The Create NSW story behind Sydney Metro Art

Two weeks ago, the very first Sydney Metro City departure went full steam ahead. Within the first week of its opening, more than 1.4 million trips were taken on the new M1 Metro Northwest & Bankstown Line.

The line's many passengers would be forgiven for thinking they were travelling through an art gallery, rather than a railway station.

Large-scale public art installations transform corridors and unexpected corners of Sydney’s newest transport service, thanks to the?Metro Art program.

Create NSW has played an important role in this program, which commissions public art by experienced and emerging Australian artists for permanent display at each new Sydney Metro station.

Back in 2019, Create NSW staff members David Everist and Nat Randall established a working partnership with Sydney Metro to develop an expression of interest framework for commissioning artists for the new line, which Sydney Metro continues to follow.

Since then, the Public Art & Projects team has worked closely with Sydney Metro to support the process, including?artist selection for the City & Southwest line, which feature artworks that respond to the theme, storyline.

Below are a few great examples of emerging and Aboriginal artists Create NSW has supported to appear on the City line:

• Riding the escalator at Waterloo station takes you past over 100 individual cast Indigenous footprints in gold and silver. Footprints on Gadigal Nura?was created by Indigenous artist Nicole Monks, whose other works at the station include a portrait of a young Aboriginal boy, Roscoe.
• If you’re coming into Central station from the South, you would have noticed the architectural-scale art on brick walls by Bundjalung artist Dr Bronwyn Bancroft AM, a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative. The DNA and serpentine-like imagery called?Time Travellers?was inspired by the DNA of Aboriginal Australia, connecting back to the origins of our river systems and sacred sites. The State Library is currently hosting an exhibition of Bronwyn’s work.

We'd also like to celebrate some stunning work by NSW artists such as:

• Sundial?created by artists Indigo Hanlee and Michael Thomas Hill, is an immersive digital artwork that shows the passing of time as images of the sun and the moon marking the hours of the day across the 12m wide screen situated at the southern concourse at Victoria Cross station.
• Inspired by timeless, universal and cross- cultural philosophies, In Time We Shall connects customers at the new Sydney Metro Barangaroo Station to ancient, shared symbols and the spiritual significance of the tree of life. Khaled Sabsabi worked closely with local Aboriginal communities throughout its creation. The giant column bands feature names of Sydney Basin trees in language and the path the artwork takes acknowledges and offers reverence to the Gadigal clan of the Eora nation and broader Dharug communities.
• Magic Circle by Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro located at Martin Place proposes a parallel between the complex infrastructure of ant nests and modern city spaces.