If you’ve been out and about recently and spotted a bin chicken holding a beer, or perhaps a coffee cup, no, you weren’t seeing things—you’ve just found some of the work of Ryan Forster from Sethius Art. What started as a humorous attempt to make people double take has turned into the Brisbane Bin Chicken Trail, and it will have you roaming all over Brisbane in search of the majestic cockroach of the bird world, the white ibis.
“I just wanted to make people driving by do a double take and get a bit of a laugh out of a bin chicken holding a beer,” Forster says of his early metal creations, which he put up in public creations around town and shared on Instagram and TikTok. They all got stolen of course, but the word was out—and people wanted more. Before long, businesses were requesting bin chickens of their own, which could be permanently installed, and the Bin Chicken Trail was gone.
Does Forster mind that his original ‘binnys’ were taken, never to be seen again? “I knew they’d end up getting stolen because they weren’t really attached to anything, some of them only lasted a few hours—it’s all part of the mystery really, it adds to the whole story. They’re just in someone’s pool room now,” he laughs.”
The binnys on the official Bin Chicken Trail, however, are far more permanent (and properly attached), perched everywhere from the sign in front of a car wash in Oxley to a fencepost in New Farm. There’s around 20 around Brisbane to find (not including those that were stolen—shout if you find any of those), with plenty more to come—Forster intends to continue until he gets sick of it, or the orders stop coming in. “I want to finish it off with a Big Bin Chicken somewhere, kind of like the Big Banana. That’d be really cool.”
So where can you find them if you haven’t managed to spot a binny yet? A map on the Sethius Art website shows the locations of most of the metal statues, though some have yet to be added, or you can follow along on Instagram to see when new binnys get installed here.
Current Bin Chicken Trail locations:
- 23 Christina Street, Wellington Point
- 45 Alexandra Road, Ascot
- 72 Kent Street, Hamilton
- 602 Wynnum Road, Morningside
- Hazel Street, New Farm
- XXXX Brewery, Milton
- 688 Ipswich Road, Annerley
- 16 Boyland Avenue, Coopers Plains
- Cnr Alban Street & Blunder Road, Oxley
- 526 Oxley Road, Sherwood
- 465 Oxley Road, Sherwood
- 2/660 Sherwood Road, Sherwood
- 30 Oxley Station Road, Oxley
Image credit: Sethius Art | Reddit