Scratching the Surface Project — Sydney (Jack Mundey)

Set into the sandstone fabric of The Rocks, this intervention pays tribute to Jack Mundey, the union leader and environmental activist whose leadership of New South Wales's Green Bans movement transformed the future of Sydney. Created in 2013 for Dissolve, Vhils' first solo exhibition in Australia, the work occupies the neighbourhood Mundey helped protect from large-scale redevelopment in the 1970s — a 1971 ban that helped save The Rocks when roughly 150 buildings faced demolition. Split across the two retaining walls of a stairway on Globe Street, the composition invites passers-by to move through the portrait itself, embedding Mundey's presence within the historic neighbourhood he fought to preserve.