Urban Art Projects, Brisbane, and Ausgrid have contracted New Media Curation to curate a commission for public sculpture at their Erskine and Sussex Streets City North Substation. Previously the home of Grid Gallery, the space is now undergoing development to enliven and enrich this busy city thoroughfare.

There are 3 phases of this process: 1] an invited longlist of interactive artists as selected by NMC; 2] a shortlist chosen by Ausgrid and UAP for ideation; 3] a final artist is chosen to realise their design.

The Curatorial Rationale



“…in effect, we cannot make our work without your product…”

– Ernest Edmonds to George Maltabarow at the launch of Grid Gallery, June 2010

The above sentence was re-quoted by Maltabarow in his opening speech at the launch of Grid Gallery. Here, in a discussion prior to his speech, one of the artists featured at the launch (also a Professor of Information Technology) articulated an undeniable relationship between electricity and digital art. This articulation sparked a greater awareness in the Managing Director of Ausgrid for the activity at hand: that digital art as a medium is on the rise in Australia and Ausgrid, whether officially or unofficially, is the sponsor of that movement. Buildings now incorporate media facades, screens are prevalent in shared spaces, and Internet access is readily available via wireless hubs.

This sense of movement, of forward motion, that knowledge is in the palm of our hands due to a bountiful supply of energy in our country; the pushing, the pulsing, and the very static of electricity is what inspires digital artists to create in this medium.

The space under consideration at Sussex and Erskine Streets in the Sydney CBD is itself a thoroughfare, one that connects commuters with trains, buses and ferries between Darling Harbour and Wynyard Station. With this area up for further development via the Barangaroo project, an area that could easily be termed “dead” or “junk” space in urban development terms ,has the opportunity to morph into something spectacular.



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Congratulations to the Winner!

> David Nixon <

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The Preliminary Shortlist:

1] Ernest Edmonds

2] Gary Diermendjian

3] House of Laudanum - Zina Kaye and Mr. Snow

4] David Nixon

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The Invited Longlist:

1] Ernest Edmonds

2] Kate Richards

3] Chris Fox

4] Dillon McEwan

5] Gary Diermendjian

6] Ian Gwilt

7] Mobile Projection Unit - Lucasz Karluk, Rene Christen and Nick Clark

8] Linda Dement

9] House of Laudanum - Zina Kaye and Mr. Snow

10] David Nixon