Artist

Idiot Box (1993)
Martin Luther Mural (1991)

After seeing the many large scale murals on the walls around Newtown, I did some research and discovered that many of the most famous paintings were done by the same two men, Andrew Aiken and Matthew Peet. I was moved by Andrews tradgic story.

He had fled England to Australia after, according to evidence given at the Old Bailey, bashing to death a man he lived with in an east London squat. He burnt his clothes and a blood-stained sofa and buried the body in the cellar before cementing over it. The man was a 40-year-old English busker who, it seemed, no one missed...

[After living in Australia for seven years] He revealed his secret to a religious leader who persuaded him to return to England in 1997 to give himself up. Peet recalled that "Andrew rang me and said 'I'm going back to England to take care of business'. I was not sure what he meant. When a friend told me he was done for murder, I didn't believe it. It was completely out of character."

Nicholls, S 2003, ‘Wall of Silence’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April, accessed 24 May 2009,

Aiken is now serving life in prison for his crime. I decided to design the art gallery to promote Matthew Peet's graffiti style artwork. However I wanted it to be more than just that, I decieded that at least part of the gallary should be a memorial to human courage with his friend's story in mind.