Located on One Central Park’s dramatic cantilevered heliostat at the Central Park development in Chippendale, Sea Mirror will be opened tonight by Bridget Smyth, Design Director of the City of Sydney, in the presence of the internationally-acclaimed artist himself.

Sea Mirror is a permanent addition to Central Park’s public art collection.

The collection includes both temporary and permanent artworks. Sea Mirror joins completed artworks Halo by Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford and Patrick Blanc’s 21 vertical gardens which now adorn the façades of One Central Park.

Kersale is one of the most highly regarded conceptual lighting artists in the world, having honed his craft for more than 30 years. His first commission in 1983 was a lighting concept for the Eiffel Tower and his major permanent works include In Out at the Sony Center in Berlin which opened in 2000 and Diffraction at Torre Agbar in Barcelona, opening in 2005.

Sea Mirror is Kersale’s first artwork in Australia as well as his first cantilevered lighting installation and his first using a heliostat.

It will be his sixth project working in collaboration with Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning, French architect, Jean Nouvel, who has designed the iconic One Central Park development with local partner, PTW.

Kersale’s inspiration for the artwork is Sydney Harbour. This permanent artwork features a rotating sequence of short ‘performances’ reflecting the seasons – Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. Each sequence is designed to capture the changing colours of Sydney Harbour in the 320 individual mirror plates of the heliostat.

These mirrored panels each contain nine LED coloured lights, which collectively are programmed to create a dazzling artwork from dusk until 10pm every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

As one of the unique architectural features of the Central Park development, which has the dual purpose of functionality as well as artistic merit, One Central Park’s heliostat exemplifies the bold and artistic ambitions of the developers; bringing dramatic, globally significant architecture to Sydney and new artworks to the city.

During the day, One Central Park’s heliostat captures sunlight via large mirrored panels on the roof of One Central Park’s smaller West tower, bounces this light to the mirrored panels affixed to the framework protruding from the higher East tower, and reflects this light into the precinct’s retail atrium, pool terrace and adjoining parklands.

The sophisticated light reflecting feature is Australia’s first heliostat to be incorporated into the architectural design of a high-rise residential tower.

Kersale describes the narrative of his work:

“Sydney’s harbour is mythical for the sailing universe and being a sailor myself, the opportunity to capture the sea in this way and reflect it indirectly on the heliostat, constitutes the grounds for this geo-poetical signal. 

“A rotating series of images of reflections of the sun on the water will be take shape via lights on the heliostat. The variations will be in relation to the shades and colour tones of Sydney’s harbour. It will not be a live projection but a capture of sea substance and light sparkles on site, which will then be worked on. They can relate to seasons or can be a game of opposites; ie. the light emanating from a summer sun in the middle of winter. 

“It is important to understand that the installation is an allegory, a symbol of the sea in the city.” 

The construction and installation of Sea Mirror and the heliostat has been delivered to precision by a collaboration of Sydney-based construction, engineers and lighting specialists including Kennovations, Arup, Watpac and Xenian on behalf of the joint venture developers.

Central Park
centralparksydney.com

Yann Kersale
ykersale.com