You don’t need to visit a gallery to see Clarence Valley’s latest art installation.

Visitors to Yamba would have seen a series of striking artworks being painted on the pylons holding up the new Harwood Bridge by acclaimed local artist Al Stark.

Inspired by the 2022 floods, the murals depicts four river sentinels — soldiers or people keeping watch — guarding the Clarence River.

Al is a nationally and internationally acclaimed artist who has a B.A. in Fine Art from the Victoria College of the Arts and a Diploma in Screen Print Design from RMIT University (both located in Melbourne). He has held residencies at Long Island, (New York) and Lyon (France) and his work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, among others. Al’s murals are featured in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Grafton, Yamba, and now, on Harwood Bridge.

You can see more of Al’s artwork here.

Pictures by Veda Dante, Debra Novak, and Al Stark.

Officially opened in December 2019, the four-lane concrete Harwood Bridge was designed to provide safer, smoother travel for motorists and eliminate the need for highway motorists to stop while the two-lane steel truss Harwood Bridge was raised for maritime users.