Bridging art and architecture, the new façade at Arden Station is entitled ‘Come Together’ and has been designed by Australian artist, Abdul Abdullah. The artwork is something of a departure for Abdullah, who more commonly works with painting or photography at scales that allow for individual control of the work. Here, however, the project strays into full architectural territory, with all of the necessary collaborative elements.

“It wasn’t necessarily a hard thing to imagine, the upscaling of an image – it was the type of image that I would do as a painting at a small scale,” explains Abdullah. “So, it was just a matter of imagining it bigger. What I hadn’t worked with, I guess, is that type of materiality. And the fact that painting is a hands-on process for me, while this is much more of a design process.”

The expressions of interest for the project took shape back in 2019, with COVID shaping some of the progress in the meantime. That, as well as budget, saw the design evolve from an initial one featuring LED text to the final result with its distinctive pair of hands reaching out to one another.

“One of the things that I found is that train stations, like public institutions such as the NGV or the Art Gallery of New South Wales, are some of the few free civic spaces where there isn’t necessarily a commercial intention. I like the idea that they’re meeting places [where] people can be unmolested and just be present in the space. I wanted to encourage that as a meeting place, a place for people to converge.

“Growing up next to a train station, I found – for better or worse – that it was a nexus point where all these different communities, all these different strata of society, would come into the one spot. People would interact and be in proximity with people that they wouldn’t ever otherwise be in proximity with. So, I wanted to make that sort of intermingling as comfortable, welcoming and as nice as possible.”

The artwork engages with the West Melbourne Swamp which existed on the site prior to colonisation. It was also originally envisaged as a large-scale mosaic, but the need for a higher performance façade led to Artedomus’ solution. The façade has been constructed from custom-printed Fiandre Design Your Slabs (DYS) porcelain panels, which are designed to deliver maintenance and environmental benefits due to their photocatalytic properties. These self-cleaning and contributing to improved air quality.

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“Fiandre DYS custom porcelain is a new innovation,” says Business Development Manager at Artedomus, William Pearse. “This is the first large-scale project in the world using Fiandre DYS; it is quite unique and exciting to see what is possible at this scale. There is no limitation to the type of artwork or shape, scale or colours that can be achieved using Fiandre DYS – there is nothing else like it. The photocatalytic properties prevent environmental dirt from sticking to the surface of the panel, and generally rain will be all that’s needed to keep the surface clean. The panels also deliver anti-pollution properties, effectively reducing nitrogen oxides to physically clean the air around it.”

Abdullah, who also draws attention to the fruitful collaboration with UAP (Urban Art Projects), reflects happily on the importance of the materiality. “Moving to this process – where the image is baked into these particular tiles – was something that I had to get my head around, but also making sure that the image itself was considered in a way that wasn’t just a photo printed onto a wall. It had to be a deliberate process that incorporated the idea into it. The closer you come up to it, you see that there’s consideration and there’s intention in all those shapes,” he concludes.

Abdul Abdullah
abdulabdullah.com

Artedomus
artedomus.com

Next up: A profile of Melbourne artist, Drez