Seven-kilometre artwork creates colour journey through Perth suburbs

Under the raised railway that runs through Perth's south-east is a public art project that took five months to complete and required 2,000 litres of paint.

The creation of two Perth artists, Chris Nixon and Kyle Hughes-Odgers, the Linewide Graphic Trail covers the concrete piers and abutments, as well as the public spaces, that were created when the Armidale Railway line was raised.

It was lifted to allow for the removal of level crossings, and the project also opened up a large amount of public space that has been filled with lawn, gardens, playgrounds and skate parks, as well as car parking.

While visitors to the stations usually only see a fraction of the whole artwork (and passengers on the trains can't see it at all), Nixon said it is designed to tell a complete story for anyone who travels under the line from Carlisle to Beckenham.

"The task we set ourselves was to create an identity for each section of the line because people are going to experience it either in just a little section or maybe in its entirety," Nixon told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth.

"We wanted each space to feel completely unique to that location.

"It's very site specific in terms of the colour palette, but also the forms and the patterns that were derived from that area.

"We treated it as if colour was a passenger and you would pick up a little bit from the next train station and the next location and bring that forward into the next area."

In the first section at Carlisle, the colours are greens, before moving towards teals at Oats Street, then into orange and red at Queens Park and Cannington, and yellow at Beckenham.

"All up, there are about 20 colours across the whole thing because we kept it fairly limited as a palette," he said.

"There are five or six colours max in each section, and then there was a crossover of those colours.

"It did create this overall link across the whole line, which was really cohesive."

While some people might be daunted by the challenge of painting 120 concrete pylons, plus abutments and other spaces, Nixon said the duo enjoyed having such a large canvas.

"It's quite liberating. It's actually just an opportunity to create with impact and scale, and it's not necessarily difficult to install them," he said.

"Kyle and I built a team to help us install it, and our mantra from the beginning was we just wanted to really enjoy the process and not let it be a big kind of machine and a big grind.

"And when you're designing at that scale, you're always thinking of the audience and that experience."

A year on from its installation, the Linewide trail has escaped graffiti and been nominated for several awards, including the Dulux Colour Award, and is in the final 100 vying for a Coda Award, run by a US-based art directory website, which the pair hope may bring more international recognition.