Artists brew up a plan for CUB site

The lone structure remaining from Broadway’s Carlton and United Breweries may become a blank canvas for four contemporary installation artists.

Sydney artists Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford and former Sydney Morning Herald art critic Anne Loxley await Council approval to transform what is now known as the Irving Street Brewery building, into a modern spectacle for the three years before the Central Park development requires the space.

Michaelie Crawford says the artists will be asked to create vibrant, possibly humorous, spectacles.

“The brief will ask the artists to make a work that’s external to the building, and possibly comes out of the windows or feels like it’s moving out in a three-dimensional form outside on the facade of the building.

“And we expect them to be quite large so they’re really easily seen from the street, and perhaps quite colourful so that against the background of the building they’ll stand out as a strong element,” she said.

One piece is planned for the smoke stack, with the other three inhabiting different surfaces of the heritage building.

Crawford says the concept is ‘habitation’.

“It’s loosely based on the idea of moving into the space, occupying the space and then seeing the signs of that habitation – and the artwork is what moves in,” she said.

“The artists aren’t literally moving in.”

The pieces would be built one at a time, with a few months between each.

Crawford says the public will get a closer look at the works when a park on the south of the site is completed next year.

“It’s something that’s really quite different for Sydney, sometimes … buildings have been clad in a cloth screen with images on them, but this is the first time that I’m aware of that there’s been a large-scale temporary sculptural project on a building of this nature,” she said.

“One of the sites for the artwork is on the northern wall that faces Broadway – it’s an old internal wall.

“They may choose to put a hole through that wall, or extend something – they could change that surface. But the other walls are all heritage walls and they can’t really change that surface at all – they just have to work with the material of the building as it’s there.”

The artists will be from Australia and possibly New Zealand.

“We do have some artists that we’re thinking of at the moment, but we’re not really in a position to talk about that until we’ve gone through the process of selecting them,” said Crawford.

“The artists whose work we’re looking at are all really fantastic contemporary artists.”

A three-sided billboard would be erected above the building to subsidise costs.

By Lawrence Bull