A 13-Storey Mural Is Taking Shape Opposite Flinders Street Station
17 SEP 2026With just 21 days from first call to intended completion, Juddy Roller and acclaimed Australian artist Adnate are attempting to deliver one of Melbourne CBD’s most prominent large-scale murals.
Something enormous is taking shape opposite Flinders Street Station.
Across the 13-storey wall of Clement House at 238–242 Flinders Street, acclaimed Australian portrait artist Adnate is currently suspended high above the Melbourne CBD, transforming one of the city’s most visible blank walls.
We can’t tell you who he’s painting. Not yet. What we can tell you is that three weeks ago, none of this existed.
From a two-storey mural to 13 storeys
When Juddy Roller received the first call about the project from Senior Creative Producer at Mushroom Creative House, Carmen Walker, the original ambition was considerably smaller: a mural of around two storeys. There was one fairly significant problem: there wasn’t actually a wall secured for it.
Then Mushrooms Chief Creative Officer, Tom Macdonald has a far more ambitious vision for a far larger-scale wall, while driving through the city a few days later.
Attention turned to Clement House: a 13-storey building directly opposite Flinders Street Station, with an enormous blank wall overlooking one of the busiest and most recognisable parts of Melbourne.
Suddenly, a two-storey mural had become a 13-storey proposition.
And the clock was already ticking.
Two weeks to solve an enormous production problem
Finding the wall was only the beginning.
Delivering a mural at this scale requires considerably more than an artist, some paint and a way of getting up the building.
Engineering had to be completed and signed off. Building access had to be negotiated (Thank you Nicolas Tate; you're a visionary). A suspended swing stage had to be engineered, mobilised and installed. Multiple sites, building teams and stakeholders needed to cooperate. Safety, logistics, access, production and creative delivery all had to move simultaneously.
And all of it was happening in full view of the people of Australia’s cultural capital, Melbourne.
Juddy Roller is acting as commissioner, curator and producer, hired by our friends at Mushroom Creative to take the project from an ambitious idea to a live installation in an extraordinarily compressed timeframe.
A small army quickly mobilised around the project - led by Mushroom’s very own “man with a plan”, Phil Reed.
The people making the impossible deadline possible
Large-scale public art is always collaborative. On a project with this kind of lead time, that collaboration becomes the difference between getting onto the wall and not getting onto it at all. Michael Griffin, Managing Director of Rigid Scaffolding, and his team moved mountains to get the swing-stage engineering completed, signed off and the system ready in time.
Then came another major logistical challenge: getting all of that equipment into position. The adjoining Lendlease construction site became critical. With the support and cooperation of the Lendlease team, site manager Gavin Sheane-Smith waved his wand and had swing-stage equipment craned into position (their crane, their site - thank you, Lendlease / Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority), saving days of work at a point when days simply weren’t available.
Without that support, the project simply wouldn’t be where it is today. The stage is set. The engineering signed off. Permits in place.
Now it’s time to paint.
Adnate takes on one of Melbourne’s most visible walls
For the artwork itself, Juddy Roller commissioned Adnate, one of Australia’s most recognised large-scale portrait artists and long-time collaborator.
It’s not the first time we’ve put him on a very big wall. In 2018, Juddy Roller commissioned Adnate to transform the full height of a 20-story tower at the Collingwood Housing Estate with monumental portraits of four residents, at the time, the tallest mural in the Southern Hemisphere.
Clement House presents a different kind of challenge. This wall sits directly opposite Flinders Street Station. From the moment the first marks appeared, thousands of people moving through Melbourne's heart can watch the work develop. There is nowhere to hide a 13-storey painting here. And there isn’t much time to paint it either.
Adnate and the crew are working towards completing the mural on Sunday. Whether Melbourne weather, logistics and the realities of painting a building this size cooperate remains to be seen.
“There are a lot of eyes on this one”
Juddy Roller founder and Creative Director Shaun Hossack says the circumstances have made it one of the most intense large-scale commissions the studio has delivered.
“Normally, you’d want months to properly plan something of this scale. We’ve effectively had weeks. But once this wall became a possibility, it was very difficult to walk away from it. You’re talking about 13 storeys directly opposite Flinders Street Station. There aren’t many canvases like that in Australia.
The pressure on everyone has been enormous, particularly Adnate. There are a lot of eyes on this wall, we’re working in an incredibly public location, and the deadline doesn’t move.
What’s been remarkable is watching everyone involved find solutions instead of reasons it couldn’t happen. Rigid, Lendlease, the building team, the Victorian Government, City of Melbourne, Mushroom Creative and our own crew have all had to move incredibly quickly just to get us onto the wall.
We’re not there yet. There’s still a lot of painting to do. But somehow, against the odds, it’s happening.”
An Australian icon is emerging
For now, the identity at the centre of the artwork remains under wraps.
What we can say is that the mural celebrates an Australian icon, arriving in Melbourne ahead of one of the most beloved weekends on the Australian calendar.
Over the coming days, the abstract fields of colour and enormous brushwork currently covering Clement House will gradually resolve into something considerably more recognisable.
Until then, Melbourne will have to keep guessing.