Artworks from several renowned Australian-based artists including Emily Floyd, John Warwicker, and Yhonnie Scarce, are on display throughout the Melbourne Quarter precinct in the garden city's CBD for public viewing.

Ranging from sculptures and artworks to installations and even light projections, the public art can be viewed at TiTree Park, Gunpowder Walk, and One and Two Melbourne Quarter. The artworks were commissioned by Lendlease, developer of the Melbourne Quarter precinct.

Creative design consultancy Broached Commissions was engaged to create a brief for the commissioned artworks, with the selected public art interpreting a cultural essay recognising the site’s history and respecting the First Nation’s story. The essay detailed themes of ‘The Grid and The Tempest’, exploring the interplay between the history of the site, the ongoing natural forces of the Docklands location, and the transformation of the site.

"Melbourne Quarter occupies a site of profound importance to Melbourne’s history,” says Lou Weis, Creative Director of Broached Commissions.

“It is pivotal to the history of the Kulin Nation and the colonial project alike. The various layers of history, from Indigenous to the industrial use of the land, have been explored in the art commissioned by Lendlease for Melbourne Quarter.”

According to Weis, Broached Commissions crafted the historical themes that guided the art commissions from concept to completion, with Indigenous Australians delivering or collaborating on the majority of the content.

Melbourne Quarter proudly displays the following artworks throughout the precinct:

  • Emily Floyd’s ‘Grass Parrot Family’, which invites audiences to reimagine the city from the perspective of a child with a family of sculptural birds in varying sizes.
  • Yhonnie Scarce’s ‘Fire’, a series of hand-blown glass objects, is a memorial to the murnong plant, a root vegetable that used to be harvested in this area by the Kulin Nation.
  • Grace Lillian-Lee’s ‘Embodied’ is a woven cloth piece in ode to Binbeal, the Kulin Nation god of the rainbow.
  • U-P’s ‘Gunpowder Empires’ traces the history and evolution of gunpowder from China, into the Ottoman Empire and across Europe through five circular Gobo light projections. Viewable after sunset at Gunpowder Walk, near Two Melbourne Quarter, where a storage facility for gunpowder once stood at Batman’s Hill.
  • Stanislava Pinchuk and Reko Rennie’s ‘Landscape Amnesia’ creates a distorted landscape over the rectilinear grid of commercial office windows through net like lines and shield patterns.
  • OCULUS and Broached Commissions’ ‘Colourama’ reimagines Melbourne Quarter’s pavilion, combining a high modernist line with a playful heart.
  • Trent Jansen’s ‘Stumped’ is a commemorative set of cricket stumps, honouring the history of Batman’s Hill where the Melbourne Cricket Club played some of its first games.
  • John Warwicker’s ‘Your lordship has been fortunate’ is a typographical response to Indigenous author and historian Bruce Pascoe’s interpretation of Captain John Lancey’s letter to John Fawkner written in 1835, providing historical and First Nations context to this artwork.

Image credits:

Grass Parrot Family by Emily Floyd

Curator: Broached Commissions; Location: TiTree Park, East Tower, Melbourne Quarter, Flinders St Melbourne; Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Stumped by Trent Jansen

Curator: Broached Commissions; Location: TiTree Park, East Tower Residential Apartments, Flinders Street; Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Fire by Yhonnie Scarce

Curator: Broached Commissions; Location: Melbourne Square outside Two Melbourne Quarter, Collins Street; Photographer: Peter Bennetts