The Watchful Ones celebrates the harmonious bond between nature, family and community, reflecting the timeless guardianship shared across species and generations that exists within our urban city spaces. A pair of magpie parents on the lookout to protect their chicks stand in front of a vibrant repeating pattern of local native flowers – pink pigface, purple kangaroo apple, and yellow murnong – signalling the season when magpies are most protective. Set against a sky-blue background, this artwork is overlaid with yellow designs inspired by the artist’s traditional South Eastern Kulin heritage, peeking through as a reminder of the land’s ever-present visual language.
Artist biography
Jarra Karalinar Steel is a multidisciplinary artist known for her 2021 Rising Melbourne Art Tram and curating the Rising Art Trams 2022-24, powerful poster art, large-scale public installations, video games, digital art and commemorative signage. Steel explores her South Eastern Kulin identity, memories, pop culture, folklore from her cultural history, and lived experiences growing up in Melbourne and living on country in culture with knowledge passed down through her family.
Steel is of Boon Wurrung, Wemba Wemba, Trawlwoolway, English and Scottish descent, and is based in Melbourne’s south on Boonwurrung country. She is a passionate advocate and consultant for self-representation of Victorian First Peoples art and culture and making sure it is kept alive and thriving.
Her focus on public and community art looks at ways to insert contemporary cultural visual language into the urban and digital landscape by reclaiming space and belonging through digital storytelling.
The current commission is the fifth in the partnership program and was installed in late 2024. It can be viewed from the intersection opposite the Hero Apartment Building on the south corners of Russell and Little Collins streets.
Image credits: Jarra Karalina Steel, ‘The Watchful Ones’, 2024. Hero Apartment Building Commission program series. Photograph: Peter Berzanskis
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