Feature Writing - Profile
Luis Geraldes,
By Marija Fletcher, Sidney Journalist
The sound weaving its way down the phone line is imbued with warm and vibrant tones: “That’s one of the good things about art – everyone sees different stuff”. If translated to colour on canvas, the voice of Luis Geraldes would be painted with bright splashes of orange and yellow.
Luis Geraldes is a Portuguese-Australian artist based in Gippsland, Victoria. In March of this year, Geraldes assembled over 5,000 tiles he had created using traditional Portuguese tilling techniques, and transformed what was once a cement and asphalt landscape into living colour, with intricate patterns and symbols.
Geraldes was commissioned by Marrickville Council to create a mural in Audley Street, Petersham, as part of a street‑scaping project.
I asked Luis why Marrickville Council had chosen him to create the mural: “I think it’s to do with my background. Actually, the time they contacted me I was overseas, and I said ‘look, you’ve just contacted me in Portugal, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning for God’s sake! What’s going on?’” [He laughs], “‘Oh’, he said, ‘ok then I’ll get in touch with you later’.”
Fortunately they did, and Petersham now has a bright band of colour on Audley Street entitled Fragile World in Constant Expansion. Geraldes expanded on the title of the mural: “The idea of that is that we are, in fact, a very fragile planet and a fragile cosmos and a fragile universe – or groups of universes – and, accepting the scientific views on cosmic development, we are in constant evolution. From the big bang to the eventual big crunch. … I really love the work, I mean I put one year of my life into that work and it’s so rich, so symbolic, so strong.”
The Audley Street mural stands over ten feet high. Its yellow background illuminates the Portuguese cultural symbols that seem to call out to the passer-by. The mural narrates the evolution of the universe in a way that has an almost hypnotic affect on the viewer. Geraldes: “My work deals with the spiritual in art. It deals with the hidden order behind the subject matter. The amalgamation of colours and symbols and shapes that I use in my paintings create this sort of magnetic field and magnetic power that when people look at them they get grabbed into that.”
Luis Geraldes was born in Portugal in 1957. He immigrated to Australia in 1985 and became an Australian citizen in 1987. He has collections all over the world, including Canada, Portugal, France, Germany, Spain, Israel and the USA.
Geraldes explained why he chose to settle in Australia: “Australia in Europe is sort of this paradisiac, sort of a dream that everyone dreams about. It’s seen as one of the lost worlds, away from everything, and I had this fascination about that idea and just went to the Australian embassy and applied. They said ‘look you’ve got 30 days to take it or leave it’. I didn’t really have time to think about it. I just, ‘yeah, well, why not, let’s go’. … It’s a beautiful country. No war, plenty of land, very spacious, a beautiful landscape and magic. This country is a magic place.”
I asked Geraldes what he meant by Australia being a “magic place”: “There is something special about Australian land that makes it very ‘magic’ or spiritual. Perhaps the extension, the horizon, being so old, its features of the landscape and most of all its relationship with the Aborigines, being such an old culture. Whatever it is, I feel the air is special and magic around certain areas of the country.”
Irrespective of what it is that drew Luis Geraldes here, his presence is testament to our good fortune at the rich cultural diversity and artistic expression that nourishes Australian soil.
Marija Fletcher
Journalist