art and property development

Frasers Property reckon they know how to appease a disgruntled local community and earn themselves trend points and potential buyers in the process.

This work is by Brook Andrew, entitled Local Memory. With a title like that, it should be right up Penultimo’s alley, but we can’t help feeling a bit suspicious about the circumstances of this commission. Even if there is art there, it’s still an enormous big property development. This makes us wary, rather than excited. We can’t help it, that’s just part of Penultimo’s take on all things Ultimo and Chippendale: wary.

Here’s the work at night, which, as you can see, communicates (or complements?) the enormous Central Park sign. 

At the Central Park development, Frasers have realised they can’t just be property developers: they need to couch the embarrassment-of-riches that is the reality of property sales in … well … culture.

(Or, more precisely, in Neon.)

So - Frasers are property developers who hire trendy web designers, and who let artists produce ephemeral work for their construction sites … 

Oh, sorry, did we sound really cynical there?

To be fair, here is what the Central Park website says about the art projects happening on this site: 

“First up: the A.I.R. project. ’Artists In Residence’ is a temporary public art project which will occupy the heritage brewery yard buildings and brick stack, from early March 2011. Brook Andrew, Mikala Dwyer, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro and Caroline Rothwell have been selected to create works specifically for this unusual and spectacularly visible site - just off Broadway, in the thick of Central Park’s construction activity. Each artist has been given free rein to create an artwork that will not only contribute to the creative character of the Chippendale community, but will also be inspired by what art advisor Michaelie Crawford describes as “the history, fluids, processes and intoxications of the site’s brewing past”. As each artist installs a new work, the previous works will remain – building to a playful collective ‘conversation’ between the four works. Watch the site from March, for some surprising transformations.” More details here