Queensland’s Covid border barricades to be immortalised as works of art

Orange barriers - like those at the so-called ‘Great Wall of Coolangatta’ - have been turned into an artistic statement for the annual SWELL Sculpture Festival.

Queensland’s controversial border wall has been immortalised as a work of art.

A representation of the border barricades dividing Coolangatta and Tweed Heads is part of the annual SWELL Sculpture Festival, one of the state’s biggest public art exhibitions, which opened at Currumbin Beach on Friday.

Dubbed ‘Delimitation’, the installation has been created by award-winning Redcliffe artists and life partners Blair Garland and Russell Solomon.

Border art showing 'them' and 'us arrows.

It features orange water-filled barriers - like the ones that make up the so-called ‘Great Wall of Coolangatta’ - as well as a Queensland-NSW directional sign and another proclaiming ‘Us/Them’.

A larger sign where the barrier meets the beach reads: “Deposit Feelings at Quarantine Station Ahead Without Penalty’.

There’s also a blackboard on which festival patrons can scrawl their feelings about how the closed border makes them feel.

Qld border bollards represented in a work of art.

An artistic statement accompanying the sculpture notes that ‘throughout history, borders have separated and protected us from the ‘Others’.’

Garland and Solomon say enforced border closures since March last year have not only served to separate and protect us physically and economically but have ‘separated loved ones and divided communities’.

“In this artwork, we have attempted to create the illusion of a border fence and a border crossing,” the artists say.

“A visible line in the sand, dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’.”

The SWELL Sculpture Festival, featuring more than 60 works, runs until September 19.