ReVITALise Rainbow Tunnels Program – Cultural Capital

ReVITALise Rainbow Tunnels Program

The reVITALise project proved the value of public art and placemaking initiatives in improving the quality of public space and increasing feelings of safety for the community. The program demonstrated how trials of creative interventions can support long-term, best-practice placemaking and attachment to place.

Cultural Capital was engaged by Transport for NSW to transform three of the pedestrian tunnels of Sydney’s Inner West as part of the reVITALise Rainbow Tunnels Project for Sydney WorldPride 2023, supported by TfNSW’s Safer Cities Program. We curated and delivered three temporary creative lighting activations for the project.

The reVITALise program is a series of state-wide collaborative and community-driven demonstration projects to trial creative interventions that support long term best-practice placemaking and attachment to place. The reVITALise program began with the transformation of four walkways in Sydney’s Inner West and at Central Station with rainbow lighting during Sydney WorldPride Festival 2023. The Rainbow Tunnels were live throughout Sydney WorldPride 2023 (17 February – 5 March 2023), celebrating Sydney as one of the world’s most progressive and inclusive cities. The project is also part of TfNSW’s Safer Cities Program which supports trials of place-based approaches to improving women, girls and gender diverse peoples’ safety within public spaces.

Cultural Capital engaged local LGBTIQA+ artists to design the tunnel’s creative installations, aiming to celebrate the Inner West community and boost public space experience, sense of pride, and attachment to place. Cultural Capital commissioned HOSSEI at Petersham Pedestrian Tunnel, Kieran Butler at Newtown Pedestrian Tunnel, and Andrew Christie and Alexandra Jonscher at Ashfield Pedestrian Tunnel to develop site-responsive installations to celebrate Pride and boost feelings of safety in each tunnel.

Cultural Capital worked closely with the artists and Transport for NSW to deliver the works. Each of the tunnels had specific heritage constraints that dictated the installations. Cultural Capital successfully navigated these parameters to realise ambitious, creative transformations that increased feelings of safety in each tunnel.

The project received widespread support from community and stakeholders and was subsequently been extended until the end of May 2023. The project was awarded the Best Small Project Award at the 2024 Asia Pacific Place Leaders Awards.

Photography: Kieran Butler and Document Photography

HOSSEI, Stars of Splatters

Splatters and spills normally have undesirable connotations, like acts of misfortune that need to be cleaned up. But to the artist these shapes are like mirrored portals, a window shaped puddle that can lead you somewhere new. The gestured mirrored spills are a visual vocabulary of the free spirit and the beautiful complexity of identities within the LGBTQIA+ community. Sydney WorldPride presents us with an opportunity to look into the mirrored surface. As you walk through the tunnel you are welcomed into the bright lights of the LGBTQIA+ community and you can see yourself amongst the Stars of Splatters.

Kieran Butler, 1'000 Kisses

1,000 Kisses is a poetic meditation on expressions of queer love and intimacy from Trans-Non-Binary-Ace lived experience. Presented as a site-specific, text-based work illuminated by neon LED lighting, the work explores the radical and rebellious joy, love, rage, sadness, and grief that accompanies public displays of queer intimacy. The feeling of cruising, holding hands, hugging, kissing, sharing space, exchanging breath, sweat and spit. The rush of serotonin. Followed by the come down.

Andrew Christie and Alexandra Jonscher, Slipstream

Slipstream is a site-responsive artwork that explores the artists shared experiences of bisexuality featuring an Augmented Reality activated hoarding and creative lighting. It presents a whimsical, sugary, ﬂuid landscape composed from images of the existing art, images and grafﬁti on the Ashfield Pedestrian Tunnel walls. It aims to encourage feelings of play and free expression that welcome you into an alternate world. The landscape is populated by characters that signify different types of queer expression – from hiding and masking, to being out, loud and proud – and were inspired by some of the children’s paintings that are in this tunnel space already. They are playful interpretations of queer bodies that represent the different feelings that arise from coming out.

SlipStream aimed to provide an avenue for audiences unfamiliar with queer culture to build awareness about LGBTQIA+ experiences in a celebratory and interactive environment that pays homage to the space behind this temporary artwork.

Slipstream on Wynscreen

Slipstream by Andrew Christie and Alexandra Jonscher was so successfully received that the artists were invited to adapt the artwork to be displayed on Wynscreen at Wynyard Station for the duration of Sydney WorldPride 2023.

The artists translated the augmented reality animations of each of the Slipstream avatars into a video artwork. The project extended the Revitalise program’s reach, experience and impact, bringing the program to Sydney’s largest screen for digital art at Wynyard Station.

Sydney, NSW

Transport For NSW

Newtown, Petersham and Ashfield Pedestrian Tunnels, Wynscreen

Kieran Butler, HOSSEI, Andrew Christie and Alexandra Jonscher

2023

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