Skip to main content

A colourful new skyline for Sebastopol

28 March 2024

Sebastopol locals are sure to have enjoyed watching the bright splash of colour and form growing across the skyline of late. Sebastopol born and raised street artist known as Cax One, who has made quite a name for himself in the industry, has recently designed and painted a colourful urban mural in Sebastopol.

The brightly coloured imagery on the side of Totally Workwear in Albert Street, includes a nod to the Borough of Sebastopol with the old municipality logo, recognition of a gold mining history with imagery of a shovel, a boot to represent the area’s history in shoe-manufacturing and a celebration of the Burra Football Netball Club with their kookaburra mascot featured. Cax also added personal elements from his time growing up in Sebastopol.

“A lot of childhood memories are incorporated into this. I look back at this time really fondly and with a lot of nostalgia, maybe even through rose coloured glasses, because I was pretty young at the time.” A bike appears in the mural as Cax got his first BMX while living in Sebas, the Albert Street and take-away food signs reflect his regular visits to the corner store, and a pink and purple cloud is a reminder of all the Hubba Bubba that was chewed as he learnt how to blow bubbles.

Another addition is a Murnong Daisy, which the local Indigenous mob farmed for the yams attached to the roots. It’s Cax’s way of acknowledging the original custodians of this land, pre-colonisation. The mural took about two weeks to paint, with many more hours spent on the design.

When asked about the opportunity to create an artwork for the Burra, Cax says he is very grateful, but would like to see more opportunities for people to develop their skills, “It’s one of those art forms that is looked down upon a lot. Graffiti as an art form is about fifty years old, but there’s still vary rare opportunities for people to just turn up and paint.

It becomes this thing where you have to either do it illegally, which is the path that I went down and got in a lot of trouble for, or you have to be in a position where you have the connections and usually the money to have a place to do it.” Cax would love to see opportunities in Ballarat to help bridge the gap between young kids just starting out and getting to a place where they are proficient enough to create graffiti art legally.

His suggestion is to have some walls that are open for anyone to paint. “If I could impress on people, the value is not just in the finished product, it’s in having the time and place to practice. If this was capitalised on, it could become something quite big and exciting.”

This art project was coordinated by Ballarat Neighbourhood Centre with funds from Regional Development Victoria, allocated by City of Ballarat through Spotlight on Sebastopol.