‘A brilliant reminder’: Arabesque mural celebrates Melbourne suburb’s migrant history

With his new mural, artist Mete Erdoğan honours the “grandfathers and grandmothers” who built the Dallas community, in Melbourne's north, into what it is today.

Mete Erdoğan and his mum, Hurşit and dedication detail of mural. Source: Either Either Creative

Highlights: 

• Hume City Council has allocated $120,000 for a series of murals. 
• Mete Erdoğan’s ‘Dallas Tiles’ at Dallas Shopping Centre reimagines Arabesque tiling with objects like figs, suitcases and Hard Yakka boots related to the local community.   
• Mural dedicated to grandfathers and grandmothers who built the Dallas community: Mete Erdoğan 

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Mete Erdoğan feels right at home at Dallas Shopping Centre. 

The artist had just returned to Australia in July after five years in New York when he was commissioned to paint a mural by the Hume City Council on the Foodworks wall in the square.   

Mete says he had an immediate idea of what he would paint because he grew up visiting the shopping centre and knew its place at the heart of the Middle Eastern migrant community in Melbourne’s north.

“My mum would come here with her mother to get her groceries and other shopping. I grew up visiting my aunties and grandmother in Dallas. Coming here with my anne (mum in Turkish), I used to stand next to her when she went to the Turkish butcher,” he tells SBS Turkish.

Dallas Tiles by Mete Erdoğan Source: SBS

Having worked for Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, Mete became a mural artist, painting his large-scale artworks on houses and big water towers across New York. 

But New York wasn’t home. 

Dallas Tiles by Mete Erdoğan Source: SBS

$120,000 to put a smile on Hume residents’ faces

Mete's ‘Dallas Tiles’ is one of four new murals that have brought a dash of colour to Hume over the past 18 months, with more set to follow next year. 

Hume City Council has allocated $120,000 for the murals to cheer up its residents in the wake of the pandemic. 

The Hume LGA was one of the hardest hit by the Delta strain. At one stage nearly a third of all cases in Victoria were in Hume. At the beginning of September only 26 per cent of Hume’s eligible population was fully vaccinated, 11 per cent less than the statewide average. 

Mother nature by Lucy Lucy Source: SBS

“We had a very difficult situation two months ago,” says Hume Councillor Naim Kurt.  

“We had the highest rate of COVID. We went from the second lowest vaccinated municipality up to the second highest now. We are now a model for municipalities across Melbourne trying to get people vaccinated. So it’s been a huge effort.  

“The people of Hume have sacrificed a lot during this pandemic and all of them should be proud and be congratulated for what we have gone through and what we have done to get to this point. That’s why we have done work like this mural project to brighten up the community,” he says. 

Harmony by Hayden Dawer Source: SBS

Hume City Council Community Development Officer Feyza Yazar says the murals are “site responsive and site specific”.  

That’s why Mete was selected for the Dallas site. He has a story to tell. 

“The Hume mural project was something very special I wanted to be involved in. It wasn’t like any other mural project that I have ever done,” he says. 

Where the creek flows by Biyala B (Mandi Barton) Source: SBS

‘The people who made the community what it is today’ 

Mete took inspiration from the Arabesque tiling already used in the Dallas Shopping Centre square. But instead of the usual floral motifs, he incorporated everyday objects related to the local community into the rhythmic patterns.

“There are things like figs and lemons that represent the trees people around here grow in their gardens. There is a suitcase dedicated to the people who came from all over the world and made Dallas their home. We have the Hard Yakka boots for the many people who staffed the factories to make the boots," he says.  

These are our grandfathers and grandmothers who actually built up Dallas to be the community that it is today.

Mete also used eucalyptus leaves and flowers native to the area to represent Indigenous life. 

He put his mother’s and grandmothers’ profiles on the mural. In fact, he dedicated the work to them. 

Mete Erdoğan dedicated the wall to his mum. Source: SBS

Mete’s mum, Hurşit Erdoğan, migrated to Australia from Cyprus in the early 1970s. She visited the site during the painting of the mural. 

“My kid coming back here and painting, and being part of Dallas, I am so proud of him,” she said in a video by Either Either Creative, where Mete is the creative director. 

Dallas Tile by Mete Erdoğan. Source: SBS

Mete says, “Painting this mural in Dallas has been a brilliant reminder of my Turkish Cypriot background and my community and the people who embrace me. It has helped me realise what I can offer as an artist that’s unique to me. 

This mural is very specific to my own voice, my influences across Australian culture and the Turkish culture I grew up around.

"It’s become a very important way of presenting myself as a first-generation Turkish Cypriot Australian.”