This is a piece by Bronte Naylor from Newcastle. It was funded by a grant from the History Trust of South Australia. Bronte came to Tumby Bay a week before the festival started. She pored over documents, photos, newspaper cuttings with an aim of finding out which part of Tumby’s history that she wanted to depict. It is important that, where possible, the artist has autonomy over what they paint. As a part of that research process she found out about the jetty protests of 1972 when the state government decided to remove a major part of the jetty and the local townspeople objected strongly. This led to the strongest rebellion that Tumby Bay has ever seen. There was always someone manning the picket line and they had a siren in place. If it looked like a demolition crew was turning up, the siren would sound and the townsfolk would rush to the jetty and prevent them from working. What intrigued Bronte was how we could turn into a militant and defiant town, which is the symbolism of this piece. The fact that there are no faces on the artwork really worries a lot of viewers, but Bronte has done that for a reason. These people are not individuals, they are representative of the whole defiant community. For a young emerging artist, she has made that piece of art pop off the wall. Look at the legs and the arms; it doesn’t look like a flat image. This is a skill that all artists would like to achieve – getting their work to “pop”.