Elliott Routledge, ‘Ti Tree Walk’ (2024), Melbourne Quarter. Photography by Nicole Reed. Public art consultancy and curatorial direction by ART AID.
Melbourne Quarter is one of the city's largest urban regeneration projects.
A 2.5 hectare Lendlease precinct opposite Southern Cross Station, bounded by Collins and Flinders Streets, with more than half its ground given over to public open space. Its buildings were shaped by some of Australia's most significant architectural practices, Denton Corker Marshall, Woods Bagot, Fender Katsalidis, and Wardle, with urban design by Aspect Oculus.
Threading through the precinct is Ti Tree Walk, a laneway whose name reaches deep into the site's layered history. Long before settlement, this ground was a meeting place for the Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Later it became Batman's Hill, where the first Melbourne Cricket Club match was played with stumps and bails cut from locally grown ti-tree. The name carries all of it.
ART AID was engaged by Lendlease as public art consultant for Ti Tree Walk, leading the project from brief development through artist selection, curatorial direction, and delivery.
Ti Tree Walk, Melbourne Quarter. Photography by Nicole Reed.
The brief
Great commissions begin with the site, and this one asked a specific question. How do you bring warmth, colour, and cultural depth to a new laneway, across the glass of its tenancies, in a way that works by day and transforms by night? ART AID developed a site-specific brief that set the conceptual and material parameters for the work, drawing on the layered histories held in the walk's name and the precinct's ambition for its public spaces.
Artist selection
Through a curated selection process, ART AID invited Sydney artist Elliott Routledge to respond. Routledge is recognised for bold, abstracted forms and a confident command of colour at architectural scale, and his response engaged directly with the walk's history and the life of the precinct around it. His concept was developed under ART AID's curatorial direction, with Eddie Zammit engaged as collaborative art director.
The artwork
Elliott Routledge, ‘Ti Tree Walk’ (2024). Photography by Nicole Reed.
Ti Tree Walk is a digital vinyl artwork applied across the tenancy windows that line the laneway, wrapping the walk in a single continuous work. The material thinking is where the commission comes alive. ART AID explored the design possibilities of a premium clear vinyl, and the artist was briefed to build areas of transparent colour into the composition. By day the work reads as bold pattern and form. By night, light from within the tenancies passes through those transparent passages, and the artwork glows warm from the inside. The laneway becomes a different experience after dark, lit by the work itself.
Delivery
ART AID managed the delivery of the commission end to end, holding the curatorial vision, the art direction, and the production program through to installation in 2024. The completed work was documented by photographer Nicole Reed, whose images capture the work within the architecture of the precinct.
Ti Tree Walk wraps the tenancies of the laneway in a single continuous work. Photography by Nicole Reed.
With thanks to Elliott Routledge, whose response gave Ti Tree Walk an identity of its own. To Eddie Zammit for his collaborative art direction. To Nicole Reed for the photography. And to Lendlease for the trust to shape the cultural character of one of Melbourne's defining new precincts.
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.
