Two mosaic fish, a parent and child, swim across the wall of the children’s playground at Cook + Phillip Park.
Artist: Joe Hurst
Artwork description
Set into the concrete wall that encloses the children’s playground in Cook + Phillip Park are a matching pair of colourful fish mosaics. One large and one small, as if an infant is swimming behind a parent.
The mosaic fish are created from many unique ceramic tiles, each featuring a different design but decorated with the same tones of cream, brown, green and blue. The tile designs include imprints of hands and shells, sea creatures and seascapes. It is likely that many of the tiles were made by the children from the YWCA’s holiday adventures program, who collaborated on the project with Aboriginal artist Joe Hurst.
The centre of the larger fish features a sub-mosaic of smaller tiles in bright colours, showing 2 figures in a boat, one sitting and one standing.
As a community artwork the piece has special significance to the local community and highlights the communal nature of the site.
Artist
Joe Hurst (1960–2022) was a multi-discipline Murrawarri artist who worked across areas of design, construction, sculpture, printing and painting. Joe was involved in many exhibitions both nationally and internationally and was a long-time member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative.
His work was displayed in group and solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally in Budapest, Hungary and in New Zealand.
His numerous public artworks include the Sea of Hands design displayed in Royal Botanic Garden Sydney for the Reconciliation and Olympic weekends in 2000.
