKEM and DVATE. This mural was commissioned as a permanent installation for Immerse 2016, Knox's biennial festival of arts and culture.

8. Systems of Knowledge #1 mural, 2022

217 Dorset Road murals

  • Artist: Kent Morris
  • Location: 217 Dorset Road, Boronia and flagpole site, located on Dorset Road near intersection of Boronia Road

Through a First Nations lens, Kent Morris reveals the continuing presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, culture and knowledge in the contemporary Australian landscape. The interaction of native birds with the built environment reflects resilience, adaption, continuity and change to ecological systems, reflecting on the ways in which First Nations culture survives and adapts.

9. Drift (water purifier shed) mural, 2023

Water Purifier Shed mural

  • Artists: Ambrose Rehorek and Chanel Tang (aka Creature Creature)
  • Location: Tim Neville Arboretum, 98 Dorset Road, Ferntree Gully

The Tim Neville Arboretum in Ferntree Gully is home to a vast array of wildlife that visit the unique parkland throughout the year. The water purifier shed has been decorated with many of these animals, including dragonflies, pobblebonk frogs, sugar gliders and a large, grey heron. The shed houses the pumps that manage the purity of the water in the reserve, providing a healthy environment for the wildlife.

10. Horologist Lane light box gallery, 2022

Horologist Lane light boxes

  • Location: Horologist Lane, Ferntree Gully

The light box gallery was installed at Horologist Lane in 2022 as part of the Ferntree Gully Creative Placemaking Plan, delivered by Knox City Council in partnership with the Victorian Government. Initiated as a creative way to increase village safety, the light box gallery has been well received by locals. The inaugural exhibition was a collection of nature collages by local students as part of a school holiday program led by artist Jo Mott. The light box gallery exhibition program is updated every six months and highlights the work of local artists and artist groups.

11. Lyrebird mural, 2023

Lyrebird mural

  • Artist: Justine Millsom (aka Juzpop)
  • Location: 98 Station Street, Ferntree Gully

Centrally located in Ferntree Gully Village, Juzpop’s mural depicts the majestic ground-dwelling Australian lyrebird, the bird that has been identified by the village community as a historic motif that represents the unique location at the base of the Dandenong Ranges.

12. Undergrowth (ferns and fungi) mural, 2023

Undergrowth (ferns and fungi) mural

  • Artist: Jack Rowland
  • Location: Rear of 170 Underwood Road, Ferntree Gully at the Apollo Service Station

This mural depicts a panoramic landscape scene and highlights the unique qualities of the surrounding hills that are only a short walk from Ferntree Gully Village. It suggests an other-worldly environment with the mist, ferns and fungi, and the use of cool-toned blues, greens and purples.

13. Reach for the Stars, 2016

Reach for the Stars mural

  • Artist: Fausto Gallego (aka Fausto)
  • Location: Knox Skate and BMX Park, corner of Ferntree Gully Road and Gilbert Drive, Knoxfield

Reach for the Stars is an aerosol mural by Fausto Gallego on the concrete skate dome. It was originally painted in 2016 and restored in 2023 by the artist. As a longtime user of the skate park, Fausto says, ‘The Knox cradle is one of the biggest domes in eastern Melbourne so it’s pretty iconic.’ The renewed mural depicts a monster pushing skaters to their limits and includes ‘sticker designs’ created by other skate park users in a face-to-face workshop with Fausto.

14. If These Walls Could Talk mural, 2023

If These Walls Could Talk mural

  • Artist: David Booth (aka Ghostpatrol)
  • Location: Rowville Library courtyard, Stud Park Shopping Centre, Stud Road, Rowville

Ghostpatrol’s low-key colour palette presents a network of subjects and ideas interwoven with an array of endemic species from the surrounding hills and waterways. Like a great think tank of the natural world, this network of creatures read, wander, explore and dream, encouraging the local community to reflect on the site’s history.

15. Aeolian sculpture, 2023

Aeolian sculpture

  • Artist: David Ball.
  • Location: Stamford Park Wetlands, Emmeline Row, Rowville.

Aeolian, meaning 'arising from the action of the wind' draws on its surroundings to create a focal point in the landscape. The large scale artwork forms part of a series that explores the theme of universality of life. Aeolian speaks of nature, geology, architecture and our human landscape. This piece represents a geological fragment of the earth’s crust that one could imagine to have been forged in situ or deposited on the coastal winds from afar. Its faceted sections create elegant angles and curves that sit lightly in the landscape and embrace the sky. Aeolian is handmade from corten steel and measures six metres wide and almost five metres high. Its deep orange, rusted patina contrasts with the cooler colours of its new surrounding environment at Stamford Park Wetlands..

16. Floodline sculpture, 2023

Floodline sculpture

  • Artist: James Geurts.
  • Location: Stamford Park Wetlands, Emmeline Row, Rowville.

Floodline is a site-specific artwork comprising of three oversized water-level sculptures positioned in a line that place the audience underneath the water of a great historic flood. Arranged eight metres apart, in a southwest direction, an invisible horizon of the flood level runs through the three sculptures, generating an abstracted mirror of the gauges on the illusory surface. Floodline materialises a phenomenon caused by refraction, where an underwater viewer sees everything above the surface of the water as a distorted reflection. Giving form to a historically significant memory of place, the ripples through the sculptures intensify as they reach the water, where the floodline would have been deeper and further distorted.

17. Untitled, Paloma Lane mural, 2021

Paloma Lane mural

  • Artist: DREZ
  • Location: Paloma Lane, between 1322 and 1324 High Street Road, Wantirna South.

This orange and green geometric mural by Drez references modernism and op art, shifting and elevating perceptions of graffiti and art in public places. Using urban structures as his canvas, Drez responds with colour gradients, following the form of the location, subverting these structures to create immersive spaces of colour.

18. Paloma Lane light box gallery

Paloma Lane light boxes

  • Location: Paloma Lane, between 1322 and 1324 High Street Road, Wantirna South.

The Paloma Lane light box gallery was installed in 2021 and features work from local artists, with exhibitions rotated every six months. Recent exhibitions have showcased work by art students from Swinburne’s Wantirna Campus.

19. Alley Oop sculpture, 2012

Alley Oop sculpture

  • Artist: Corey Thomas.
  • Location: Knox State Basketball Centre, 291 George Street, Wantirna South.

This stainless steel and fibreglass sculpture is based on a popular basketball manoeuvre called an ‘alley-oop’. Sculptor, Corey Thomas, has captured the dance-like movement of an athlete executing the offensive move to a teammate. Alley Oop was commissioned by Knox City Council in 2012 as part of the construction of Victoria’s State Basketball Centre at Knox Regional Sports Park.

20. Kinematic, 2023

Kinematic sculpture

  • Artist: Studio John Fish.
  • Location: Knox Regional Netball Centre, 9 Dempster Street, Ferntree Gully.

Located at the entrance to the Knox Regional Netball Centre, this sculpture has a central visual motif that speaks to ‘kinetic movement’. This is presented by aligning with the architecture of the newly refurbished centre. The work reflects a sense of flow and inclusiveness, connected to the activities of the sports facility.

21. New-Natural, 2024

Image
  • Artists: David Lee-Pereira and Amina Briggs.
  • Location: 46 Station Street, Ferntree Gully.

Amina Briggs, a proud Boonwurrung, Ugar and Erub woman has painted traditional Boonwurrung diamond symbols alongside David Lee-Pereira’s maidenhair fern, endemic to the Dandenong Ranges. Located on Wurundjeri Land the work depicts Waa, the Australian Raven as the protector of the waterways, represented here as the train network, in conflict over a worm (train) that embodies Amina Briggs Boonwurrung people’s entanglement with an ever-evolving environment.

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