More than 400 people are on a waitlist for one of Zanko's distinctive slice-of-suburbia works - woodcarved reliefs of the area's rapidly diminishing stock of postwar brick and fibro houses.

The 30-year-old's latest show - Downshifter, a reference to the influx of Sydney-siders into the Illawarra's north - opens at Wollongong's Egg and Dart gallery on Friday evening.

Though he knows better than most what is being lost (Zanko grew up in a brick/weatherboard two-bedder at Austinmer) he says his work is not intended to be critical of those who have so dramatically changed local streets.

"If they move down here they might build something different. I don't have negative feelings towards that because growing up in this area there wasn't a lot of opportunity for art or music, so I guess that change is positive as well," he said.

"But at the same time it does change things, like the visual landscape of our area."

Zanko, who has been called a "loss of character" artist, graduated from West Wollongong TAFE in 2012 and UOW in 2015.

He was a finalist in the Lloyd Rees Memorial Youth Art Award that year, then in 2016 won the Gosford Art Prize. In 2019 he became a finalist in one of Australia's most important art prizes - the Archibald's landscape equivalent, the Wynne.

Zanko has since become a father. He says life with daughter Lux, now 4, has brought him into closer contact with neighbourhoods that border playgrounds - an influence that has crept into his latest collection of work, which includes a brick beauty he spotted while at a playground in Fairy Meadow.

"We spend a lot of time walking around now," he said.

"I think when you're moving at that pace and there's new eyes seeing things ... you either rediscover or see the best of things that you may have missed in the past."

"Picking these little leaves and seeds off the ground - you start to see things that you thought of as being more background noise. You're looking at the finer detail around the streets."

He carves directly into the wood, before painting into the scars made - every blade of grass and brick.

The end result is solid and unflinching - time, progress and gentrification might erase these places from the real world, but they will last forever under Zanko's treatment.

"Carving into the works is like an act of permanency for me," Zanko says. "Like writing into wet concrete. You can't undo it."

The Egg and Dart's Aaron Fell-Fracasso says this "strong evidence of the artist's mark" in part explains Zanko's appeal to buyers.

Art world novices who might baulk at spending five figures on an abstract squiggle seem to have fewer reservations when faced with one of Zanko's hefty, tactile reliefs.

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"The process is quite obviously laborious and painstakingly crafted," Mr Fell-Fracasso said. "People who might not necessarily understand other facets of art ... understand what that means, because it's there to be seen."

"There's room for them to go up in value, but they are already highly sought after and there's just an amazing amount of people that are very keen to purchase his work.

"There are well over 400 people that have been on a waiting list. It's unusual for an artist to have that following. And it's quite a diverse range of people that are interested."

Downshifter opens Friday from 6pm. Runs until May 13.

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