"The Wall is NOT over"
I
The Air Niugini airbus traces the curve of the apron and enters the main runway. A harrier flushes and wings through evening sunrays to the fever-green Varirata plateau.
The ’plane rolls imperiously alongside the rusted shell of an old DC-3, now used for fire training. The hulk’s rear section and tail are bombed with colour. It is a real burner of a piece. Dynamic reds dominate, yet ochre, gold and paradise yellow flame the hues. Bone cursive smokes with carbon silhouettes. It is raw wildstyle tumbuna, Papua New Guinea’s street art.
As the Captain rattles through V-speeds to take-off, the piece is pulled from view. Next to me, Senuna laughs aloud. The tag is unmistakeable. It is a farewell, daring throw-up from Peter Leo and the Six Mile crew.
II
Six weeks earlier, Glasgow awoke to a late-winter snap. Senuna hoodied-up as she weaved from the City to the Clyde. Her breath was vapour-ice. Her temples cramped. Her canvass shoes leaked cold. She hit the Yarrow Café, her father’s old favourite on the Dumbarton Road.
The Yarrow barely kept any custom. The local ship yard had not seen a vessel in nearly two years. Rust spread like fungi, choking anything bright and new.
Senuna looked up at the withered wharf. She grimaced. A new, aggressive piece barked from the brickwork. The dock was shredded by black shards, bitter edges biting into fragmented faces. Maddened eyes wept emptily into oncoming tar and darkness. From below, potassium flames fanned their grip on the remaining will of punctured bodies.
“A wall is a very big weapon,” She lamented.
III
Peter Leo sits under the neon strip in his small yard in Port Moresby. The lime white light garishly reflects onto his screen. He sees a message from Senuna. There is a scan of a dockyard. The piece is dark and ugly.
“I need a change. Send me some light! Senuna.”
Peter Leo uploads the bright .jpeg of the Boroko community wall, finished last week. He replies, “Six Mile Walls of Welcome!”
IV
“James, come with me!”
The Retouch Gallery offers you myriad legit walls and free decks for murals, installations and crew projects. A low-brow piece titled “The Wall is Not Over” leads you inside. Post-graffiti vies for space with knit-bombs and wheat-paste swoons.
I am in my office. My laptop perches on a stack of newspapers.
She breezes in with an amber sway. She taps her phone to landscape. I catch light and zest in a compact composite of colour and smiles.
“It is a peace wall in a shanty called Six Mile, in Port Moresby.”
“Isn’t is dangerous?”
“Don’t start, Jamesy-boy! I grew up on the Clyde.”
V
She sees him the moment we spill into Papua New Guinea. The humid hustle envelopes us. Glowing, she peels off her layers and crams as much as she can into the duffel bag.
“Senuna. You are so welcome, sister.”
Peter Leo’s beret frames charcoal textured good looks. His eyes are the deepest echo of highland peat and his ash-tinged beard warms his full, beaming smile.
The tin-roll of our trail bikes draws only hollow curiosity from the milling and the mobile. We growl past white-washed stores and myriad street stalls then hit the betel-splashed red dirt, dust and tarmac of Six Mile road.
Senuna clings to Peter Leo’s threadbare polo as he spryly commands our course. She breathes in his earthiness and feels his wiry strength as he leans into the corners. I grip hard and weave the same line. A motley wall shadows the remainder of the route. Peter pulls up by a bleached length of corrugated sheets, chipboard, and cement panels. Muffled 'O-Shen’ reggae drops from an old soundbox.
VI
We are deep in Six Mile; a maligned slum washed up on urban shoals. It is a mortar for itinerant, jobless and displaced people, ground into desperation and poverty. We are now immersed in the thick polemic of modern Papua New Guinea. Yet, Peter Leo enthuses, Six Mile has astounding diversity of language and affiliation, with highlanders, islanders, bay-siders and other ’wontoks’ from across Papua New Guinea’s effervescent ethnic identities.
“Wontok,” he explains, “is our lifeline. It ties us together as a community. Wontoks are our kin, clan, family. They are our brothers and our sisters. We must forge our own Wontok identity in Six Mile.”
His 'Artists for Development′ movement helps everyone to share discoveries of expression and promise through street art.
VII
Peter Leo presents Ratoos and Yai Pupu, each with a crew of Six Mile youth. They carry rag-rollers, bush-brushes and home-made spray cans. They dance around tubs and cut-bottles of paint, of every shade.
For many days we camp, work, talk, share. We lack for nothing; fruit, rice, betel, blankets. Our numbers swell. Peter Leo forms new crews. We are always met with smiles, kindness and calm curiosity.
The raw creativity is pulsating. Nothing from our experience in Glasgow can relate to the vitality and openness of this community. Every section of Six Mile is lovingly treated to tumbuna.
Peter Leo’s crew layer electric greens with cascading saturation, from island clouds to dense, deep-sea turquoise. Sharp swoops emerge from jutted lettering, at least three dimensions of dramatic form, abstract S-shapes extend into natural and symbolic twists.
I work with Ratoos’ crew on a rainbow piece, rioting with momentum. Cassowary blues and coral reds slash their way through rigid, lettered forms.
Senuna joins Yai Pupu in a chanting ’Meri’ crew of women and girls. They take an open section where posts, piping and one large old banyan form open gates within the Six Mile Wall. They spirit the shanty gateway into a welcoming, woven gallery of yarn and yearning.
Finally, we set aside our colours. We have transformed the wall into a tumbuna, a totemic expression of place, boldly derived from the fusion of tradition and modern challenge. We have witnessed the unique Six Mile wildstyle of visual rhythm, where the rules of light overcome the shadows.
