Public Sydney: Stop, Look, Live

Overview

Sydney is notorious for its streets that bend like tangled shoelaces, its laughable town planning that left our Town Hall facing the wrong direction (the original front faces the QVB) and a public transport system about as efficient as underground solar panels. But Sydney is also home to a sunny harbour framed by two of the 20th Century’s most impressive architectural feats, parks that feel like paradise, some of the world’s greatest outdoor city festivals and a legacy of elegant colonial buildings that bring us into conflict with our Aboriginal heritage. Public Sydney: Stop, Look, Live is an exhibition presented by the Historic Houses Trust, inspired by Philip Thalis and Peter John Cantrill’s newly released book Public Sydney: Drawing the City.

It’s a good starting point for anybody interested in Sydney’s design and offers a basic architectural and social history of iconic public sites including Bennelong Point, the Museum of Sydney, Hyde Park, Central Station and Town Hall. There are some cool old photographs that remind us we weren’t always a hip cosmopolitan metropolis, historical artifacts including a two-ton canon and even an impressive to-scale drawing of the Opera House along one wall. There are videos that chart each site’s history, including vox pops of people waiting for friends at Town Hall steps (not just Goths and tourists it turns out!) and along the Opera House forecourt. There’s also a great photo essay including images of the skaters who spend sun dappled afternoons sharing the tricks of their trade by the Pool of Reflection in Hyde Park and the bike couriers who hang out on the steps near the GPO at Martin Place.

But further than eating sandwiches on steps and strolling through tree-lined parks (all excellent and valid activities), Public Sydney washes over one of the most powerful ways in which we have shaped these public spaces. That is, through political and civic engagement. Other than a black-and-white photograph of a rally at Town Hall, this exhibition steers well clear of our political engagement with Sydney’s public spaces. How have we, the public, used these marvelously designed sites for protests, rallies, celebrations and other mass forms of civic engagement? What do these buildings, parks and street corners mean if they haven’t been shaped throughout history by ideological, cultural and humanitarian displays of expression and debate? It is these elements that really inform how a public engages with, experiences and shapes a city. Without them, Sydney is no more than a shiny shell inhabited by a benign and somewhat flaccid public.

Public Sydney’s saving grace in this respect is that it offers you, the public, the opportunity to share your own stories – both in the exhibition and online. What are the hidden public histories layered within these spaces? How do you spend your time in the Pearl of the Pacific? Help set the record straight.

Local zine maker and master of urban detail Vanessa Berry will be running a  parallel blog as part the exhibition.