Perth Voice Interactive

ARTIST Harry Hummerston (pictured, right) guides his scroll saw along intricate corners to cut foliage from a plastic bonsai tree.

He points out his edges are so clean a laser could have cut them. Good thing too, the expert printmaker says, because he’s the kind of artist who doesn’t like the look of most raw handiwork.

“I don’t like to see the hand in the work and that’s because of my screen-printing background,” the 62-year-old says.

He’s piecing together an exhibition, Walking Spanish, in Northbridge this month, and says his works have accents of duality that will challenge onlookers.

“Don’t believe what you see,” he says. “Look behind the obvious.”

Some pieces, called Made in Japan, will have two opposing elements. He says his bonsai represents growth and the real world. Acting like the bonsai’s shadow or reflection, a constructed ninja positioned below depicts killing and death.

“There are other layers of meaning, too,” Hummerston says. He picks up the pieces of his handiwork and shows how vinyl acts as faux wood or stone.

“It appears to be one thing, but it’s not.”

Hummerston will share William Street’s Turner Galleries with world-renowned street artist Kyle Hughes-Odgers for a month from Friday, June 26.

Hughes-Odgers is best known for painting cartoon-like characters and is behind a giant street painting in Northbridge (pictured above by Jarrad Seng) as well as The Giants View—artwork of two characters dressed in blue on a building near the Mitchell Freeway.

by EMMIE DOWLING