A once-plain brick wall at Booval Fair is being transformed into a vibrant celebration of community, creativity and local identity as six artists put the finishing touches on a series of large-scale murals as part of the SPARK Ipswich Festival.
The mural project, a collaboration between Booval Fair and local artists, aims to brighten the shopping centre while showcasing stories that reflect the Ipswich community.
Booval Fair Marketing Manager Rachel said the idea was about more than simply painting walls.
“We’re all about community – it’s not just a tagline, we actually mean it,” she said.
“Murals are a great way to enliven a space that doesn’t have much going for it. It’s just an old brick wall in a car park, so why not make it beautiful and give people something to talk about?”
Rather than using a traditional arts panel, the finalists were selected by Booval Fair retailers.
“I wanted the people who invest in this centre and see these walls every day to choose the artworks,” Rachel said. “They’re also the ones who’ll return to judge the finished murals and select the overall winner.”
Among the finalists is local artist Alex Jones, whose mural celebrates Cameron Park and the sense of community she discovered while walking her dogs there.
“I realised it was such a good little community using that space, and I wanted to capture that feeling of connection,” she said.
Another mural, created in partnership with the Ipswich Climate Action Group, focuses on the importance of bees and pollinators.
Group representative Val Wheatley said the artwork highlights growing concerns about bee populations and their critical role in food production.
“Without bees, we don’t have food,” she said, noting that around 75 per cent of agricultural crops rely on pollination.
She also shared some remarkable bee facts, including that a bee’s sense of smell is around 50 times stronger than a dog’s and that it takes the lifetime work of multiple bees visiting thousands of flowers to produce just a teaspoon of honey.
Artist and arts advocate Glen Smith chose native wallflowers as the inspiration for his mural, saying they represent the resilience of the Ipswich community.
“They grow anywhere and survive tough conditions,” he said. “That’s a bit like our community. We’ve been through floods, fires and plenty of challenges, but we keep going.”
The murals are expected to be completed by 20 July, with shoppers encouraged to stop by during the week to watch the artists at work before the finished pieces become a permanent feature of Booval Fair.
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