About Australian Silo Art Trail

Our Story

Shortly after setting out on their own great Australian road trip in March 2018, Western Australian grey nomads Annette and Eric Green visited Dutch street artist Amok Island’s geometric banksia mural covering three grain silos in Ravensthorpe, the second silo painted in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt. 

The retired couple were so taken by the artwork that it inspired them to refocus their trip around Australia, seeking out more of the incredible large-scale public artworks that had popped up around the country, creating a series of driving trails with a difference.

While travelling around Australia the couple soon realised that tracking down the nation’s silo artworks wasn’t particularly straightforward due to a lack of a single resource dedicated to this outback art phenomenon.



Background

Life isn’t easy in regional Australia, where many small towns currently risk being wiped off the map due to ongoing drought, declining industry, lockdown restrictions and other hardships. Typically located in remote areas lacking traditional tourism draws, few of these towns have been lucky enough to benefit from Australia’s booming caravanning industry either – until now.

The very first silo art mural was a pilot project in March 2015 by a cultural non-profit called FORM who wanted to bring art to rural communities. Together with the CBH grain handler two internationally renowned street artists Phlegm & HENSE were engaged to paint the grain silos in Northam, in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt.

It was such a great hit that a full trail of 6 silos were planned. The Public Silo Trail of Western Australia was a three year project that brought this permanent, open-air, truly PUBLIC ‘gallery’ linking rural and coastal towns across Western Australia’s southern regions. A game changer for bringing renewed emphasis to the positive perceptions of the regions, their people and industries, and the unique canvas they provide.

FORM WA's PUBLIC Silo Trail can be viewed on line here: https://www.publicsilotrail.com

In Victoria’s Wimmera Mallee region, a similar idea was conceived in 2016 after the success of the first silo artwork in Brim. What started as a small community project by the Brim Active Community Group, GrainCorp, Juddy Roller and artist, Guido van Helten resulted in widespread international media attention. The Wimmera Mallee Silo Art Trail was created as a partnership between Yarriambiack Shire Council, international street art agency Juddy Roller, Victorian Government, Australian Government and GrainCorp, who donated the silos as canvases for the artists’ work. This project saw a team of renowned artists from Australia and across the world visit the region, meet the locals and transform each grain silo into an epic work of art; each one telling a unique story about the host town.

Soon, many other regional towns across the country were angling for their own silo to be beautified, and for the visitors and rural revitalisation it would bring.