Guido Van Helten is currently in Australia where he recently finished this new mural portrait for the Wall to Wall festival in Benalla curated by Judy Roller.
Titled‘Nostalgia I’ the wall was, according to the artist, painted using the image of a boy Ned Kelly’s nephew, standing at the Kelly homestead in Greta West, just outside of Benalla in 1922. The wall in the picture is covered with carved initials that included K.K., A.S., J.B., N.K., D.K., S.H., carved by Kate, Sherritt, Joe Byrne, Dan & Ned and Steve Hart, the Kelly gang and family.
The artist explains his work as follows:
“The use of old images has become a recurrent theme in my work, through the nostalgia and the sentiment community attach to photographs, old stories and people. Images can become distorted, faded or misused over time, they become our mythology.” – Guido Van Helten
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
