Chapters → What’s Behind It? Wendy Murray
I missed Urban Crew this past Tuesday. We were all supposed to write our essays together, but I was having a bad day, & clean forgot what day of the week it was.
So, I’ve opted for a different approach to get this writing finished on time. I thought I would put myself in the location, here on the intersection of Darlinghurst and Kings Cross Road, it might be easier to write. Because I had moved to L.A. last year, I feel a little disconnected to the city I spent 18 years living in. So – here I am – sitting opposite the famous Kings Cross coke sign.
COVID bleakness has settled into the neighborhood. It’s grey - autumn leaves and bare trees contribute to the feeling of a long, austere winter still ahead. But the coke sign doesn’t show signs of 2020 melancholy – it’s not feeling the economic downturn. The sign is a bright red beacon - clean as a whistle, fresh as a daisy. No wonder. The neon sign was replaced in 2015 and that’s when I had noticed it - the mural behind the sign. Partially revealed, visible through the scaffolding. Something that looked like an abstract mural on the wall of the Zenith Apartment Tower. I recall asking friends around The Cross and Darlo if they knew anything about it. Did anyone know what was behind the coke sign? Looks like a mural to me. Who did it? How long has it been there? I hunted around for information and found this comment by the Sydney City Council, in the Wentworth Courier:
“The City was unaware of the markings on the support wall and has been advised by Coca-Cola that they will be undisturbed during the restoration work,” City of Sydney spokeswoman said. (Nick Hansen July 17, 2015, Wentworth Courier)
The council had acknowledged the mural had significance. In my head, I had already started planning a ‘save the mural’ campaign. Similar to the successful community campaign to bring back the Enmore Road 'It's Like a Jungle Sometimes’, mural. The dearly loved Newtown mural by Colin Bebe was painted over in a 2017 publicity stunt by Melbourne based marketing agency Apparition Media. A hand painted advertisement for Mr Aronofskys’ movie ‘Mother’. After a massive amount of community push back, including by the Inner West Council, the work was repainted.
I wonder if now, in 2020, the power of the people could bring down the neon of a multi-national corporation? I began asking locals again. Jo Holder, long time local, curator and writer, said she’d ask around. She knew someone who knew someone who knew everything about the history of The Cross. This led me to Lumino Kinetic Artist Roger Foley Fogg.
So, the story behind the mural, behind the coke sign, was not what I expected.
It all happened in 1973. Fogg was paid to project manage on the installation of an artwork by Neil Burley. The work had been commissioned by the building owner to paint something that was reminiscent of an ad for coke. Originally the building was the Kingsgate Hotel at Kings Cross which opened as a ‘motor inn’ in 1971.[1] His understanding was that the building owner had commissioned the work as a pitch to the multi-national corporation, hoping they might also see the new site as a location for advertising. It worked; the first coke billboard went up on the site in 1974.
As a street artist operating in Sydney from 2002-2017, this story is a familiar one for me to see Sydney. Here’s how I’ve seen it play out in Sydney over the past fifteen years: A wall is ‘activated’ by a graffiti writer, crew, poster artist, muralist, community group or street artist. A mural, production or piece is painted. The public seems to appreciate the work for a while, but interest soon wanes. The site gets noticed by one of a number of guerilla / ad agencies – they move in and replace the mural with advertising that poses as street art. They pay the building owner for the site, deterring the owner to save the space / revert the space back to public artwork. This happened on Foveaux Street in Surry Hills with the ‘Great day to paint’ mural by ROACH and NUMSKULL.[2]. After eighteen months, the site was hijacked by an advertising agency who ‘promised to give it back’. They still haven’t. Twenty meters down the street, still on Foveaux, a wall that once had street art, then illegal advertising, has now been hijacked by Apparition Media. They commissioned their artists to paint a mural of Swans player Adam Goodes as a supportive gesture to the Black Live Matter campaign. This appears to me to be advertising dressed up as street art and activism. This site has now become a landmark for folks on social media, and in the neighborhood.
The coke sign is an important landmark for folks too. I can’t recall how many times I’ve said to friends over the years – meet me under the coke sign. It used to be – meet me at DOME café – named for the domed shaped architecture of the building that housed the book shop. Giant architectural coffee table books, design books, special Japanese volumes of illustration. Those were the days when print was still revered and respected.
Did you know the Coke sign was once printed? Before its current neon form.
Sitting here, on July 2020, I recall a was a time in my life when the coke sign was the centre of my universe. Clubs, dancing and troubled party nights were ‘beyond the coke sign’. I lived in Darlinghurst, went to galleries in The Cross, markets in The Cross, coffee in The Cross, gentrification exists beyond the coke sign. Like the Hollywood sign in L.A., for me the coke sign was a central pivot to the way I navigate the city. It’s ridiculous really – I don’t even drink coke. But that sign gets mentioned often and sitting here now I think of how much ‘advertising’ I’ve done for coke over the years. It’s a terrific marketing strategy – make a landmark out of an advertising billboard. The billboard becoming so ubiquitous, folks don’t even realise it’s advertising. Like the Hollywood sign, which was originally Hollywoodland, a temporary real estate sign to sell land in the area. If these spaces hadn’t been highjacked by opportunistic salesmen, we might not have the visual landmarks we have today, including the coke sign? Foley likes the coke sign and feels it ‘brightens up the street and has become a Pop Icon as a work of Electro Kinetic Pop Art, in the manner of Warhol's soup cansand Rudi Stern’s Let there be Neon artwork’.
But like me, Foley has similar ideas about the installation of work around the city. It depends on the intent of the person doing it. Foley always intended to make an artwork with nuanced messages, he says, ‘which is sometimes at variance with the desire of the person commissioning the work, which is why I don’t get a lot of work but the work I do get is profoundly satisfying and something I can be proud of.’
The traffic is still blaring passed me. Every time I look up – someone smiles at me. I’m oddly perched on the stair, on the 169 Darlinghurst Road white elephant corner. Where there always seems to be an operational night club but no one ever here. Shit on Sticks is covered in pigeons and pigeon shit.
The coke sign represents a haphazard compromise - the mural work created with integrity coexists with advertising. But I don’t want to see compromises. I would prefer a city whose visual landmarks I reference be mural artworks, graffiti, or street art and not advertising. So for now, mural will remain safe, tucked away behind the coke sign, until another curious researcher tries to figure out what was behind it. My Parking ran out 3 minutes ago. I’ve gotta go.