How many hours have you spent looking at the back of truck doors while driving?

Trucks are an essential part of our global system. Trains, boats and planes are the sexier vehicles that are representational of our global supply chain but trucks fill in those kilometres too. Trucks are the most accessorised of these machines, sporting stickers, flags or airbrushed paintings on their surface. Ned Kelly, Norse mythology or cowboys are often the subject of truck painting: playing up the lone wolf vibe of the job while downplaying the invariably Sino-centric origin of their cargo.

Truck decoration is an international thing; with trucks in Indonesia, India and Japan probably the most flamboyant. We have blended the aesthetics of Japanese decorated trucks, known as Dekotora with the imagery of Yokohama-e. Yokohama-e are Japanese woodblock prints depicting foreigners living in foreign enclave of Yokohama after Japan was opened to international trade by Commodore Perry in the 19th Century. These artworks are similar to early Australian landscape paintings by Europeans. Just as Europeans painted gum trees in a very willowy fashion you can see the mental cogs of the Japanese artists grappling with understanding a hitherto unknown quantity.

This clashing of cultures: that projects as well as attempts to decode, is the perfect aesthetic to revisit the Ozploitation films of the 70’s and 80’s. These unabashed films depicting an uneasy side of Australian culture, offers lurid insight into post-colonial relationship to the land and its people.

– Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, 2024