Frasers is making a highly visible contribution to the creative life of Sydney with the opening of Artists in Residence, a temporary public art project within the Central Park development site. Five artists have been invited to transform the heritage Irving Street Brewery building, within the Central Park construction site, with enormous, witty and vibrant artworks which reflect the heritage, creativity and cultural life of Chippendale. The first artwork, called ‘Local Memory’ by renowned artist Brook Andrew, was installed in April 2011 as is visible to the several hundred thousand people who pass along Broadway every day. ‘Local Memory’ comprises 18 enormous portraits of local residents and brewery workers from the past 70 years, each framed in red neon.

Artists in Residence is a $450,000 public art project, which will be installed in stages over 12 months, and remain in place for up to 3 years. This is one of several projects in Frasers’ $8million public art programme for Central Park, which spans both temporary and permanent artworks. It’s an unprecedented commitment to public art and creative community engagement, boldly conceived by Frasers with art consultants Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford, and sure to transform Sydney’s downtown.

For more on Artists in Residence, visit the Central Park web site.

In September 2008 Frasers Property embarked upon a groundbreaking collaboration with local arts producers Queen Street Studio, transforming otherwise vacant warehouses within the CUB development site in Chippendale into a vibrant visual and performing arts space. Under Queen Street Studio’s management and with funding from Frasers, Arts NSW and the City of Sydney, FraserStudios now offers free 3 month visual arts residencies, performing arts residencies, workshops and subsidised rehearsal space.

The project is one of several innovative, temporary community uses for the Kensington Street precinct, intended to make creative use of otherwise vacant properties before construction of the wider project begins.

FraserStudios won the National Australian Business Arts Foundations Encouragement Award for arts partnerships in 2010.

FraserStudios is open to the public every few months for an Open Studio and exhibition event when locals and the people of Sydney are welcome to drop in to explore this remarkable arts space. For more information visit http://www.queenstreetstudio.com/fraserstudios

This week the Governor of NSW, Her Excellency Marie Bashir, formally opened a garden commemorating the graduate nurses of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, on the former site of the hospital in Camperdown.

The garden is the product of a joyful and often inspiring collaboration between Frasers Property and the Graduate Nurses of the hospital.

The garden is a small amphitheatre surrounded by native gardens, informally planted with native grasses and well-established gum trees, and is part of a local native bush regeneration effort.

The Hospital operated on this site from 1906 to 1995, when the hospital operations relocated to Westmead. The site has since become ‘City Quarter’, a residential community of 1100 homes, innovatively incorporating significant heritage buildings.

The nurses’ commemorative garden now completes extensive heritage works on this site, which also include:

• Research, documentation and archiving of the site’s history.
• Restoration of several delightful murals by Pixie O’Harris (aunt of Rolf Harris).
• The Avenue of Palms, featuring retained 50-year old phoenix palms and sandstone sculptures made from stone quarried on-site.
• Installation of interpretive panels of text and hundreds of images celebrating the history of the hospital, to the foyer of ‘Alexandra’ and within the new garden.

The garden is located on Sterling Circuit, Camperdown, and is open to the public.