Central Park

'Artists In Residence' is launching tonight, Tuesday 12 April, when the first artwork – ‘Local Memory’ by Brook Andrew - is officially turned on by Bridget Smyth, Director, Design, for the City of Sydney.

Artists In Residence is a is a temporary public art project which will occupy Central Park's heritage brewery yard buildings and brick stack, from April for a year or two. 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.

'Artists In Residence' was conceived by Frasers' Central Park art advisors Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford, and is being curated by Anne Loxley.

First up: Brook Andrew, 'Local Memory'

Brook Andrew is the first artist to temporararily take over the heritage Brewery Yard, with a monumental artwork comprising a series of portraits of people who worked in or were associated with the brewery’s history. Called 'Local Memory', 18 portraits - each almost 3 metres high – fits neatly into the exposed grid of floors and walls on the northern exterior wall of the old Irving Street Brewery building.

Each portrait is illuminated by a red neon frame which will fade on and off in a series of programmed sequences, illuminating different images at different times. The artwork will be an engagingly active kinetic light installation and have both a day time and night time presence.

'Local Memory' aims to celebrate people who have lived, worked and witnessed change on the brewery site between 1909 and 1998. These people are often the forgotten ones of socienties whose importance in work and lifestyle has little or no public memory, let alone the intimate social and cultural lives they lived and legacies within local families and brewery production," says Brook.

No special permission needed to view this work – you can see it from Broadway from the bus, or stroll into the car park to read about the people pictured.