Continuum, Martin Place Station Sydney Metro, Sydney, 2024

Mikala Dwyer’s Continuum artwork is a series of sculptural elements located in both entrances at Martin Place Station.

The south entrance, at Castlereagh Street, hosts a dramatic and colourful glazed ceramic tile wall mural that celebrates the tempo and shape of train travel – the tracks, sleepers, networks, and repetitive train movements can be seen through simple geometric shapes.

These classical shapes have been further developed into six sculptural prisms which are suspended from the entrance ceiling as if exploding from the ceramic mural. Two of these, the crescent and the track, are flat. There is a folded plane and three models in three-dimensional form including the cylinder; the cube; and the sphere. The sculptures are fabricated from bronze, brass, aluminium, steel, and polished stainless steel.

The north entrance, at Hunter Street, hosts the final sculpture in the sequence. It is a Möbius sculpture suspended in the vast station entrance hall, welcoming customers, marking the space, and inspiring wonder.

The Möbius sculpture is made of polished stainless steel and represents an endless, enigmatic form chosen to echo the continual tide of people moving through the transit space below.

The mural and hanging sculptures, interact with each other, the spaces of transit and the travel experience. Their enigmatic geometric forms offer a poetic and abstract representation of space and time as experienced through travel.  They stimulate curiosity and engagement and create memorable meeting points.

Mikala Dwyer has also completed a public artwork nearby which was commissioned by Macquarie Group. This work named Shelter of Hollows, conceptually and formally links to Continuum and is suspended in the public through-site link which leads to the new Macquarie Office building.

Additionally, three artworks from the original Martin Place Station site have been restored and are newly installed in the through-site link. These artworks are P&O Wall Fountain by Tom Bass; Four Continents by Douglas Annand and P&O Wall Mural also by Douglas Annand.

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Artist Statement

Mikala Dwyer based the Martin Place Station artworks on geometries from classical and hypothetical mathematics as well as natural forms, scaling them up in size to create monuments far removed from a mathematician or scientist’s notebook.

The three components of the artwork include a huge, shining steel Möbius sculpture hanging above the grand public foyer; a vibrant and colourful mural celebrating the tempo and shape of train travel and a series of hanging geometric shapes that seem to explode forth from the mural design.

The sculptures are abstract embodiments of space and time – potential meeting places that offer an unfolding encounter that parallels the experience of travel. Together they are intended to be experienced like a journey that shapes in the mind, as a succession of unfolding encounters that parallel the experience of travel.

The artworks are intended to create moments of wonderment for commuters, with incomprehensible charismatic forms that stimulate curiosity and engagement to punctuate the daily commute and create memorable meeting points.

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Text courtesy of Transport for New South Wales, Photographs of Castelreagh Street entrance courtesy Sydney Metro.