Art Pharmacy Consulting was referred to the Stockland Green Hills project team in 2017, and was asked to pitch ideas for a number of sites within their Green Hills Shopping Centre.
The Stockland team was currently in the process of redeveloping its Green Hills Shopping Centre, adding new dining and restaurant precincts, as well as luxury shopping such as David Jones. The team was anticipating a higher level of worker and shopper traffic.
The client was after durable works, that evoked the local community and the centre as a meeting space. Any works created were to represent the local area, and the Stockland brand: something the artists achieved through incorporating native Australian flora of the Maitland area into the works. They had set a budget to activate two blank walls in high traffic areas – a mezzanine next to the carpark, as well as a blank wall lying in the space between the street entry and the foodcourt.
Art Pharmacy was asked to find two Australian artists who could create murals to ‘put the green back in Green Hills’ – reflecting the landscaping and the botanical elements of the Maitland area.
Art Pharmacy commissioned local artists, Ellie Hannon and Emeil Saada to create a murals in the Stockland Green Hills Shopping Centre which is currently undergoing expansion and re-development. Her Maitland river mural explores the vitality that a river can bring to an inland town. She draws from patterns found in native botanicals, ferns, birdlife and river movement. The mural invites the viewer to imagine themselves in a natural, active landscape by identifying familiar yet abstracted forms in the work. Art Pharmacy located and guided the artist in the creation of a concept, before liaising between her and the Stockland design team; all the time considering how the design would reflect, and interact with, the community.
After successfully executing this large scale mural in the mezzanine, Art Pharmacy was asked to complete the other mural (next to the food court) in early 2018. This mural was to welcome people to the new foodcourt as a shared community area. For this mural, Art Pharmacy located and guided the artist in the creation of a concept, before liaising between him and the Stockland design team; all the time considering how the design would reflect, and interact with, the community. The work was installed over three days – the Art Pharmacy team providing documentation, as well as occupational health and safety documents and induction documents.
