'The Travellers' Public Art Project
City of Melbourne, Design and Culture Division
2006
PMAA Results: State Category Winner
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‘The Travellers’ is a major new public artwork by Lebanese artist Nadim Karam and Atelier Hapsitus, installed in the Sandridge Bridge precinct by the Yarra. This series of complex 7.5m high stainless steel sculptures reflect themes of immigration and journey, which are of particular significance to the former rail bridge. Many of Melbourne’s immigrants crossed this bridge soon after disembarking at Port Melbourne. In the artist’s words:
The concept behind The Travellers was the conviction that the Sandridge Bridge, an important relic of the industrial age, should have its aesthetic and historic qualities preserved and enhanced. The ten large sculptures are a metaphorical re-creation of the immigrants who travelled on the train from the port for more than a century.
The bridge, now the setting for the ‘The Travellers’ procession, has become much more than converted railway infrastructure. Re-integrated into the fabric of the city, the bridge now plays a major cultural and social role.
The artist first submitted his concept in 2001, in an Expression of Interest process to redevelop the disused bridge. His non-commercial concept would enhance Melbourne’s cultural life: large-scale sculptures of multicultural inspiration, moving on rails along the bridge, recalling the waves of immigrants to the city.
In 2005 the State Government provided a $3m grant to the City of Melbourne for the project, for completion before the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The project commenced in April 2006, and was publicly launched 11 months later, on 12 March 2006.
Technically and aesthetically complex, the project needed to balance artistic aesthetics and immigrant and Indigenous sensitivities, with a tight budget and even tighter deadlines. New engineering and stainless-steel fabrication processes were developed during the project, to ensure that the large 7.5 metre high sculptures were structurally sound and buildable, yet true to the artist’s vision of the archaic procession and the migration narrative.
Email the Support Office or call (02) 8288 8700 for media and project enquiries.
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