Heritage Lanes, 80 Ann Street, Brisbane. Developed by Mirvac. The Level 1 Lobby ceiling screen designed and delivered by Spacesuit&Co.
In the heart of Brisbane sits one of the largest and most technically advanced LED canvases of its kind in the world.
It spans the ceiling of a lobby walked daily by thousands. It operates at a resolution that very few permanent installations on earth can match. And it was built, from the beginning, to hold serious art. This is the story of how that platform came to be, and of the first artist commissioned to make work for it.
A site shaped by exchange
Heritage Lanes occupies a site that has shaped the commercial and cultural life of Brisbane for 120 years. In 1906 the Brisbane Fruit and Produce Exchange opened here, and for more than half a century it was the beating heart of Queensland's food and trade network. Traders, buyers and transport workers moved through it daily, driven by rhythm, exchange and purpose.
Today, developed by Mirvac, Heritage Lanes is one of Brisbane's most celebrated commercial destinations, bringing together world-class architecture, curated dining and retail, and a genuine commitment to cultural programming. At its centre sits the screen, an architectural and cultural gesture from a developer with a track record of taking placemaking seriously.
The canvas
The Level 1 Lobby ceiling screen was designed and delivered by Spacesuit&Co, a studio whose technical capability sits at the front of the global industry. It is not a digital advertising surface that happens to be large. It was built as an artwork platform, with the engineering and resolution to do justice to ambitious creative work.
232 sqm. 16K resolution. 9 million pixels.
Comprising 4,240 LED tiles and experienced daily by approximately 7,000 staff and visitors.
Most digital canvases at this scale exist to sell something. This one exists to show art. That distinction is the entire reason the commission matters.
The 232-square-metre ceiling screen at Heritage Lanes, designed and delivered by Spacesuit&Co.
The curatorial brief
ART AID was engaged by Mirvac to lead the curatorial direction and artist selection for the inaugural commissioned artwork on the screen. Working in close collaboration with Spacesuit&Co, we set out to find an artist with a strong creative vision and a genuine response to the site, its history and its continuing life as a place of activity and exchange.
The commission is shaped by four curatorial themes: exchange, movement, layering and transformation. All an invitation to think about what this place is, what it has been, and what it continues to become.
The brief was also structured to be genuinely open. The call was extended beyond digital practice on the understanding that Spacesuit&Co would work alongside the selected artist to translate and deliver the final work for the screen. Painters, photographers, illustrators and moving-image artists were all welcomed in, on the principle that the strongest idea should win, not the most technically familiar one.
We were not looking for a literal retelling of history. We were looking for work that carries the spirit of this place into the present.
The screen was built as an artwork platform, with the engineering and resolution to hold ambitious creative work.
How the artist was selected
The Expression of Interest drew a strong national field, with particular depth from Brisbane and South East Queensland.
From that field, two artists were invited into a second stage, where each developed and presented a concept for the screen to the selection panel. Running a concept stage costs time and money that a straight portfolio selection does not. It is worth it. A portfolio tells you what an artist has already done. A concept tells you how they think about your site, which is the only thing that actually predicts the outcome.
The panel's decision was unanimous.
The artist
Ross Manning has spent two decades taking technology apart.
He works with the discarded and the broken, fluorescent tubes, ceiling fans, projectors, flatscreens pulled out of service, and rebuilds them into kinetic sculptures and atmospheric installations that make light and sound behave in ways their manufacturers never intended. His long-running Spectra series works directly with additive colour, the red, green and blue model that sits underneath every screen ever made. It is a practice about the machinery of image-making, made by someone who understands that machinery from the inside.
None of that is why he was selected, and I want to be careful about the temptation to say otherwise. A neat fit between an artist's medium and a client's technology is a nice line in a press release and a poor basis for a commission.
What decided it was how he thought about the Fruit Markets.
Ross works from research, and his research takes him into city archives. He came to the site the way a historian would, through the record, before he came to it as an artist. That is the rarest quality in this kind of commission and the hardest to fake. It is also precisely what the four themes were written to invite, and he was the artist who took the invitation literally.
A Brisbane artist, represented by a Brisbane gallery, on a Brisbane site with 120 years of trade behind it. That was not a requirement of the brief. It is what an open process produced.
The inaugural commissioned artwork will be presented on the screen in September 2026.
What sits behind a commission like this
An open brief only works if the structure underneath it is tight.
ART AID's role ran the length of the project. We prepared the art strategy and the curatorial framework, wrote and managed the Expression of Interest, ran the assessment and the two-stage selection, and prepared the communications and press material around the appointment.
We also worked alongside Mirvac's legal team on the Commissioning Agreement and the licensing terms. That work is invisible when it is done properly and expensive when it is not. It covers moral rights, so the artist's authorship is acknowledged and protected for the life of the work. It covers copyright and the scope of licensed use, so that Mirvac has certainty about what it can do with the artwork and the artist has certainty about what it cannot. And it holds the commission to Aboriginal cultural protocols, so that Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property is protected by the terms of the agreement rather than left to good intentions.
A commission of this profile will be looked at closely. Getting the paperwork right at the start is what allows the artwork to be the only thing anyone has to talk about at the end.
Why this commission matters
Australia has very few permanent platforms of this scale genuinely dedicated to art rather than advertising. Heritage Lanes is one of them. That makes this first commission more than a single artwork. It sets the standard for what the screen is asked to hold, and it tells artists something they do not hear often enough, that a developer in this country built infrastructure for serious creative work and then backed it with serious curation.
The artwork is currently in production and launches in September 2026. We will be sharing it as it develops, through to the moment it first fills the ceiling at 80 Ann Street.
Mirvac built the canvas. We are about to find out what it can really do.
If your project holds a digital canvas, a lobby, or a public space that deserves more than the default, this is the work ART AID leads, from curatorial strategy and artist selection through to agreements, licensing and delivery. We would love to talk.
Heritage Lanes is developed by Mirvac. The Level 1 Lobby ceiling screen was designed and delivered by Spacesuit&Co. The inaugural artwork commission is curated by ART AID. Ross Manning is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
ART AID is a public art and cultural consultancy working at the intersection of art, community, and place. To find out more about our work visit art-aid.co or follow @artaidau.
