"Tied to Tide", Pirrama Park, Pyrmont

This is an artwork located in Pirrama Park at Pyrmont. The artists are Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford.

This is what they say:

"The winds and waters of Sydney Harbour choreograph a lively performance of maverick planks and renegade ladders between the boardwalk and the seawall at Pyrmont Point Park.

Tied To Tide is a kinetic artwork activated by the natural forces of tide, wave and wind. Hinged to the boardwalk, floating planks and airborne ladders combine with the ever-changing elements to perform an aquatic dance on the harbour. Conceptually, the artwork adopts and transforms the maritime language of the site’s timber boardwalk and access ladders. Free of their prosaic constraints, they play with rather than stand against nature. The ordinary becomes the extraordinary as timber boards hover over the water balancing tilting ladders like unwieldy acrobats in a harbourside circus.

Connected by a float to the water, the timber beams translate the eternal return of the tides. High tide lowers the beams whilst low tide raises them skyward. They bob gently on calm waters and dance staccato in a choppy swell. The wash of passing boats unwittingly choreographs sequences of frenzied motion. 

Vibrant maritime-orange ladders pivot in a seemingly impossible balance at the end of timber beams. They offer a metaphor for journey, collaborating with the elements to inspire a reverie of the imagination. A breeze gently sways them whereas wild gusts will spin them through 360 degrees.

Tied to Tide elucidates the complexities of nature through its simple engineering. Its interconnected axis create a myriad of responses to the action of tide, wave and wind. It is an installation in a constant state of flux, endlessly transforming itself with the elemental forces of Sydney Harbour."

Website

Museum of Contemporary Art

On the top of the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay, there is a rooftop cafe. And art. 

Tiger in St Peters

This striking mural adorns the walls of a car smash repair and rust removal workshop in the inner suburb of St Peters.

Not Just A Number

Word sculpture by Alex Woof, Amelia Calantzis, Catriona Calantzis, Elleni Karafilis, Rebecca Luhur and Rosie Wood. It was displayed at the recent Living Laneways "Handmade" market at Rockdale.

Its creators say:

"The word sculpture began its life as a national Youth Week 2013 workshop in Rockdale City Library. Under the guidance of artist Kelly Pearce we discussed which words were meaningful to us.

AUTHENTIC, ORGANIC, INDIVIDUAL, FORTY-TWO

"We ran our words through a barcode generator and over six sessions created four panels with our words and their corresponding barcodes. Barcodes turn everything including the authentic, the organic, the individual and forty-two into a number.

"Barcodes are everywhere. They're unavoidable. They can turn everything into a number....This is our way of reclaiming those words and their meaning."

Victory & Lore

These two lovely women have started a small local business called Victory & Lore, specialising in these great prints inspired by the area in which we live.

I was really pleased to see them at the Living laneways market in Rockdale yesterday, despite the cold, blustery weather.

I have a dream...we have the dreaming

This is the last day of NAIDOC Week. NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines' and Islanders' Day of Observance Committee.  To find out more, click here.

The Martin Luther King "I have a dream" mural was painted in August 1991 by Andrew Aiken and Juilee Pryor (with Tony Spanos), part of a group of mural artists called Unmitigated Audacity Productions.

The Aboriginal flag followed later, after several changes: see here and here.

I believe the complementary mural "we have the dreaming" mural was painted in 2011.

Art and About ... Deconstructing Ways by Isidro Blasco

Deconstructing Ways on the corner of Mullins Street and Market Row. This installation "creates a parallel world for your imagination to step into. Another option to the usual route appears - distorted, but strangely more real than the street you are standing on."

You do feel as if you could walk into it. At first I thought the car coming out of Market Row had spoiled that snap and I'd need to take more, but when I looked at it on the computer, decided it actually "made" the photo! It hides the disjuncture at the pavement level.

The photo below reveals more of how the work is located and constructed. It's like a movie set - all facade and perspective, mounted on a wooden backing scaffold.

Art and About ... peri(pheral)scopes looking over to the over-looked

In Skittle Lane, there is an installation by Heidi Alexson, Adriano Pupilli and Hugo Moline -  a series of periscopes, purportedly showing views of Western Sydney (the over-looked part of Sydney). Only one was working when we stopped by. But I loved the graffiti art (NOT part of the official art...) backdrop to one of the periscopes.

Here's a previous post on Skittle Lane and how it got its name.

Art and About...Untitled by Magda Sayeg

In Sussex Lane is this Yarnbombing, or Gueriila Knitting installation by Magda Sayeg.

Art and About...Bubbleway by Rebar

"Are you planking?" asked my friend Sue, as I stretched out on these covered Swiss Balls in Bulletin Place.

"Bubbleway, a modular, inflatable social furniture system...asks us to rethink our notions of public space and discover new forms of social interactions, creativity and play in a heavily encoded cosmopolitan centre."

Whatever .... they were quite comfy!

Art and About - Donut by Brook Andrew

Brook Andrew's Donut in Bridge Lane is "a large inflated PVC form donut ...transformed into a striking black and white matrix of Wiradjuri design. The shape references ancient European and Indigenous depictions of time travel and healing, and the popular contemporary notion of a 'pie in the sky."

I just like it! And the refelection in a corner of a window of the Exchange Hotel.

Andrew is of Wiradjuri and Scottish descent. The Wiradjuri people people come from Central New South Wales. I showed one of Andrew's other works, Bouncy Castle, in the Biennale of Sydney exhibition on Cockatoo Island.

Art and About: Untitled by Barry McGee

It's the 10th annual Sydney Art and About public art festival. One of the highlights for me is the laneway art installations.

Here in Tank Stream Way, Barry McGee has created a work which the catalogue says "teeters between the free spirit of graffiti, the randome energy of the urbane and the pure intent of controlled artistry"

I don't know if the tag shown left is part of the original work, or a graffiti tagger's addition!

The red paint strayed a way from the can! I rather like this too - implies a bit of hit and run- ness.

Melbourne has fabulous laneway art all over the city, much of it "graffiti style". Sydney is much more purse-lipped and tut-tutty about it all, but I rather think in some places it would brighten up otherwaise drab places.

McGee is a Californian, also known as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.

This piece caused controversy, with the narrow-minded straighteners of Sydney poo-poohing and decrying it and saying it should be erased! Grrrrrrrrr

Railway mural, St Peters

Mural along the railway line at St Peters, depicting nearby Alexandria Canal, buildings, and a Qantas (?) plane coming in to land at the airport.

centripetal by Matthew Harding (Vic)

"When you look at yourself from a universal standpointsomething inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about." Albert Einstein.

oh my god by Lucy Vader (NSW)

Statement: "Using her background in architecture and interiors, the artist has segued into steel sculpture, knitting the two forms of expression in a way that affords levity and longevity."

I have only one thing to say: FFS!!!

monument for small changes by Vlasé Nikoleski (NSW)

For Nola. This was her favourite sculpture this year, and today is her birthday! Happy Birthday, Nola.

The artist says: "Dealing with natural and man-made events that mark the attrition zone between land and sea."

the dancer by Jeramie Carter (NSW)

Another one of my favourite pieces from this year. Carter says: "Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.", Ted Shawn. The work gives the viewer the mirror image provoking the imagination to give the viewer an alternate look at themselves and their surroundings."

the big melt by Jane Gillings (NSW)

Statement by artist: "Icebergs break off and drift. Ephemeral sculptures, dripping and changing. Icicles cling to overhangs. Little swords of Damocles. Falling imperceptibly. Returning to the sea."

Gillings won the Kids' Choice award last year (click here).

bureaucratic tank by Edward Horne (NSW)

Horne says: "Bureaucracy is like a military tank. It won't stop for anything and has a disregard for humanitarian values. It leaves a path of paper wherever it goes."

mirroring 1995 by Keld Moseholm (Denmark)

This year's winner of the major prize of $60 000 (The Balnaves Foundation Sculpture prize).

I have liked Moseholm's works before - click here for his 2009 entry; 2008 entry

The work is made of bronze and granite. Moseholm says: "There is a relationship between reality and unreality symbolised by the imaginary mirror."