Artist opportunities
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Creative hoardings program
Aims to transform the visual impact of construction sites in our area.
The creative hoardings program provides opportunities for artists to showcase their work on a large scale in very visible locations.
The program was created in response to community demand for more street art to enliven the streets of Sydney and bring creativity into the everyday.
Developers with construction sites in high traffic areas must cover their hoardings in art by a living Australian artist, or historical images relevant to the area where the hoarding is located. Developers can commission their own artist, or they can use artworks licensed by the City of Sydney, free of charge.
Artworks commissioned by City of Sydney
To date we’ve run 3 national call-outs for artwork concepts.
In 2022, we received hundreds of applications. From these, 10 artworks were licensed for use. See them below.
Colouring Memory — Indigenous plants including wattles, gymea lily, lillipillies and eucalypt have been incorporated as an overlay on the old European motifs as a reclaiming of space and sharing of history from First Nations people, referencing the movement of Indigenous people from across the country to the city as well as the movement of people from across the world to Australia in search of work, education or a better life in both Indigenous and exotic plants. By removing the structural standing forms of the Victorian fences, these have been reimagined into highly coloured shields that also references European ideas of heraldry. The floral referencing introduces the idea of memory of place and country and memories of the past.Artist: Dennis Golding
You Rocked My Heart, Trev — You Rocked My Heart, Trev is a star, named for a lover in code. Every star has its own unique colour signature, it's like a fingerprint. Of the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, we can only see 9096 of them at night. There is a service where you may name one of the unseen stars, send a coded declaration of love the scale of a star. This work recreates the colour signature of a star named You Rocked My Heart, Trev in pigment and potassium powder, a smoke bomb that we can burn and star-gaze.Artist: Emily Parsons-Lord
Heavy Light — Exploring ways digital and emerging technologies can be incorporated within performance, often to advance dialogues relating to disability. The results have involved computer generated imagery, 3D printed sculpture, performance visualisations and virtual reality experiences. Heavy Light involved working with each dancer to create avatars of themselves. With a variety of natural traits applied to their bodies, these characters express the thrills and tensions of the stage, the importance of visibility or the weight of self-confrontation. The result is a series of bodies that interact in ambiguous ways, encouraging the viewer to insert their own narratives.Artist: Andrew Christie X Sprung!! Dance
Offering — Green spaces are woven through our cityscapes, dotted like mosaics, offering places to contemplate. Taking time to intertwine our commitment to greening the urban is expanded through gestures of gratitude. Making an offering invites reflection on the patterns and habits through which we take care of the Earth. Symbolic acts of devotion have the power to activate awareness and honour the abundance present in our natural environments. When we create in ways that honours the Earth, we bridge our inner connection to the external world. Through our offerings each of us have a role to play in creating a vision for a collective future.Artist: Elizabeth West
Equivalence — Images created through 3D software. Through sculpting landscapes and seascapes showing how virtual, artificial and generated landscape imagery is a formative practice, and a space for engaging complex social and cultural perspectives, temporalities and modes of seeing. This work has a hybrid capacity. From far away it passes easily as an expansive wave. But up close the image deteriorates and the digital details, artefacts and flaws emerge. The material shifts between passing as water, and becoming more solid and terrestrial from different perspectives. I am interested in the hybrid nature of photography and its ability to represent the ever-growing set of technologies, artificiality and physical realities of the everyday.Artist: Ash Garwood
Faraway Gums — An exploration of the metaphysical world in search of ancient trees and unseen auguries, the goal with this series is to explore the wonder and magic of the Sydney Red gum also known as the Kajimbourra, and Angophora Costata. These gum trees possess a remarkable regenerative ability. Its beautifully twisted silhouette is shaped from the turbulence of nature. The scars of lightning, fire and insect carving have become ghost limbs and misshaped bumps. It is a striking and unique story told over centuries, captured with a touch of magic and exuberance. Exploring beyond the familiar and searching for new, hidden perspectives and strange beauty, these majestic trees were captured using a special infrared camera that sees wavelengths invisible to the human eye. This is a documentation of natural history, a new way of seeing the earth that’s magical, alluring and hyper-real.Artist: Billy Ryan
yarrayarrayarra — An interpretation of the biodiversity within Warrane’s rich shorelines. Stylised forms evoke ideas of mangrove roots searching through mud flats and tiny crabs (Yarra) eyes popping out of the mud into the sunlight. This work celebrates Warrane and the life it supports – plants, animals and the Gadigal and everyone that calls this place home.Artist: Suzy Evans
Koala 4ever — An homage to one of the most iconic and wonderful members of the Australian community. All at once a love letter, an apology, a promise that humans will be endeavour to be better companions in the future. Let's never accept the koala becoming a mythical creature of the past.Artist: Elin Matilda Andersson
Waves Like Trees You Can’t Imagine — A body of work comprised of a series of pastel paintings that draw on the lineage of tantric abstraction, a reflection on ritual practices, spirituality and meaning-making, something that speaks to the ineffable and unknown through the concrete process of drawing. Incorporating Eastern philosophies and Tantric painting traditions into contemporary abstraction by working intuitively, referencing symbols or using spiritual analogies. These artworks are offered as little worlds or representations of possible worlds that can speak to the space beyond words, something felt rather than understood rationally.Artist: Zev Tropp
Dancing fig trees — Imagine all our streets being full of trees, a city submerged in a forest. The beautiful fig tree can play an important role in greening the city. These native trees are a source of food, providing shelter and sanctuary for fauna and provide respite from the urban environment. A visual symphony of the impressive buttress roots and branches, with the shapes forming characters each with their own story to tell and dance to, taking inspiration from the tree bark, with contour like textures and lines forming abstract patterns. The notion of wrapping and twisting creates a map like visual and relates to networks that exist in the city, and ones that need green pockets to sustain and provide calm.Artist: Richard Briggs
Creative hoardings artists
Get to know the artists who’ve contributed to our creative hoardings program since it began. nThey share the inspiration behind their works and reveal the joy of seeing their art super-sized around the city.
News
First look: Building sites reimagined as works of artYour new favourite artwork could be just around the corner.25 November 2022News
“I want people to feel visible”: 9 artists discuss seeing their work on a construction siteLearn the stories behind the artworks on Sydney’s inner city hoardings.14 May 2021News
Larger than life: 3 artists on seeing their work displayed across the cityArtists reveal the surreal joy of seeing their art super-sized and in a whole new context.21 November 2018News
Creative hoardings: street art of a different kindDiscover the art and artists brightening up Sydney’s construction sites.8 October 2018
Approvals
You need to get approval from the City of Sydney before hoardings and scaffolding are set up for a development or worksite.
Hoardings & temporary structure approvals
Get approval for hoardings and scaffolding on or above a public roadHoardings & temporary structure approvals
Get professional advice on hoardings and scaffolding
Creative graphic design options
Our creative hoardings program requires eligible hoardings and scaffolding to feature artworks or historic images.
Hoardings & temporary structure approvals
Apply creative artwork to hoardingsHoardings & temporary structure approvals
Apply historic images to hoardings and scaffolding covers
