TURBOT STREET OVERPASS
Brisbane, QLD, Australia
ARTIST Judy Watson
ARTWORK Freshwater Lens
CLIENT Brisbane City Council
DESIGN UAP Studio, Belinda Smith
CONSTRUCTION UAP Workshop
YEAR 2010
Where Turbot Street passes over Roma Street in Brisbane’s Central Business District, a public oasis marks the point where creeks and springs had formerly met. In pre-colonial times, Indigenous people would gather together with other language groups from the area for ceremony and cultural exchange. Renowned indigenous Australian artist Judy Watson was commissioned to create a major public artwork to re-activate this once forgotten urban space.
Judy’s suspended sculpture references the freshwater lens, a body of fresh water that pools beneath coral atolls and sand islands, such as Queensland’s Heron Island and Stradbroke Island. The fresh water floats atop the salty seawater, its weight pushing out into a lens shape. The artist describes these and other subterranean bodies of water as “hidden, fragile, precious jewels, sustaining the environment and all life forms.”
The sculpture, which measures four metres in length, is formed from beaten brass and patinaed to reference the effects of water on its surface. As part of the site’s thematic focus on the role of water in the community, rainwater from the Turbot Street overpass is harvested, fed into a water tank, and used to nourish the gardens of the public space below. The water tank is housed by a weathered steel screen which features patterns the artist developed to represent the flow of water from nearby Spring Hill. Part of the Brisbane City Council’s Small Spaces public art program, the artwork humanises the space by changing the sense of scale and perspective in the site, softening the dominant lines of the built environment and signifying the history of the space.
JUDY WATSON
Artist
Indigenous Australian artist Judy Watson explores issues of heritage, identity and isolation in her public works. She has won national and international recognition for her work including an invitation to the 1997 Venice Biennale. In 2006, Watson was one of eight Indigenous artists who were commissioned to make work for the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. Watson’s work can be found in major International collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, China; St. Louis Art Museum, USA; and The British Museum, London. Judy Watson has received significant public art commissions in Australia for the Brisbane Magistrates Court (2003), the Melbourne Victorian County Court (2002), Sydney International Airport (2000), and the Melbourne Museum (1999).
UAP PROJECTS
Turbot Street Overpass
Reconciliation Place
