Cultural design on public transport line

A BIBBULMUN Noongar artist and recent Federation University graduate is one of seven First Nations creatives to see his work featured on a Melbourne tram.

After tying for the win in this year’s MuralFest competition, Jay Van Nus’ top-place-taking style can now be seen as part of the RISING Art Trams project.

Like much of his recent work, Van Nuys said he was inspired by his Indigenous heritage.

“The designs are based off my background, being Bibbulmun Noongar,” he said. “There’s lots of traditional symbols in there and showing different people.

“The main thing that connects my work is around using art to tell my story of all my different identity groups. More recently, it’s really been about my Indigenous background.”

The RISING Art Trams initiative was a collaboration between Public Transport Victoria, Yarra Trams, and Creative Victoria.

With this year’s theme being Blak Futurism, the project was curated by Boon Wurrung/Wemba Wemba artist Jarra Karalinar Steel.

Van Nus saw his stretched across its tramline canvas during a launch event last month.

“It was overwhelming,” he said. “It was huge. I’d been seeing it on my screen for months so I hadn’t expected it to be as big and exciting as it was.”

He said the piece marked many firsts for him.

“I’d done a lot of black-and-white Western traditional works in realism,” he said. “This was my first time doing vector art to scale.

“I’ve been using lots of contrasting colours as well. Composition-wise, a lot of it was based off that.

“It was a whole different process going from a sketch to vectoring. I got sent tram templates and had to be cautious of windows and I’d never had to think about that before and in the 3D space.”

Van Nus is a self-proclaimed lifelong creative and recently established his art business Jay Kulbardi, which is Noongar for “magpie,” after first selling his work in 2016.