Satire, Controversy, & Scott Marsh's Taylor Swift Experiment in Sydney
Artist Scott Marsh is (in)famous as both a talented mural painter – with vibrant, detailed artworks gracing walls across Sydney – and a spikey satirist commenting on contemporary social issues with a razor-sharp wit that takes no prisoners.
By ALEC SMART
Among the latter, his targets have included hilarious caricatures of Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, Gina Rinehart, Tony Abbott, Alan Jones and Cardinal George Pell.
Several of his pointed political portraits grace the walls of inner Sydney suburbs, including Newtown, Enmore, Chippendale, Erskineville, Redfern and Alexandria.
One of his most recent and ironically famous Sydney murals is a dynamic image of iconic American pop star Taylor Swift. In close proximity to Taylor Square, the artwork appears on the side wall of Rivareno Gelato at the corner of Little Oxford St and Crown St, Darlinghurst.
Despite his diverse portfolio of public works, his reputation is more of a satirist than a painter of icons of popular culture. So how did the Taylor Swift mural come into being?
“Well, it was a satirical work of sorts,” Scott explained, “or at least a troll and experiment to highlight the failures of mainstream media and the plight of Julian Assange, who had his final USA extradition appeal at the time I painted it.”
Scott put it into context in an Instagram post on 21 February 2024: “On the day of the final appeal for Australian citizen and award-winning journalist Julian Assange’s extradition to the USA for the crime of journalism - publishing truthful information about USA war crimes (for which he faced 175 years in a US prison, essentially a death sentence).… In the morning when I turned on the news, what did I see on every channel: ‘Taylor Swift has dinner in Surry Hills’!!”
Taylor was in the midst of her Eras Tour, which involved 152 concerts across five continents, including four sold-out performances at Accor Stadium in Sydney, the final attracting over 80,000 fans - and became the highest-grossing tour in history earning $1 billion in revenue.
Scott elaborated, "This is a mural of Taylor Swift but not really about Taylor Swift, It was more an experiment to show where media’s priorities lie. Using the metaphor of ‘The woman in the red dress’, the idea that ‘The System’ distracts the people with one hand (‘Hey look at this beautiful woman in the red dress!’), while it commits despicable acts against the people with the other hand.
“In the past year, I have painted well-thought-out and executed murals about Julian Assange, Covid origins/vaccines’ injuries and the Palestine/Israel conflict, yet despite serious attempts being made, can not get any meaningful mainstream media coverage of those works.“I paint a mural of Taylor Swift and before it’s even finished, my inbox is full of media requests, it has been syndicated, and is appearing in a dozen online outlets, in print, TV and radio.“So, that was the experiment and it really worked a treat!”
Scott declared, “Conceptually it’s actually one of the works I'm most proud of.”
How does he go about selecting the walls for his murals? Do people contact him and offer their houses?
“Either people contact me and say, ‘Hey, I have a wall that’s free for you to paint’, or, ‘I would like to commission you to paint my wall,’” he said.
“Alternatively I find a wall I really like and knock on their door and ask if I can paint it. If it's commissioned I'll get it done pretty quick, if it’s not, I wait until I have a work I would like to create in that space. The perfect wall for my work is 1.5 - 3 stories, minimal windows, pipes or drains, and is a spot that gets at least a little foot traffic.”
As a painter, how did he transition from canvases to walls, and from art pieces and tributes to satirical works criticizing injustice and political scandals?
“I have been painting graffiti since I was 12 years old,” he revealed, “so when I started moving into more pictorial work, painting walls came naturally… I have a bit of a scatter-brain so I think painting the same thing or within a specific genre would drive me nutty, so I bounce around between portraiture, satire, still-life's etc.”
Controversially, a few of Scott’s satirical murals, such as those featuring George Michael and George Pell, have been vandalised by enraged individuals, typically religious fundamentalists. Furthermore, a Redfern mural featuring a burning police car and commemorating Indigenous youth TJ Hickey, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2004, was ordered to be covered over by NSW Police.
This must be really disappointing, considering the hours it takes to create his detailed artworks, and that they're painted with the permission of the householders. How does the vandalism make him feel?
“Some people have very thin skin and want to destroy things they don't like,” Scott considered. “It’s always disappointing when my works get trashed but as long as I have a good image of the work, I'm not too devastated. A lot of my work finds its audience in a digital space rather than a physical one, so if I have a good image of the work it lives forever, indestructible online.
“Ironically in every case to date when a mural is destroyed it blows up online and in the media, and is seen by 10000s more eyeballs, so it’s pretty counter-productive for the d***head who destroyed the original artwork!”
Scott Marsh
Instagram: www.instagram.com/scottie.marsh
Webpage: www.scottmarsh.com.au
Facebook: www.facebook.com/scottmarshart
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