Artist: Ash Coates
Year: 2021
Location: Furlong Road Shops: Corner of Furlong Road and Godfrey Ave, Sunshine North
A mural depicting and commemorating the Anzacs has now been installed on the corner of Furlong Road and Godfrey Ave, Sunshine North. This mural honours the sacrifices of Australia’s armed forces and is based on accounts and photographs from World War 1. The line of soldiers refers to the massive scale of lives lost and of the many men and women who served and those that never returned, like ghosts, lost to history.
About Ash Coates
Ash Coates is a multi-disciplinary artist. His practice involves, but is not limited to, painting, animation/video, installation and digital art. Across these mediums the artist conjures environmental and scientific narratives, while gleaning reference materials from the landscape, personal events, mythology and science fiction\horror films.
Often using tropes and metaphors from a broad range of sources, Ash’s work has a tendency to explore weird biological and social phenomena. He has a distinct aesthetic that straddles traditional and non-traditional techniques and he uses these to create worlds that blur the line between what is natural and what is unnatural.
Ash has completed a bachelor’s degree with Honours in visual art and has exhibited widely. His animations have been screened at various galleries and festivals, including the Adelaide Festival Centre, Kofu City International Art Festival (Japan), University of Mary Washington (USA), Willoughby Art Biennale, Gertrude Projection Festival and more.
In 2019, he was selected for the Rio Tinto’s, Martin Hansen Memorial Art Prize and was the recipient of both the Crow Street Creative Award and the People’s Choice Award. In 2018 he won the Eureka Art Prize and in 2017 he was selected for the Rio Tinto’s, Martin Hansen Memorial Art Prize and won the CQ University Award. He also received the Ballarat Arts Foundation’s Project Assistants Grant, the People’s Choice Award at the ANL Maritime Art Awards and residencies with WASPS studios in Edinburgh and Fife Scotland and also with AIRY Kofu in Kofu City Japan.