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A Mt LAWLEY resident has asked an artist to paint an alien mural on his back wall, after graffiti artists kept tagging his property.

Arts management graduate John Clark was fed up looking at the ugly tags on his rear wall, which backs onto Jack Marks Lane, so he got in touch with local artist Martin Wills on Facebook.

Wills agreed to do the mural for free if Clark split the cost of the painting materials, estimated to be around $400.

“My house has been increasingly covered with graffiti tags over the past year—I felt it my duty to do something about it,” he says.

“It is a fantastic project for our area as there has been a marked increase in tagging and an inability for council to handle it.

Overlooked

“We have also seen the removal of local artists’ murals by businesses—especially in Beaufort Street—and a prevalence for local council-commissioned artworks by eastern states’ artists in my area over local artists.”

Wills, who has exhibited at Bivouac Bar and several galleries in Perth, says he had mixed feelings about Perth councils commissioning eastern state artists.

“I feel like there is a lot of local talent that could be exploited and that it is being overlooked sometimes,” he says.

“But then you see the works that the big-name artists from the east have done in Perth, they are amazing.

“I guess there has to be a balance between using interstate and local talent.”

Wills, 31, estimates it will take him around four days to finish his “intergalactic-style” mural on Clark’s wall.

“It’s about alien bloggers with big hair,” the artist told the Voice.

 by STEPHEN POLLOCK