General News
25 July, 2025
Travelling artwork captures social history
Three well-known Australians are leaving Maryborough today, as they did a decade ago, taking with them hundreds of guesses from across the country.
Earlier this month locals were encouraged to consider a travelling mystery of who the blue, red, and green figures are — it’s a set-up familiar to those who made their guess in the artworks first visit in 2015.
The abstract work created by Martin Shaw has been travelling the country for more than four decades, gathering letters from some of the big names in Australian history, in a growing work with no end in sight.
“This painting goes to big cities, provincial towns, small villages. It’s like the torch relay in the Olympic games,” Mr Shaw said.
“Your opinions form the portrait of Australia in the pages, that’s what you’re leaving behind.”
Flicking through those pages Maryborough’s residents have left their mark, and their ideas, once again.
The changing of Central Goldfields Shire CEOs was captured in the side-by-side guesses of new CEO Peter Harriott and former interim CEO Sally Jones.
Ms Jones, alongside other residents, and former prime minister Bob Hawke thought the blue figure must be Ned Kelly.
“Who knows why some names endure the test of time while some people don’t,” Mr Shaw said.
While others made the common guess that the red figure was an Indigenous person or artist.
Or, even more broadly, others looked at the work and saw something more abstract like political parties, to utility companies, or specific emotions.
“It’s up to the individual how they want to take it,” he said.
Although the artwork and its entourage of yearbooks and letters is leaving for Portland today, it’ll be back — it’s an artwork intended to tour for generations.
It’s an effort that’s consumed Mr Shaw’s attention ever since it started touring in the 80s.
“I haven’t done another painting in 30-odd years,” he said.
“This has just overtaken everything else, I just can’t think of anything, this is just full on. This is the main event.”
In an effort to preserve the artwork’s generational future, and perhaps find some balance in his own life, Mr Shaw hopes to start a foundation for the work — but that’s just the beginning.
“I want a second identical painting to tour other countries,” he said.
“It’s a fairly ambitious thing but one thing at a time.”
In the meantime, local residents have once again penned their ideas in a curious social history captured by some visiting unknown Australians.