Birdman, Danny Gretscher & Bryan Jeffs

2016, Byron Bay

Four site specific works across Byron Shire Council’s water & sewer infrastructure, commissioned for the purpose of graffiti prevention.

Birdman’s ‘Secret knowledge of backroads’ recalls the colours and forms of paddocks, referencing both the Recreation Ground’s history as an open paddock and his own past-time as a bird watcher, creating mudmaps to himself to recall his travels and sightings on the edge of pastoral lands on his postie bike.

This is the only known, large scale public work created by Troy O’Keeffe aka Birdman, who flew free during the 2022 Northern Rivers floods.

Danny Gretscher’s work ‘Ancestral Sea’ was at the same location where Brett Whiteley spontaneously painted a nude in the 80s.

Bryan Jeffs’ site specific living walls across two sites, entitled Heathgraph I & II, were designed to utilise recycled water from Byron’s sewer pump stations at the Industrial Estate (opposite Santos) and Recreation Grounds, to create a sustainable, living work.