Splash of Colour Bedford video transcript

[Background music]

[Liam]: These local parklands are quite special in that they're home for a lot of different species of animal.

Making sure that we're doing our part to look after them is pretty vital.

So my hope with this artwork is that it serves as a bit of a reminder that the space is used by, not only humans, but a lot of local species of animals. We have a fairly regular rotation of ducks and ibises that are here pretty much every day. And so, in a way, this is their house, their home.

Water is very important for the environment and we just need to make sure that we're aware of the fact that we're not the only ones that use it.

My name is Liam Dee and I'm a Perth-based artist, and today we're painting a Water Corporation pump station at Birkitt Reserve.

For me, working on this Splash of Colour project has been pretty awesome. I feel very grateful I got to work on this one in particular, because I spent a lot of time around this park as a kid. Obviously, a lot of these sites are quite iconic for the people who grew up in the area, and so to be able to see these sites revamped and given a new life, it's good to see.

One of the cool things about the Splash of Colour project is they get the artists to have a dialogue with the local community. In my case, we did a workshop with Hillcrest Primary School, and part of that workshop was getting the students to come up with a bit of a narrative with how their community interacts with water and how it plays a part in their everyday life.

[Student]: With Liam in the art workshop today, we are making designs.

[Student]: Today I learnt that there were three whole pipes. There's one for thunderstorms. There's one for going up to your house and there's one coming out of your house.

[Liam]: I like the idea of trying to represent the way water moves and the reaction water has to movement. As often as I can, I like to include ripples, especially splashes, and try to give this sense of outward motion and flow. And I thought it'd be a good fit for this particular project, being that it's the Water Corporation.

The artwork I'm trying to produce here is reminding people that they need to use water in a responsible way. Make sure that they keep these local natural environments, you know, as healthy as possible.