Located in a young person’s play area, the cut outs referring to the cicadas and mayflies refer to their exotic annual life cycle and the nicknames for cicadas. With a diversity of cultures enjoying the park, this quintessential Sydney experience is made accessible to young children.

The artwork uses disparate materials combined as one sculpture.  The metal upright stretches over eight metres into the air and attaches to a granite stone wall.  Extending towards the river a granite line projects cleanly in the shadow of a vertebrae of seats in hardwood and metal.

It makes a number of references.  The granite wall alludes to its material use for the Harbour Bridge and the function of training walls to control sand deposition in the river.  The vertical fin is a figurative gesture while the seats follow its curve along the ground as the vertebra of a spinal keel.

It is neither a fish nor a boat but threads their differences into sculptural material.  Both are in the water, one rides on the Plimsoll line, the other below.  Both are stranded out of water.  The form and imprint of the sculpture’s stranding reminds its audience from where it has come.  The local text references respond to Aboriginal language, history and school students.

The sentry box represents the early role of Parramatta as a colonial outpost at the head of the harbour, set in a park-like landscape which seems surreal to the first Europeans who saw it in 1788, expecting a “wilderness”.

The landing place, wharf, military barracks and government store/granary were at one end of the power axis at the entry point to Parramatta, with Government House at the head of George Street commanding the opposite end.  Floggings of convicts and soldiers sometimes took place at the doorway of the Government Store.

The sentry outside the barracks watched over the river and George Street for Aboriginal guerillas and escaping convicts and stood at the first gateway through which immigrants flowed to inland Australia.”

The direct use of quotations brings the speech and characters alive within archaic language forms while the current shorthand of the text message and computer code dominate.  It is a kind of oral history that cuts through the SMS of language rhythms with timeless preoccupations and emotions.  Framed within the wake of countless boats that have moved upstream, the walls quietly remind.

From a distance the ripple of wave motion disrupts the monotony of shoreline and the organic landmass responds rhythmically in sculptural form and material.  From here the combination of organic and made elements blur function and artwork.  The sense of equilibrium is jolted by the perception of the solid form of land rolling and shifting as liquid.

The conceptual framework and contrasting elements of natural and made materials define the palette for the park.  These materials contrast conceptually and aesthetically, for example, with the patina of metal referencing the industrial heritage as well as its clean slice through the heavier mass of concrete.  These material contrasts reinforce the notion of fractures, as interventions in site and as sculptural elements that shape movement and sightlines.  The concrete wall and paths explores all three themes, fractures, fingers, and connectors in its slice, in its fragmentation and the artwork texture of its surface.

The idea for the wall plays with the notion of “illuminated manuscript,” exploring these issues in the imagery and text of the light box. This takes the medieval relationship between image and text and reinvents its form within a contemporary “illuminated” panel for the wall section.  While the style of the panel is derived from the formal set out with initials and miniatures, the text and imagery of the panel explores contemporary notions, such as text as a digital bit or part of a binary code, layered with pictorial and symbolic language.  The local history is the source of text.

The sign announces a popular market enterprise below street level.

The imprint of tyre treads upon the earth echoes the stratified fossil prints of ancient plants and leaves compressed into stone and shale.  While the tyre tracks reveal the weight of travel and an impatience with speed, the leaf patterns stretch skeletally to trap the light and water.

The artwork is made up of a number of elements spatially separated and yet geometrically interlocked.  A  patterned perforation on the sides of each element renders them as transparent and hollow.  The imagery of these patterns explores the common threads of the treads, the plant veins and water marks.

As a starting point for sculptural forms, the tread patterns were individually sampled, scaled and reconfigured using metal.  The links between apparently disparate layers of water, leaf and tyre are reinforced by their repeated geometry and the rhythm of their patterns cut from sheet metal.

Floating above the heads of the piazza, the skeletal veins cast intricate shadows in the groundplane.The experience has the feel of the forest with the floating leaves nourishing as the canopy overlays and shelters the forest floor.

The differences in height reflect the cascading properties of the nasturtium and colour accents echo the vibrant blossom colours.

The Entry Statement arcs the existing rail tracks as a geometric progression into the air, retaining the sleeper staccato rhythm of carriage sway.

The transformation of a timeless courtship ritual by the bowerbird into a contemporary public artwork borrows the essence of his installation: its avenue; entrance; precious objects and two enfolding stick constructions. The passage of people through animates its presence through performance.           

Tiers projects away from the shelter of its host and in direct attitude to the sky and these primal elements. The geometric progression of materials, including a magnified glass image of trees reflected in water, ascends in sympathy with the axis of the former building.

With the awareness of climate change, the element of water has been transformed from an anticipated resource to a precious spring. As a colony of sculptures in the roundabout, their inverted form changes them from sunshade and rain shelter to light receptor and water collector. 

A rhythm of perforated panels sways as it meanders through the landscape. This installation grew from collaboration with the Landscape Architecture team.

This fence was designed to frame the refurbished town square. The imagery of the panel was influenced by a thread pattern.

The sculptures reinforce the role of cycleways as community in motion with the parts of a bicycle deconstructed, distorted and reformed as sculptures. Students from Bossley Park High School designed one of the markers with us.

The sculpture refers to the toppling of bed heads and includes mist within the hollow of the metal. Some of the nurses saw the artwork as acknowledging the hospital site as a traditional healing place for the community.

The fence imagery responded to the signature figs and oak trees growing in the vicinity and was cast to reference the tradition of iron filigree in existing architectural flourishes.

The markers have responded to the local natural environment as well as the prior history of the area as a munitions site. They function as orientation signs, reinforcing a cohesive language within the landscape.

This cycle and footbridge spans the Parramatta River and is part of the refocus upon the river. The seamless integration of artwork within the bridge infrastructure ensures the bridge is an artwork and the artwork spans the river.

The sound sculptures as bronze horns amplify the sound of the old creek whose passage had been channelled into pipes. This artwork reveres prior surface water still flowing underneath the overlaid strata.