The Art of the Water Tank – It need not be Green!

SOME PEOPLE ARE SIMPLY NOT SATISIFIED to leave things as they are. Such as the Randwick Organic Community Garden crew, for instance, especially those there that are part of the Arts In Community Gardens team.

The community gardeners had acquired a grant to buy rainwater tank in which to store rain falling on the adjacent stable roof. Now, there it sat — a shiny, bulbous, 21,000 litre plastic projection like some anomalous fungi emerging from its slumber in the earth. Supplemented by the gardener’s existing, smaller tank, the community garden now has the capacity to store around 30,000 litres. The Randwick community garden is entirely rainfed.

The new tank was installed but — it was all too plain. That big green surface just begged to become the canvas for a work of collective art. This would be the Randwick garden’s first excursion into community arts. It had already been the location of mosaic-making and a course in botanical drawing.

So, the gardeners set to work and soon that shiny, green but all-too-plain, curved surface had become a botanical illustration all of its own.

Now, when passers-by walk along the footpath above the community garden, that tank stands out like some anomolous, primitivist, multi-hued artform to bring visual excitement to a little corner of Randwick.