Coonalpyn Silos

Artist Guido van Helten was given the keys to Coonalpyn on 1 February 2017 at a community welcoming barbecue, he almost became a local after staying here for six weeks. Guido spent the first week engaging with and photographing members of the community before deciding to paint five Coonalpyn Primary School children on the Viterra silos with the intention to represent Coonalpyn’s ‘hope for the future’. Guido used a 35m cherry picker, 200 cans of spray paint and a lot of normal paint. Meet the silo kids: nine-year-old Ciara, six-year-old Blake, five-year-old Reef, six-year-old Kiarah and five-year-old Macey. The 30-metre mural on the (still operational) Viterra grain silos was the flagship project in Coorong District Council’s arts lead regional renewal program ‘Creating Coonalpyn’.