Sydney Streetworks 1999

Early in the morning of August 22 eight Streetworks were installed in Sydney, Australia. Made from materials retrieved mostly from around the streets of Darlinghurst that included mannequins, stones, crutches, wire cages, kitchen utensils, construction materials, and various pieces of timber. The pieces were placed high on stone walls, railway bridges, viaducts, and installed in parks and near canals. One piece, Christo's Edge, was wedged within a rock ledge in Little Bay, the site where Christo and Jeanne Claude had wrapped part of the Sydney coast thirty years earlier-the transparency of the mesh and glass Streetwork seemed to be just the right marking and moment to remind us of the way the Christos' cover things up to help us see. A friend photographed some of the Sydney Streetworks that were still on display a couple of months later-however, one piece, Academy, was found and photographed as a broken tangle of cane and timber at the base of its original site. But it's not a worry that some art encounters may surprise in ways that others may not like.

Go to images