Artist, ICC Sydney Team Members Guided by Dalmarri Artists. Title, Connections 2023. Connections is an artwork that reflects ICC Sydney’s core values and how we all relate to each other, our team, clients, partners, delegates, patrons, and the community around us. On Thursday 1st of June 2023 during National Reconciliation Week, over 80 ICC Sydney team members collaborated to create this artwork under the guidance of Dalmarri owners and artists Jason Douglas and Trevor Eastwood. Dalmarri is an Aboriginal owned business that specialises in Indigenous engagement, learning and connection. In collaboration with Dalmarri to create the artwork, the team took inspiration from the local topography and colour palette of the Tumbulong, the land and Gomorrah, the waterways of what is today known as Darling Harbour. You can see this inspiration play out in the blues that reflect the sparkling waters, greens that represent native flora and reds which reflect both the earth and the urban fabric around us. Connections features various symbols utilised for tens of thousands of years within First Nation communities to communicate key features of daily life such as campfires, trails, resources like emu eggs and the people that connect to the land and each other. The artwork represents our connection to country, our connection to each other, and everyone who is part of our extraordinary community.

Artist, Jeffrey Samuels, title, Gadigal Acknowledgement Respect, 2018. Jeffrey Samuels is an Australian Aboriginal contemporary artist. He was a founding co-member of Bumali Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in 1987. ICC Sydney first met Samuels in early 2018 at the Bumali Gallery, where he was commissioned to create an artwork to signify to ICC Sydney’s visitors that they are on Gadigal land. The artwork tells the story of how Australia’s First Nations people are connected to Sydney Harbour. It depicts various flora, shells and animals of significance around the harbour foreshore, including the whale, a totem of the Gadigal clan. As an iconic destination which stands and operates on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, where people have gathered to meet, trade and hold ceremonies for many tens of thousands of years. ICC Sydney embraces its unique opportunity to foster and promote reconciliation.

Artist, Lloyd Rees, title, France, a passing vision, 1987. France, a passing vision is one of the last works created by Lloyd Rees and was painted as a response to his final visit to France in 1987. This luminous work conveys an ethereal view of landscape as memory and spirit, as opposed to a literal representation of place. Looming shapes, suggestions of mountains and buildings shimmer in an obsolescence haze. Difficult to discern, like a dream half remembered, they seem to be composed of light rather than solid matter. The vision is presented with a whiteness of light that is almost blinding, as if the landscape is to be sensed rather than to be seen. In his later life, Rees’s own impaired vision caused him to draw on his memory and his superb drafting skills to paint and to see with an inner eye. Forms are not fixed in this painting and seem to float with the towering mountains leading up and out of the frame and a river flowing through the work, suggesting notions of passing through and a journey. Painted in glowing pastels of yellow, pink and celestial blue, this mystical meditative work invites quiet contemplation.

Artist Michael Johnson, titled Ellamatta, 1987. Michael Johnson painted this work, titled Ellamatta, as a commission for the Darling Harbour collection. Johnson works in layers, using brushes, palette knives, and squeezing directly from the tube like toothpaste, creating repeated rhythms and generous pictorial fields of colour. Whilst abstract, his paintings have divisions which suggest spatial effects, such as a dark-coloured earthy foreground, a mid-ground of water with its movements and flickering reflections of light on the water, and a possible horizon line at the top with a lighter atmosphere above that. Johnson remains an abstract painter with unswerving conviction.

Artist Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, title, Ngamurangya, 1986. Ngamurangya takes its title from a site in Australia’s Central Desert where this dreaming or creation story is located. Comments made by the artist include that other sites depicted in this painting are Koonjari and Namaru. The design components include possum footprints depicted by the small rectangular shapes on each side of the sinuous lines representing tail tracks running between secret sites shown as these concentric circles. There are also two men in this painting represented by the U shapes at the top and the bottom centre. The overall geometric shape of this painting is given by the five rows of five roundels. The background is composed of distinct parallel lines of red, white and yellow dots running in different directions. The effect is compelling for it gives the painting both depth and movement, with suggestions of sand dunes continually reshaped by the wind. This painting may be seen as a map, not topographical representations of the current landscape, but rather schematic summaries of the key sites, beings and events which created the landscape in the Dreamtime, and continue to give it meaning for the tribal descendants who still belong to that country.

Artist Kevin Connor, title, Pyrmont and Beyond, 1985. This painting, as titled Pyrmont and Beyond, depicts the suburb of Pyrmont prior to Darling Harbour’s redevelopment. The old Pyrmont represented in this painting is of a working class inner city Sydney, a jumble of markets, wharves and warehouses. Rust red buildings worn with work, sweat, grime and age suggest the presence of working lives and devoid of people. There is a pulsating force in this painting with an upward heaving of earth and water beneath a bustling highway. There is suggestion of danger and unrest by the frenetic brushwork and the crowded colours of the sky. Up-thrusting waves are depicted as jagged slashes of dirty colour in a scene that is not beautiful, but instead full of emotion. Pyrmont and Beyond conveys a sense of urgent energy and an ominous sense of change in its shifting forms. What we see here through Connor’s eyes is a city that is not restful, but one distressed and edgy.

Artist Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, title Possum Dreaming, 1986. Possum Dreaming tells the story of possum ancestors and their travels in the dream time, the time of creation. The sinuous lines represent the marks of possums tails dragging in the sand. The small comb shapes depict the possums footprints with the direction of the toes revealing that the tracks all emerge from the edges of the painting and travel towards the centre. The three main sets of concentric circles are sites where secret events occurred in the Dreamtime and where ceremonies have been held for thousands of years to celebrate those events. The smaller circles are campsites, each with four men, possum ancestors, depicting, using classic desert iconography by the U-shapes, or men sitting on the ground with legs folded as viewed from above design elements of this contemporary acrylic painting would be identical to those in the myriad of ephemeral sand paintings which the artist’s father and numerous ancestors before him would have used to tell and retell the possum dreaming to successive generations.

Artist Charlie Tjapangati, title, Tjiparritjarra, 1986. Tjiparritjarra is based on a site by that name in central Australia, just west of Alice Springs. The dreaming portrayed in this painting is one of the most traditional and widely told dreamtime stories from the Western Desert, namely the Tengari cycle. Somewhat comparable to the gods of Greek mythology, the Tengari are a group of mythical ancestors who travel throughout the world conducting secret rituals, performing heroic deeds and creating the landscape in the process. Their travels are linked with particular sites for which the different tribal artists have inherited storytelling. This work is derived from traditional sand paintings depicting the travels of the Tingari between sites represented by the roundels of white dot concentric circles. The roundels are joined by single straight lines of white dots except for the bottom centre where there are two dual tracks with specific ritual meaning. The uninitiated just are not allowed to know. Overall, the painting displays a unique blend of traditional and contemporary artistic styles.

Artist Sandra Leveson, titled Notes on Various Pasts, 1987. This commissioned painting by Sandra Leveson, titled Notes on Various Pasts, exudes a strong sense of the Australian landscape, but not of a particular place. This imaginary landscape is implied through the colours and textures evoking the harsh beauty of a barren expanse, scarred, dry creek beds, charred stumps and weathered rock faces. There are three long cross-sections suggesting horizons with vast empty spaces, and at the same time random calligraphic jottings appear to sit on a stretched skin-like surface, possibly as an aerial perspective. There is a sense not of one view, but of various dimensions creating an ambiguity within the work.

Artist Peter Laverty, titled Early Light Kakadu 2002. This very popular work by Peter Laverty, titled Early Light Kakadu, is a painting of a site in Australia’s World Heritage listed National Park, east of Darwin. There are striking vistas of wetlands marked by meandering streams threaded with densely interlaced water lilies.

Artist Ronnie Tjampitjina, title Tarrkunya 2001. Tarrkunya alludes to a site near Wimpaku, Mount Webb, west of Alice Springs, over the border of Western Australia. This painting tells the story of the Tingari ancestors in the dream time, time of creation, but at different sites and performing different deeds. According to the artist, the story retold in this painting is part of the Maliyara, or high school ceremonies of tribal initiation for men. This painting uses concentric boxes of lines to depict sacred and secret sites, giving a different and more contemporary artistic effect. There is great strength in the relatively simple composition of Tarrkunya. The two rows of ochre coloured forms are dominant against the three rows of red forms, suggesting movement of the travelling tingari. But the secret narrative coded within the work does not necessarily follow the horizontal chronology a non-Indigenous mind might assume. Uninitiated are not entitled to know and would not be capable of understanding the details of this story. Extended viewing of the painting evokes the impression of waves of heat shimmering on the desert floor. The shimmer effect is enhanced in the parts of the painting where the lines are executed with kind of saw-toothed rather than straight edges. The right angles within the rectangular forms align visually to create pulsating diagonals and an optical illusion which causes triangular and diamond-shaped surfaces to emerge in 3D. The whole painting appears animated with mythical history, but in the midst of all the movement, the elongated blank spaces scattered across the painting provide a lovely contrasting and enigmatic stillness.

Artist Gloria Petyarre, title Leaves on the Ground, 2001. Leaves on the Ground is an excellent example of one of the major themes in Gloria Petyarre’s work, namely wild flowers, grasses and leaves, all painted using short, thick to thin brushstrokes. Her other major themes are ceremonial body paint designs and the mountain devil lizard, or the dreaming, that is the creation story, typically comprising patterns of parallel lines, often framed dots. As with much Aboriginal art, Petyarre’s work simultaneously displays a high level of abstraction and simple iconography representing links to the land. The inspiration for Leaves on the Ground is exactly that, fallen leaves swept by the wind across the red earth of the artist’s country in Australia’s central desert region. The first stage of abstraction occurs with the use of simple but dramatic white on black paint. The shape of the leaves is further abstracted with stylised brushstrokes. Also, the pattern on the ground are symbolically represented to give geometric symmetry coupled with random variation. Finally, across the three panels, further variation is introduced in the wind-inspired movement effects created by the elongation and swirling of the leaves sustained viewing of the work induces almost an optical illusion which makes the pulsating movement three-dimensional.

Artist, Salvatore Zofrea, title, Psalm 19, 987. Psalm 19 is one in a series of paintings reinterpreting biblical Psalms and relating them to contemporary experience. Zofrea’s work is influenced by the visual and cultural traditions of his native Italy, but also expresses a deep concern with spirituality and the nature of existence. Psalm 19 depicts a group of performers and although the figures are presented in a rather stiff formal arrangement, they convey an intensity of feeling and suggest family, relationships and separation. Performers are frequently wanderers journeying from one location to another. This movement suggests the artists and others’ experience of migration and associated gain and loss. The young girl gazes out of the painting with a sad, distant expression, while the youth opposite stares directly at the viewer. One hand is clutched to his heart conveying a sense of absence and longing, while the other hand rests on a trumpet. Zofrea infuses his work with a personal symbolism, and in the Psalm series the image of a trumpet is used repeatedly to signify change, while the performers are situated amongst hoops, hurdles and bar. A metaphor for the trials of life.

Artist, Tim Storrier, title, Point to Point, 1988. Point to Point is characteristic of a number of works by Tim Storrier in which fire, earth, water and air are featured within vast elemental Australian landscapes. In this mixed media work, a blazing rope stretches across a dark empty landscape, its curving form contrasting with the stark straight line of the horizon. Beyond this, the ground is a light with secondary blazes that scatter sparks into a smoke-filled night sky. While physically real, the rope has an ambiguous quality as it appears both connected to the earth and suspended in the air, forming a kind of symbolic barrier. It emerges from the dark, umber background as a white, hot, burning light. At mists this luminous energy, it is almost possible to hear the fires crackling and to smell the smoke haze, with the work conveying a sense of beauty and destruction entwined. In the Australian bush, fire is an element of both annihilation and renewal, reflecting cycles of life. Storrier has created a number of works encompassing this theme, which have been described as suggesting, quote, a linear progression through time and space, symbolic of the journey, unquote. Created in wide format, with overarching sky and pinpoint stars, point to point has a monumental quality, its vastness almost suggesting the curve of the Earth. In this immense environment, human presence, which is absent but implied, seems infinitely small.

Artist Geoffrey Proud, title January 1986. January is an exuberant work that evokes the colour, light and life of a Sydney summer. It depicts a celebratory image of Sydney as a subtropical city where sailboats skid across the harbour and fruiting palms thrust their fronds towards a lollipop pink sky. January is generally the time for long… hot summer holidays when Australians lap up their leisure time. This painting evokes a sense of freedom and hedonistic pleasure that marks these times. There is a vitality and energy in the work which is constructed primarily through colour and also owes a stylistic debt to the Fauves such as Matisse and Duran. Like them, Proud has used colour in an arbitrary or non-literal way. The aqua blue harbour is daubed with golden yellow pinks and peaches, while the multicoloured palm froms painted in bold strokes of salmon, mauve and jade are unbounded by any outline at all. Diagonal lines of the leaves create a lively movement as they radiate out in all directions, bursting out of the frame. At the same time, they can also be viewed as abstract arrangements of shape and colour, enjoyable simply as juxtapositions of vibrant contrasting hues. Proud’s work has a naive quality with the luscious colours infusing it with a sense of beauty and absolute delight.

Artist Ken Done, titled Postcard from Sydney 2002. This popular work, titled Postcard from Sydney by the well-known artist Ken Done, reflects the incorporation of Done’s design elements and a repertoire of well-known Sydney icons and motifs in his paintings. He has long favoured gestural brushworks and bright colours for depicting Sydney symbols, and they’re familiar to most Australians, whilst they also appeal to foreign tourists who are familiar with his successful clothing design and his homewares.

Artist Brett Whiteley, titled Sydney Harbour to the Spirit of Bill W, 1987. Brett Whiteley is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists. This large work commissioned for the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre in 1987 has it all. Titled Sydney Harbour to the Spirit of Bill W, it presents us with a panoramic view of Sydney Harbour and is one of many works by Brett Whiteley exploring the subject matter seen and imagined from his lavender bay studio. Sun-worshipping bathers are draped on the shoreline whilst white birds soar through the skies, mirroring the billowing sails of the boats below. The painting displays recurrent motifs in Whiteley’s work, as well as demonstrating through colour, composition and space the influences of Henri Matisse. Sydney Harbour is infused with vitality and light, but it is also dominated by empty expanses of blue that suggest qualities of the harbour’s waters. Dark blue greens suggest fathomless depths. Rich ultramarines contrast with the vibrant orange of the fruiting palm, while areas of aquamarine portray the light-filled shadows.

Artist Frank Hodgkinson, title Spirit of Sydney (City to Surf), 1998. This mural by Frank Hodgkinson, titled Spirit of Sydney (City to Surf), was commissioned for the Western Hotel in Martin Place in Sydney in 1998 and was gifted to the State of New South Wales in 2023 and now wonderfully displayed here at the International Convention Centre Sydney. The mural consists of 18 panels and is three metres high and 32 metres wide and is the largest work in the ICC Sydney collection. Frank Hodgkinson revered the artists Henry Matisse and Pablo Picasso and this is evident in this work. The title Spirit of Sydney (City to Surf), is an allegory, a story, which celebrates the famous annual fun run, the City to Surf, with the story unfolding from the left to the right. Hodgkinson takes us on a journey, starting at the firing gun on William Street in the city, passing over the pedestrian crossing and on to and past some of Sydney’s greatest landmarks. We finish heroically at Bondi Beach with the surf, fiery sun and Sydney’s quintessential blue. The work was completed at time that Sydney was enjoying the excitement of having won the Olympic Games 2000 and displays the optimism, energy and vitality of the newfound spirit of Whilst the mural was not commissioned for ICC Sydney, it is a perfect addition for the collection, which celebrates Sydney and its landmarks.

Artist John Olsen, title Big Sun and the Sydney Summer, 1987. Big Sun and the Sydney Summer is a commissioned work for Darling Harbour Convention Centre in 1987. John Olsen remains one of Australia’s greatest contemporary artists. A celebratory tour de force with a throbbing central core, a pulsating sun exploding with tendrils of life. From this thermal nucleus, sinuous red lines burst out in multiple directions reaching to the edges of the canvas and beyond. In its outpouring of warmth and life, the painting evokes the exuberance and energy of Sydney summer. Big Sun and the Sydney summer is typical of Olsen’s work, demonstrating his mastery of line and colour, his animation of the painted surface and his ability to infuse an abstract work full of joy and emotion.

Artist Colin Lanceley, titled Port, 1988. This work by Colin Lanceley, titled Port, presents the harbour as a former bustling centre of shipping activity where goods were unloaded and long finger wharfs and container terminals like we see in Botany Bay today. Lanceley is renowned for his assemblage works where found objects are repurposed and secured to the painted canvas surface. Metal posts slabs of rings and rope are painted in industrial oranges and greys, the colours of rust, grime and peeling paint. There is a wonderful chaos of textures and shapes conveying almost a naive, childlike quality.

Artist Frank Hodgkinson, title Night Loading Darling Harbour, 1987. Night Loading Darling Harbour is an abstract work evoking the energy, sound and vibrancy of frenetic nightly waterfront activity. The painting is divided into three unequal parts. The upper section is dominated by dark violet blues and is the calmest portion of the work, echoing a spacious night sky. The lower sections of the work are fused with luminous aqua and jade greens and explode with a fiery light. Energy is conveyed by radiant curved lines which spill and pour out of the painting while architectural frameworks in the foreground suggest the new buildings of the redeveloped Darling Harbour site.

Artist Charles Blackman, title Escape by Moonlight, 1987. This commissioned large canvas is by one of Australia’s most famous modern artists, Charles Blackman. He’s known for his dream state paintings. The title of this work, Escape by Moonlight, is typical of his dreamlike paintings, which presents us with iconic landmarks of Sydney Harbour and all at night time pairs of animals ascending from Taronga Zoo, spiralling upwards towards Noah’s Ark, illuminated by a radiant moon. A downcast gaze of a young girl trapped in the Sydney Harbour Bridge replaces the laughing lunar park face. A celestial sun watches over the girl who turns her forlorn face towards a bunch of blood-red roses. These burn fiery red on a table of blackness, suggesting both love and loss. In this painting, you will see recurrent themes from Blackman’s painting including the butterfly, cat, schoolgirl and Alice figure. While this mysterious scene unfolds, everyday life continues as ferries glide across the waters and passes by Lounge on the Shore, observing the moment of change and existing simultaneously in a contemporary and imaginary space.

Artist John Firth-Smith, title Dawn Tide, 1988. Dawn Tide is a commissioned work by John Firth-Smith and is a monumentally sized abstract reflecting elements in Firth-Smith’s work such as sailing, movement of water and the harbour. There is a juxtaposition of elements within the work. The central split hemispheres of black and white are separate and yet connected by the elongated ellipses alluding to a yin-yang balance of opposing forces evoking the continuous rhythm of tide and time, day and night. This sophisticated work presents a meditation on cycle, flow, and change that is tied at dawn.

Artist Ann Thomson, title Ebb Tide 1988. Ebb Tide is an imaginative and evocative depiction of Sydney Harbour. A dark, dreamlike scene in which shipping vessels seem to be metamorphosing into fantastic creatures gushing water and waving snaking arms. The ebb tide is a period of transition as boats move in and out and water recedes dispersing into darkness. Thomson suggests this through her expressionist imagery which dissolves into abstraction while still maintaining some visible connections to the environment. The artist has stated of her work that, reality lies beneath the surface, but how deep it is not easy to grasp, unquote. This is reinforced by Thomson’s thick textural paintwork which creates a rich tactile surface. Curling around the edges of the work, the sinuous line of the harbour foreshore encloses a restless expanse of water animated by energetic brushstrokes. The cool deep blues of the harbour contrast with the warm red oxides of the boats that ply its surface. In this work, the harbour is alive with activity, crowded with tankers spewing ballast, tugs with wild protuberances, and a tall ship with creamy white sails all emerging from the darkness.

Artist Robert Woodward, title Tidal Cascades, 1988. This public artwork by Robert Woodward titled Tidal Cascades is a double helix shaped water animated construction set into the stone pavement on the Western Plaza of Darling Harbour. When realised, this was one of the most complex works of Woodward’s career. He said, quote, the fountain is a spiral water feature in an unassuming saucer-shaped depression in the bare harbourside concourse, a shape cleanly cut as if by an auger into the pavement, ten spiralling paths for water and two for people, a mesmerising show of shallow rippling water.” Water cascades over 3,000 granite weirstones.

Artist Danny Mellor, Title Entelekheia 2016. This commissioned artwork by Danny Melaw, an Australian artist of Indigenous heritage, are photographic images of plant species found around the Darling Harbour Precinct, which have been photo-etched into concrete and seen on the extensive facade of ICC Sydney. The images were then photo-etched into the concrete and you can see as the sun rakes across the walls these fugitive images of the original canopy, once familiar to Indigenous people. They appear and disappear as the light changes.

Artist Larissa Smagarinsky, titled Dance of Love, 1988. Dance of Love by Larissa Smagarinsky was installed in the Darling Harbour public domain in 2006. Her work ranges from figurative sculpture to abstract forms, often reminiscent of early 20th century European sculpture.

Artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso, titled Sandstone Pollen 2016. This public artwork by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, titled Sandstone Pollen, consists of 11 sandstone sculptures and one white onyx sculpture. The artist was inspired by the archaeological repost on Darling Harbour that had identified microscopic grains of pollen as being either original pollen to the area or later deposited during loading of ships at the port. Nine different pollen species are represented in the work. The artist worked with experts across various scientific fields and had grains enlarged with a computer program written to generate 3D images which robots then carved into stone and then hand-finished.

Artist Michael Snape. Title Diver, 1987. Michael Snape was trained as a sculptor in Sydney at the East Sydney Technical College. Snape’s early works focused on abstract welded steel sculptures, but later he found inspiration from a figurative sculptor Auguste Rodin. Diver further explores figurative sculpture and his engagement with Picasso. The painted cutout steel figure of the diver with enlarged hands, splayed legs and plunging torso anchored by wave-like supporting struts carries a direct response to Sydney’s foreshores and ocean beaches.

Artist Janet Laurence, title Habitat 2016. This work by Janet Laurence is a 16 channel soundscape of Indigenous bird calls. The varying calls resonate a sonic version of a former Senuis environment, now largely unfortunately banished from the waters, gullies and bush it once defined through Birdsong. The work creates a texture of sound almost lost other than to Aboriginal collective memory. There are 16 birds represented in this sound installation.

Artist Peter D. Cole, title Arrival 1988. This work by Peter D. Cole titled Arrival reflects a fundamental change that occurred during the 1980s when he refined his melding of two seemingly incompatible fields of interest, the casual, organic and often untidy forms of nature and the inorganic studio crafted components of a final work. In Arrival, some of the natural forms as well as the geometric sphere are cast in bronze signifying permanency. Meanwhile, marine epoxy paint, a familiar finish in the world of machines is applied to the cone in another branch-like form. The whole work brought to a highly tuned state of completion.

Artist Ken Unsworth, title Equation 1989. This artwork by Ken Unsworth, title Equation, displays the kind of unexpected juxtaposition of elements that mark much of Unsworth’s work. The physical components of Equation combine three solid sandstone cubes and four circular bronze rings. Three of the bronze rings pass through the adjoining faces of the two stones, forming like a circuit of connections. The fourth ring links only one stone and the perimeter space, forming an open-ended extension of that arrangement. This infinite extensibility is metaphorical only. The physical finiteness of the sculpture closes with the last bronze ring resting on the ground, as if part of an unfinished proposition, or forming the coda to a mathematical exercise.

Artist, Ryōji Ikeda, title, DataScape 2016. In 2014, the Japanese artist, Ryōji Ikeda, was selected for the sole major commission that was to be integrated into the design of the new Darling Harbour’s ICC Sydney’s reconstructed public domain. It’s a continuous screen, 96 metres long and four metres high, and plays two different programmed videos. During the day, the full DNA sequence of the human genome streams, and at night a vast star map of the universe is scrolled across the screen.

Artist Ingrid Skirka, titled Memory Lines 2004. This artwork by Ingrid Skirka, titled Memory Lines, is a memorial and was installed in Darling Harbour’s public domain more than a decade after the original collection was assembled. It’s sponsored by WorkCover NSW and Unions NSW and the work celebrates the lives of workers who died or whose lives have been cut short in the pursuit of earning a living.