In the Studio with Sair Bean
Muralist Sair Bean’s colourful, paint-splattered Seacombe studio is largely a pit-stop while her real work takes place out on the street and among the people.
Sair Bean doesn’t put herself in a box titled ‘painter’ or ‘public artist’. Instead, she throws around more broad descriptors for herself: a “maker”, “tinkerer’, or even “thrill seeker”.
“I get a thrill from working big,” she says. “I like skydiving and bungee jumping and stuff like that, so working on a big scale and working up high gives me something in that sense of adrenaline.”
For Bean, the fact that her art is often on someone’s else’s property, completed to tight deadlines, with the owner looking over her shoulder throughout the entire creative process, simply adds to the thrill.
“When I first started, I was like, ‘Oh, don’t make a mistake,’” she says. “It’s someone else’s building; it’s someone else’s property.
“It’s a bit different to working on a body of work in your studio, where you have more time to develop it and go back and forth.”
As a result, Bean says her Seacombe Heights studio is akin to a storage space.
“Because I work with public art so much of late, I guess my studio space is quite often on the road or on the street, taking things in the van and packing it all up. It’s a movable space.”
Her fixed studio has a little bit of everything; there are shelves of fabrics and spray paints, baskets full of knick-knacks, a table covered with paint and clay, remnants of past projects, and collected material that may inform future work.
“I’ve got, like, about 300 tuna cans in here at the moment in some boxes. Am I going to do something with that at some point?” Bean wonders aloud.
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Her work is up on the walls, in all of its colour and personality. It is a space full of life, a place that offers itself up for experimentation and fun. Its energy resembles that of an art department, which might not be a coincidence — Bean also works as a teacher.
“Working with other people is a passion of mine. I think being a teacher informs that, just connecting with others and making with others.”
Ultimately, it’s this connection with people that drives Bean’s love to making art in the public realm.
“My favourite thing about working with public art is that I’m just amongst other people, and people are stopping by,” Bean says.
“I feel it [public art] makes art accessible to everybody. It doesn’t have to be a fancy gallery piece. You don’t have to pay a fee or be pushed passed to go and see the work. It’s just on the street, and it can be for everybody.
“It’s the people’s art.”
Bean’s mural work is often grounded in the people and places she works in. Photo: Jack Fenby
Bean’s most recent work …and the roots run deep while the windows whisper, on the corner of Chapel Street and O’Connell Street in North Adelaide, is an example of this. It is also Bean’s new favourite piece.
“I feel like my most recent mural is always my favourite,” she says.
The brief for this latest work, commissioned by the City of Adelaide and Guildhouse, was the inclusion of botanicals, but Bean also looked to the neighbourhood for inspiration: North Adelaide’s heritage buildings, St Peter’s Cathedral, and the beautiful character homes scattered throughout the suburb.
“I just get really drawn into all the windows and archways,” she says.
“I’m always so intrigued by spaces — I guess that’s why I’m a public artist as well — but just little nooks and crannies and looking up at windows and going, ‘Oh, what’s happening in that building?’ or ‘What once did happen in that building?’”
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The archways and the window frames became central to the work, and the plantlife, which are all native flora from around the Adelaide parklands, are woven around these architectural details.
Integrating the natural and the manmade was Bean’s way of honouring the long history of North Adelaide, and Kaurna Yarta.
“The river red gum is right in the centre of the piece, twisting around in the centre of the windows,” she says.
“Instead of painting it red, I did it as a really warm yellow, because I wanted it to be glowing and golden – that was my interpretation.
“The roots are going down as well, so that’s representing that deep history.”
Bean says her style is reminiscent of Where’s Wally? — between details such as the River Torrens in one of the windows, or a shopping basket as a nod to the Foodland on which the work is painted, the work features figures in silhouette form to represent those who call this area home.
“I wanted the viewer to almost see themselves in the work,” says Bean.
“I wanted it to have a very magical feel. I wanted it to have movement, and be a very layered piece, a little bit other worldly — you don’t quite know if it’s daytime or nighttime, because there’s stars, but the moon is also a light bulb. You don’t know, really, if you’re inside or if you’re outside, because the windows don’t give it away.”
This work includes a digital extension that brings the piece to life, with viewers invited to use their phones to unlock an augmented reality-inspired animation via QR code.
‘It’s so nice to be able to work with other people to make artwork that brings just a little spark of joy,’ Bean says. Photo: Jack Fenby
“Those little moments of surprise and joy is what I’m aiming for with this work,” says Bean. “I definitely want people engaged.”
Above all, Bean loves making work that is both optimistic, and empathetic to the community it’s made in.
“In my process I aim to work with community to inform the work, because really, it’s their artwork — it’s not my artwork. It belongs to them.
“With everything, all the negative stuff. that’s happening in the world, it’s so nice to be able to work with other people to make artwork that brings just a little spark of joy.”
In the Studio is a regular series presented by InReview in partnership with not-for-profit organisation Guildhouse. More information about Guildhouse Professional Services can be found here. Follow Sair Bean’s practice on her Instagram.