Ipswich City Council are trialling an initiative that will beautify our parks with art and not ugly graffiti, as part of the Beautiful Ipswich program. Three murals in Maculata Park painted by Riverview artist Annie Clarke pay tribute to the local community.

Annie Clarke said she was thrilled to see her art displayed to the Ipswich public.

“The three individual elements represent Riverview: the blue and the fish for the river, the magpie that is the mother looking over the area and a boy and a girl at a skate park for the community,” she said.

“For me Riverview is different to other suburbs, it’s very community orientated. It’s almost like a little country town on its own and this park is the heart of the suburb, that’s what I wanted to get across in the art.”

Councillor Kerry Silver said the beautification concept would be trialled at the Hayden Street park before hopefully being rolled out to other parks and suburbs.

“We’ve taken a new approach to presenting Annie’s art with an easy-to-maintain vinyl wrap of the work placed onto walls,” she said.

“This was based on the successful initiative of wrapping traffic signal boxes across Ipswich to enhance our suburbs and display the work of local creatives.

“I’m sure the Riverview community will embrace the idea and we’d love to bring it to other parks as part of the overarching Beautiful Ipswich program.”