Looking through Barangaroo: Sabine Hornig’s ‘Through Site Link’ project

Sabine Hornig, Shadows, computer rendering; image courtesy Sabine Hornig, Berlin, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; © Sabine Hornig and VG-Bild Kunst, Bonn 2017

The scale and pace of the Barangaroo development in Sydney’s CBD – in particular the three colossal International Towers hovering on the western Harbour foreshore – have mystified and disorientated many Sydneysiders in recent years. A sense of transparency and pause for reflection will now come courtesy of the Berlin-based artist and photographer Sabine Hornig.

The German artist’s vision for a diaphanous 170-metre glass walkway connecting the three towers overlaid with images of native flora and fauna was chosen by developer Lendlease’s Art Advisory Panel – including Chair Simon Mordant and Curatorial Advisor Barbara Flynn – from around 20 international entries; Shadows is set to be unveiled by the end of 2018.

For New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2003, Hornig installed four glass panels imprinted with near-lifesize abandoned Berlin shopfronts, in which audiences saw themselves inhabiting a different temporal reality. For Barangaroo South, the artist hopes to take Sydneysiders back to nature – ‘to take stock of reality that has been there always before,’ Hornig has said.

Michael Fitzgerald, Sydney