In the heart of Sydney, a remarkable transformation is taking place. Nearly 250,000 daily commuters stream past one of the city’s largest First Nations artworks—Dr. Bronwyn Bancroft’s Time Travellers—a sweeping, abstract landscape rendered in colored bricks, emerging out of the façade of four massive ventilation towers.
As trains curve past, the piece seems to shift and transform, with changing light exposing different angles throughout the day, creating what its creator calls an experience of “paddling through the corridors of time.”
The artwork, titled Time Travellers, is the vision of celebrated Bundjalung artist Dr. Bronwyn Bancroft. It invites viewers to strip away the layers of modern Sydney and imagine the landscape as it once was—a rainforest teeming with life, crossed by rivers and streams, home to the Gadigal people.
“For decades, my work has been about travelling back through time,” Bancroft explains, “looking at archival images of my family and our people taken by anthropologists. It’s about repurposing, reclaiming, and reentering the past to understand our present.”
Creating art for Sydney’s Central Station carries profound significance for Bancroft. “I definitely felt like I was working in a space that was spiritually resonating for me,” she says. “To have this uplifting piece of artwork in a place where people would have been sitting on grass and lying under trees and maybe killing a kangaroo or fishing, it’s just extraordinary.”
“It’s about repurposing, reclaiming, and reentering the past to understand our present.”
This awareness of place extends beyond the station. “I think we’re all so lazy and we don’t think about our topographical relationship to nature,” she explains. “We just get in the car and think we’re going from Leichhardt to Lakemba. But no – you’re actually moving across country, and you’ve gone past Georges River or Cooks River. To know your land as navigated by water is to truly know it well.”
“When I travel by plane along the East Coast from Sydney, I’m constantly reminded and inspired by the Indigenous stories about how rivers were formed – the amazing serpentine patterns you see from above.”
Much of this inspiration is embedded in Bancroft’s characteristic approach—a canvas laid flat on a table, painted from above from a bird’s eye view. “I’ve never been able to paint on an easel,” she says. “It seems completely unnatural.”
To translate the artwork from canvas into the built form, John Prentice, Woods Bagot Global Transport Lead and Lead Architect for Central Station recalls several logistical hurdles that they had to overcome to bring Time Travellers into its final form.
“We wanted to ensure that we brought the artwork proper justice,” Prentice explains. “When we first went to pitch the design, we wanted the artwork to be integrated into the architecture, but we had to work through a few technical challenges.”
We changed the material of the façade walls from metal panel to brick so that we could use the brick as a ‘pixel’ but rather than a mural we rotated the bricks in increments to expose the colour on the short side of the brick rather than the front face. We used computer coding to address the complexity of modelling each brick to expose the work,” says Prentice.
The final installation required 55,727 coloured bricks, each precast at precise angles to create what Prentice calls “a kind of architectural ballet choreographed by light and movement. From some vantage points the colour is revealed, and others, only the impression of the pattern. As sunlight moves, the vibrancy of the colours change, shadows cast and give it life.”
Original painting.
Initial concept design of an extracted artwork on a render on three of the ventilation towers.
“A kind of architectural ballet choreographed by light and movement.”
The original artwork consisted of vibrant greens and reds, but after safety testing by the operator, the team had to change the colours, to not confuse with the train signalling that would impact the visibility of train drivers through the station.
“Once we had settled on the colours, we went through several rounds of testing. Initially the bricks were meant to be glazed, but we found that the glazing process muted the colour,” says Prentice. “After comparing several different batches, we collectively opted for hand-painted bricks that were colour-matched to Bronwyn’s vibrant hues.”
Bronwyn in the Woods Bagot Sydney studio.
“The extrapolation of the original image into an organic form that’s part of a building is extraordinary,” says Bancroft. “It reminds me of a Transformer… it’s been transformed. And I think it’s epic.”
Upon seeing her completed work for the first time, she was moved: “The way that the light moved… it actually felt like it was unwinding and winding up through the colorways. If anybody else sees what I saw on that day, then the job’s done.”
The decision to place the artwork on ventilation towers speaks to Bancroft’s lifelong practice of beautifying the mundane. “I just think the ventilation towers can be really ugly,” she says with characteristic frankness. “So why not put something amazing on them? Ever since I’ve been a small child, I’ve painted things to make them more beautiful.
“The way that the light moved … it actually felt like it was unwinding and winding up through the colorways. If anybody else sees what I saw on that day, then the job’s done.”
For Bancroft there’s a responsibility through art to give back to the people who experience it.
“At Central we have this industrial superstructure, and you can look at this and think this should be claimed for the hundreds of thousands of people that are travelling by it on train.”
“Railway stations are such a democratic space. You see people from all walks of life – people who walk past them, people who sleep there, – it’s a huge reminder of the fertility of humanity. One of my key reasons for pursuing this piece was the desire to bring light, life, colour and beauty to the experience of someone who might be down and out, or just catching a train through the city.”
For Prentice, the collaboration brings a sense of optimism for the artwork as part of Central Station’s history. “Bronwyn’s sensitivity to humanity, her openness and inclusiveness, has created a welcoming kind of peace for everyone that has worked on this project. And I hope that feeling translates to the passengers travelling past the artwork each day.”
“It’s a huge reminder of the fertility of humanity. One of my key reasons for pursuing this piece was the desire to bring light, life, colour and beauty to the experience of someone who might be down and out, or just catching a train through the city.”
Media enquiries Adrien Moffatt Content and Communications Specialist (Australia)
28 Sep 22