Daniel Wallwork
About the artist
Born and raised in Cairns, Daniel (Wally) Wallwork is a multi-faceted contemporary art practitioner.
A professional aerosol artist, automotive spray-painter, sculptor, event producer, curator, arts worker, small business owner, father and Chair of KickArts Contemporary Arts, Board of Directors are among the many guises of this dynamic artist.
Established as a gallery artist, Wallwork is one of North Queensland’s most progressive visual artists whose practice often extends on his trade skills as an automotive spray-painter. Wallwork’s arts practise is recognisable through the use of high-quality automotive paints and materials creating slick, finished works that utilise light and shadow to create tactile forms. His works often playfully explore and celebrate Australia’s iconic automotive culture, its suburban roots and various sub-cultures. And more recently natural forms found in his tropical suburban environment, including the dynamic insects and birds of FNQ.
Often merging these concepts as ‘auto-organica’, his works tap into the visual language of the suburban ‘rev-head’, Daniel creates a signature sexy, minimal and vibrant auto-aesthetic.
Wally has also become widely known throughout regional Queensland and particularly many remote Cape York Peninsula aboriginal communities, as a Socio-Cultural Aerosol Artist (legal graffiti) and Educator.
Artwork
Blue Carcoons, 2010
Cast resin, candy apple two-pack, simulated rust, zinc anneal
Ulysses, 2010
Recycled plastic car bumpers
Freshly emerged from its chrysalis and resting on the wall, Ulysses and the Blue Carcoon series are a homage to the stunning Ulysses Butterfly found throughout tropical North Queensland.
The triptych, Blue Carcoon is a reference to the intricately formed chrysalis that butterfly caterpillars transform into as part of their amazing life journey. It protects the butterfly during its metamorphosis, often adopting camouflage and patterning and protection to blend in with their individual domestic and sub/urban environments.
“I have envisaged an evolutionary camouflage approach by the butterfly in an urban environment, as the Carcoons have been formed on a surface of similar colour an effort to been into its industrialised environment”.
The work also is an exploration of light and colour, with the dents and high spots on the surfaces catching the light at different angles and the candy apple paint reacting to the lights.
The process involved hand beating the zinc anneal surfaces with various objects, casting forms off a WRX Subaru and altering them, then recasting to get the forms on the surface. Finally, the pieces were spray-painted with a custom candy apple paint finish with a rust finish to small areas to give the panels a more weathered look.
Ulysses is a direct reference to the Ulysses butterfly. Floating effortlessly through the canopy of a tree, stunning flecks of electric blue catch your eye, drawing your gaze skyward looking for this majestic butterfly dancing through the foliage.
Wallwork aimed to recreate this tropical beauty, mimicking their electric blue wings as impressive wall pieces, ready to take flight.
“Ulysses is part of a small series of butterflies, moths and beetles I was creating out of repurposed damaged and discarded, plastic car bumper bars. I imagined the works as to be something like a collected specimen on a wall, still showing small imperfections, referencing the life it had already led."
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