From the illegality of the beginning to having become a real project that has changed the Australian artistic landscape, we tell you how silo art is transforming abandoned places into open-air art galleries

Of course we all know Street Art. A somewhat subversive, illegal and fleeting art form.

Which sees street artists labeling walls, public transport and buildings. Often quickly, at unexpected times and out of the blue. A movement born as a language of protest to communicate messages and ideals.

Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat in the Eighties expressed in a cheerful, colorful and lively way profound themes related to drugs, AIDS and sexuality.

While Banksi later vehemently screams against society, politics, ethics or racism using spray images that suddenly appear overnight, plastering the walls of various British cities.

From the illegality of her beginnings to a project that literally changed the Australian artistic landscape.

It is in fact since 2015 that Australia has seen its own, unique and very personal street art movement germinate. But here the road is the vast expanses of countryside, the walls are the immense volumes of cisterns and containers for the grain and the commitment is tourist-cultural.

It's called Silo Art, the art of painting abandoned silos in the most remote heart of the Australian outback.

A game, an initiative by FORM, a local non-profit cultural organization, which saw the light in 2015, in Northam in Western Australia.

Here 97 km north-east of Perth, two internationally renowned artists - Phlegm from Great Britain and HENSE from the United States - were engaged to paint the silos of the CBH group, on a fully functional site.

For the fortnight of work the trucks came and went, while both artists continued to paint. Phlegm his magical and extravagant Leonardesque balloons, on the left. And HENSE, on the right, with abstract motifs that run from one volume to another like explosive blocks in fluorescent colours.

This innovative concept of oversized wall art, was the beginning of the Public Silo Trail, which, in just three years, saw WA include 6 groups of silos and a cultural, visual, tourist path to discover traditions, the territory and small rural towns, otherwise forget. From here, a trend erupted that soon engulfed four other DownUnder island states.

Thanks to this new expressive lexicon, radical artistic manifestations have transformed grain silos into art galleries and small towns into destinations.

With artistic itineraries that excite the eye and the heart, transforming the road trip in the most remote areas of the hinterland into a colorful journey. Colors that explode from the center of the earth rising proud towards the sky thanks to these imposing concrete giants, now used as canvases of maxi dimensions.

It was only in 2019 that all the murals were collected, photographed, cataloged and enclosed in an artistic journey of local culture.

When Annette and Eric Green, while on the road circumnavigating the Austral Island, came across three grain silos decorated by the Dutch street artist Amok Island with banksia stylized, the pair decided to follow the colorful trail to the rest of Australia.

And so, in 2019, the Australian Silo Art Trail was born. An online map that documents, in addition to the 200 artistic murals on the silos, decorations of water towers and street art on abandoned walls.

Here they can discover the different painting techniques, the artistic gestures, the stories of the cities, of the poets of color or simply of the people who inhabit the vast countryside. Giving everyone the opportunity to create their own guided path through these allegorical graffiti that interpret rural culture, nature or Aboriginal dreamtime stories.

Imposing works, the smaller 'canvas' reaches thirty meters in height, where symbols, allegories and details continue to appear and amaze, depending on the angle of observation. Street art, or rather silo art, is today an open-air art gallery accessible to all.

A place of experimentation and expression to visit.

Because as the great explorer Ibn Battuta said: "Travelling leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller". Have a good trip.