On an unseasonally chilly night in November 2013, a new permanent art installation by French lighting artist Yann Kersalé, was switched on at Sydney’s One Central Park, the new towers on Broadway designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel with PTW Architects.
Lighting artist Yann Kersalé.
Kersalé joins the French cohort of creatives on this project: architect Jean Nouvel and botanical artist Patrick Blanc, respectively conceived and cloaked the twin towers in glass and greenery. Nouvel’s signature cantilever here is a heliostat (a frame of reflective mirrored panels) suspened off the higher east tower to throw reflected sunlight (from giant panels on the lower west tower roof) down into the void between them. Kersalé has used the heliostat as his canvas for the LED projections – short performances of pulsing coloured lights calibrated to “the four seasons” and reflected off all 320 of the heliostat’s mirrored plates.
Kersalé says his colours are an homage to the “magnifique” Sydney Harbour. At the switch-on ceremony on 5 December 2013, from the rooftop of the neighbouring Park Lane tower (by Johnson Pilton Walker), Kersalé called Sea Mirror his “magic carpet of colour.” Unlike other Sydney light installations, Sea Mirror will be a permanent fixture, bringing light up the airspace between the towers every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from sunset to 10 pm. Some lucky residents have their apartments bathed in the lumionous tapestry, as does the old UTS tower, nudging its way handsomely through the gap, while its additions by Frank Gehry are taking shape down the road on Broadway.
Chippendale public art: Sea Mirror (top) by Yann Kersale joins Halo by Turpin + Crawford at Central Park, Sydney.
Image: Simon Wood
This is Kersalé’s sixth collaboration with Jean Nouvel, but his first work on a heliostat and first artwork ever in Australia. Having notably received his first commission in 1983 to create a lighting concept for the Eiffel Tower, his other permanent works include In Out (2000) at the Sony Centre Berlin, and Diffraction (2005) at Torre Agbar in Barcelona.
For the rapidly changing Chippendale precinct, Sea Mirror is the latest addition to the $8 million program of public art planned by the developers, Frasers Property and Sekisui House Australia. It joins the marquee piece Halo, by Turpin + Crawford studio, their gyrating kinetic sculpture was unveiled in August 2012 in Chippendale Green at the centre of the redeveloped brewery site. City of Sydney curatorial advisor Barbara Flynn is the precinct’s art consultant.
