Watch The Making Of The Rubens Cover With Street Artist Scott Marsh

22 April 2016 | 6:19 pm | Uppy Chatterjee

"I didn't wanna tell Cole but I was thinking, 'oh I'm not gonna finish this on time,'" chuckles Marsh.

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When we organised to have Australian street artist Scott Marsh create a huge mural for our The Rubens front cover for photographer Cole Bennetts to document, Marsh had not yet embarked on the whole rumour-ridden saga that was his Kanye Loves Kanye mural and worldwide publicity. Ahead of the amazing behind-the-scenes video created by Billy Zammit, we chatted to both creatives to discuss just how they found the process of creating Marsh's biggest mural to date, working to a tight deadline and having The Rubens arrive to discover their faces on a wall.

Bennetts says, "I guess I had this idea ages and ages ago when I first had this idea to shoot The Rubens for a cover. I wanted to do something kind of big, that kind of representation of where they are at the moment as a band. Winning the triple j Hottest 100 and then upgrading to do the Festival Hall and the Hordern... I thought it'd be cool to effectively bring in a street artist to paint the cover. I came across Scotty's work from One Day Sundays, and then I saw one of his pieces at the Gladstone, a James Brown portrait that I dropped some cash on and I bought it on the spot."

Having received the green light from Marsh, Bennetts then sent Marsh a series of photos of the Menangle rockers. Marsh remembers, "Cole sent me a bunch of different photos of the band, I kinda picked out what I thought would sit best on the wall and on the dimensions of the wall. Then it's all a matter of me drawing it all up in one day, layer by layer. I draw it and start from a pinky-orangey-yellowy background, then I build it up with spraypaint and brush it at the end.

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"On the last day, halfway through, I didn't wanna tell Cole but I was thinking, 'oh I'm not gonna finish this on time,'" chuckles Marsh.

"We had 48 hours to do it and we had to battle rainstorms, towing a 1.8 ton scissor lift to the location. We had flat batteries of cars, lots of little things that went down, but Scott being the true professional that he is finished the final paint stroke as the band came in to have their picture taken," recalls Bennetts. "One of The Rubens was looking at it and just said, "This is the sickest thing that has ever happened to us," which is really cool."

After the whirlwind 48-hour process of painting the mural, Bennetts only had a short time to get the photo the whole mural had been created for. 

"I didn't want the band's faces in it, I wanted their backs to me so I wanted it to be all about the portrait. It's an incredible piece of work and it brings the focus onto Scott's work and the achievements of the band.

"We ended up having to shoot at 5 in the evening. Because daylight savings is over, I literally had 10 mins of light to get the shot. 48 hours of build-up and I had 10 mins to get the shot."