The artist who painted a mural of a young Queen Elizabeth II,to mark the death of the British monarch,says he is likely to leave the portrait up after it was painted over on Wednesday night with the colours of the Aboriginal flag.
larger-than-life tribute went up in Marrickville the day Sydney woke to the news that.
Stuart Sale’s portrait this morning.Wolter Peeters
Having seen the changed work,he said:“It doesn’t really belong to me”. “It belongs to the street.”
His work was mostly received positively but within days had been defaced with a “horrible” epithet,that was subsequently “tidied up” by what Sale said were street art angels.
This time,the face of the Queen has been blotted yellow and is surrounded by dripping red paint,pointing to the contested nature of Australia’s history and the representative role the British monarchy played in the colonisation of First Nations people. The Queen’s funeral on Monday night ended 10 days of official mourning in Britain.
Sale said street art was by definition not meant to be static. “It belongs to the people in a way and that’s why I’m torn. I’ve painted this and given it to the street. I might let it stay for now.”
No “massive royalist”,the British-born Sale said he had been motivated to paint the Queen using a stencilling technique,to mark a historic moment rather than to make a political statement.
Stuart Sale’s tribute to Queen Elizabeth II.Dean Sewell
Sale memorialised American George Floyd in June 2020 on a garage near Enmore Park,. In the same vein,he painted two Indigenous boys beneath an Aboriginal flag at half-mast on Sydney Street,Marrickville.
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