PUBLIC ART WALK AT MELBOURNE QUARTER

Location: One Melbourne Quarter lobby

Typographical artwork: John Warwicker  | Accompanying text: Bruce Pascoe

Creative Direction: Lou Weis, Broached Commissions | Architectural design: Denton Corker Marshall

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

The artwork on the upper walls of the foyer features a typographical interpretation of a letter from Captain John Lancey to his employer, the co-founder of Melbourne, John Fawkner in 1835, the year Melbourne was founded.

Lancey’s observations were made where this building stands today. John Batman ended up buying the lot and it became known as Batman’s Hill.

Bruce Pascoe (a renowned author and scholar of Indigenous agriculture and language) of Bunurong, Yuin and Tasmanian heritage has provided a contemporary interpretation of the letter, highlighting the hill as an Indigenous garden maintained by the Kulin Nation for generations.

Artist John Warwicker selected fonts like the Caslon typeface, which date back to Melbourne’s founding era and were used in official British Government documents, thereby paying homage to the formal aesthetics of the British Empire.

Location: TiTree Park, East Tower Residential Apartments

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Emily Floyd’s artwork was designed to specifically engage Melbourne Quarter’s younger residents by reimagining the city from a child’s perspective. “Grass Parrot Family,” transforms the urban park into an outdoor classroom, blending childhood learning with local fauna.

The sculptural birds are modeled on the Red Rumped Parrot (Psephotus haematonotus), also known as the red-backed parrot or grass parrot, a common bird of south-eastern Australia.

Floyd also acknowledges and pays respect to the Traditional Owners and Elders, past present and emerging, of the lands and waters on which Ti-Tree Garden stands; acknowledging Aboriginal connection to material and creative practice on these lands for more than 60,000 years, and their enduring presence and knowledge.

Location: TiTree Park, East Tower Residential Apartments

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

The Colourama pavilion blends high modernist lines with playful elements. It features overhanging eaves and a square core inspired by traditional Japanese tea houses, but with a rectilinear, Western modernist twist.

The sliding dichroic glass screens merge traditional Japanese shoji screens with Bauhaus-inspired color play. Visitors can interact with the sliding panels to create various contrasts of color, shadow, and pattern, experiencing the pavilion as a playground, maze, or sanctuary.

Location: TiTree Park, East Tower Residential Apartments

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

The Melbourne Cricket Club played some of its first games at the foot of Batman’s Hill, now Melbourne Place. To honor this significant moment in Melbourne and Australia’s sporting history, Lendlease commissioned a commemorative set of cricket stumps. Designed by Trent Jansen, the stumps are imagined as being crafted in a makeshift mold using local timber.

Location: Gunpowder Walk, near Two Melbourne Quarter. Viewable after sunset.

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Batman’s Hill, a founding site of colonial Melbourne, once housed a gunpowder storage facility crucial for the colony’s expansion.

Five circular Gobo light projections on Gunpowder Walk trace the deadly history and evolution of gunpowder from its origins in China during the Song Dynasty, to its use in the Ottoman Empire and across Europe. From gunpowder use during the Song Dynasty, China (960-1279) culminating in American Civil War-era patent drawings for pistols and rifles (1861 – 1865). These projections highlight the transformative impact of gunpowder from the glory of the feudal Empire through to the rise of the American empire, which coincides with industrial scale munition manufacture.

Location: Viewable from Gunpowder Walk, near Two Melbourne Quarter

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Reko Rennie and Stanislava Pinchuk began their artistic journeys in street art. “Landscape Amnesia” reflects their ongoing commitment to using simple symbols to make bold political statements. In this piece, Pinchuk and Rennie employ net-like lines and Reko’s vivid shield patterns to create a distorted landscape over the rectilinear grid of commercial office windows.

Location: Melbourne Square, outside Two Melbourne Quarter

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Yhonnie Scarce’s memorial to the murnong plant, a root vegetable once harvested by the Kulin Nation, features hand-blown glass objects representing the plant in various states; buried, as if in a firepit, in their natural subterranean state, and also laid out as if ready to eat.

This artwork, located on what was once an Indigenous garden, serves as a tribute to sustainable Indigenous agriculture. According to Bruce Pascoe, early colonial records noted the site’s rich array of edible herbs and plants. Scarce’s work is both archaeological and ceremonial, encouraging a return to traditional practices.

Location: Melbourne Quarter East elevation, best viewed from the corner of Flinders Street and Wurundjeri Way.

Curator: Broached Commissions

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Grace Lillian Lee’s sculpture, “Embodied,” is a tribute to Binbeal, the Kulin Nation god of the rainbow, son of Bunjil. “Embodied” is Lee’s first public art commission and expands on her fashion practice of body-armour and cloth weaving.

The screen sculpture resides on the back wall of the Oculus-designed pavilion situated at the East end of Melbourne Square. It symbolizes the rain collected by Binbeal which is woven into a rainbow and body armour. The folded, laser-cut, metal weave pattern is inspired by Torres Strait Island weaving techniques.