Earth v Sky, City of Sydney public art project

Twilight in Sydney is newly alive with colour, through a public art project that’s graceful, bewitching, colourful, and sustainable to boot.

The City of Sydney has unveiled a new artwork in Bicentennial Park, a dynamic and shifting light piece by artist Allan Giddy. Using technology that continuously samples the colour of the sky
(a world-first piece of equipment, apparently), the work projects a spectrum of colours onto two beautiful Moreton Bay fig trees by the water. Enchantingly, the colours shift according to the sunset, dyeing the trees with a vivid wash of ‘opposite twilight' — the inverse of the sky's sample colour.

Fittingly for a public project and for an artist keen on alternative energy systems, the installation is powered by the City of Sydney’s first wind turbine — as Giddy says, ‘as the earth seeks to balance the sky through colour opposition, the turbine balances the electricity used to create it.’ (See more of Giddy's artist statement, info, and attributions on the Council website, here.)

Take a look by visiting Bicentennial Park at the end of Glebe Point Road. Be there at sunset — the work fades into the black sky 1 hour and 15 minutes after the sun begins to die away.