In 2018, curated by Barbara Flynn, Studio Olafur Eliasson was commissioned to design and manufacture a significant work of public art, a sculpture which would be the centrepiece of one of Sydney’s largest and most ambitious urban regeneration undertakings to date – QQS. The artist had been identified and discussions about an artwork commenced two and a half years earlier, in a conversation on 28 August 2015 among Behmann; Kim Herforth Nielsen, founder and Principal of Danish architecture firm 3XN; Barbara Flynn; and Caroline Choy, then Senior Project Manager, AMP Capital, Quay Quarter Sydney. The QQS development features, at its heart, a comprehensive contemporary remodelling of one of Sydney’s original skyscrapers, the AMP Building at 50 Bridge Street, by 3XN. Eliasson had his pick of sites for his artwork. He chose the rooftop podium that connects the original AMP heritage tower at 33 Alfred Street (Peddle Thorp and Walker, 1962) to the re-envisioned Quay Quarter Tower.
Following a presentation to the City of Sydney by Flynn on 28 August 2018, the work was endorsed and approved as developer AMP Capital’s public art contribution under the Development Consent conditions for QQS. It is a condition precedent to occupation that the work be complete to the satisfaction of the City of Sydney. To this end, Bridget Smyth, Design Director, and artist and Public Art Advisory Panel (PAAP) member Janet Laurence visited the site to inspect the sculpture on 7 October 2021. Flynn and Reinhard Ostendorf, Studio Olafur Eliasson’s lead for the artwork, hosted the City’s visit. Eliasson himself had visited Sydney for meetings with AMP Capital in December 2019. He met with Smyth, Laurence, and other representatives of the PAAP and the City’s Design Unit on site on 9 December 2019. Sebastian Behmann and Taylor Dover, Co-Director of Encounters at Studio Olafur Eliasson, had visited Sydney from Berlin on an earlier trip, 3–6 December 2018, to present the artwork to the PAAP.
Following two years of successful collaboration between City of Sydney, Studio Olafur Eliasson, fabricators CIG (The Netherlands), AMP Capital, contractor Multiplex, and installer Icon Metal (Sydney), the $3 million sculpture was completed, packed and shipped in ten containers to Sydney. Components of the work were on the seas from the beginning of May to the end of August 2021. The artwork was inspected upon arrival at Icon’s yard and again following delivery to the Quay Quarter site. Installation on site commenced on 14 September and was completed on 9 October 2021.
Twenty-six columns support the canopy of the sculpture, which is comprised of three layers. Columns and canopy are flawlessly fabricated of hollow steel, zinc coated and painted with a C4 system of paint in a papyrus white colour for the columns and a sulphur yellow colour for the canopy. Hand-polished, marine-grade stainless-steel sections form smaller, mirrored c-curves that reflect the buildings surrounding the site; once the site is open and people visit, they will see themselves reflected.
The work weighs 66 tonnes and covers an area of almost 2000 square metres installed. Complex components are almost too long to take in at a glance; they fork in unexpected directions and connect to other components in unexpected ways. In its detailing, the sculpture is precise and delicate, a delicacy that seems to be at odds with the work’s giant size. The beauty of the fabrication strikes a note of awe: the whole structure fell into place like a key slotted into a keyhole at installation.
Text by Barbara Flynn, February 2022