Peter Drew works swiftly, transforming a blank city wall into a work of art designed to spark questions about what it means to be Australian.
The efficient movements of the Adelaide artist should come as no surprise – he has plastered as many as 5,000 of his striking “Aussie” posters on city walls around the country – and he’s about do more.
As he brushes starchy glue on the wall to hold up the colourised archival images on Sunday, people glance and occasionally pause, curious.
Drew works quickly as he pastes his posters on public walls in Adelaide on Sunday. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/The Guardian
A man in a One Nation T-shirt wanders up with a friendly smile – he needs directions to the nearby anti-immigration protest.
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At the last protest, an exercise in jingoism based on the fear of so-called “mass migration”, protesters tore Drew’s posters down as he was putting them up.
That inspired him to reinvigorate the project, with 1,000 new posters and six new designs – including one of the people tearing down the posters.
The Aussie Posters project has been under way for nearly a decade, sparked by a wave of anti-Islamic sentiment in Australia in the wake of the Lindt cafe siege.
Drew went on the hunt for pictures of people who applied for exemptions to the White Australia policy.
“I was already into archival images before then,” he says. “I looked at the photographs here in Adelaide first and found some great shots. But it wasn’t until I was at the Melbourne archive, the national archive, and I found the image of Monga Khan.
“And as soon as I saw that, I thought, well, this is it. This is the centrepiece, and he was unknown.
Drew’s posters celebrate Australia’s multicultural history. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/The Guardian
“I sort of wanted to find people who weren’t famous, who were just people you’d bump into on the street, and that would be more effective.”
The picture of Monga Khan, with his striking profile, moustache and turban, was taken in 1916. As a hawker – a critical part of the economy – he applied for an exemption so he could go home to India and then return.
Drew wants his designs – screen-printed on craft paper – to get people thinking about national identity.
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He has faced outrage and vitriol from those challenged by his work, and gratitude from new arrivals and those who see hope in his evocative images.
So he says he’ll continue his work, as immigration policy debate is again used by many as a front for nationalism and racism.
Drew poses next to a booby-trapped poster of Monga Khan before an anti-immigration march in Adelaide on Sunday. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/The Guardian
This time, as the anti-immigration march in Adelaide began on Sunday morning, Drew cheekily covered one of his posters with another, identical one, stuck on with masking tape. He added another prank – he rigged up a bucket of water.
An anti-immigration protester waited until he thought the police had passed then tore down the top one, leaving the original behind and spilling water everywhere.
“Pick it up,” a police officer said.
The officer and his colleagues waited, and watched, until the protester put every last scrap in a bin.
“Good boy,” one of them said.
