Bike Art Trail

Hutt Street is a busy urban place in Adelaide that has a strong café, art and design culture. As soon as Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa saw the site they knew it needed some bold graphics. Somewhere that was a special place to lock your bike but also somewhere that could hold its own against the backdrop of the local TAB and the two nearby banks. 

Deb and Christine took their inspiration from the roads, airports, helipads and line markers of the world. They played with the predictable seriousness and colour tone that line marking usually delivers and added a few tertiary colours and a ‘you are here’ sign that reassures the person sitting on the bench close by of where they are.

Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa wanted their bike rack/artwork to be a gentle reminder:

• that someone has been here before
• that time will change your perspective
• that we are inexorably linked to the land and the sky.

They have installed two differently shaped bike racks. Each bike rack has a shadow of a bike sandblasted into the ground below it, as if the bike is still there. Drawn from actual shadows, the shadow images indicate different times of the day; one long shadow for early morning and the shortened shadow for early afternoon.

Rundle Street is fast becoming a high street fashion shopping destination and a pair of interlinked coat hangers not only acknowledges, but celebrates this. 

Shaping the hooks of the hangers into heads is intended to give them character and pay homage to Joff and Razak of Miss Gladys Sym Choon, recognised pioneers of fashion and of Rundle Street Culture.

The Botanic Garden is a place that celebrates plants. Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa wanted to make a bike rack using plant materials, however, that wouldn’t last very long so they opted for the next best thing: a bike rack made from bronze, cast directly from a tree branch. 

When they visited the site and saw the row of existing standard bike racks, they decided to model the branch rack similar in form to the standard racks so that the artwork blend in and come as a surprise at the end of the bike rack line.

This artwork was inspired by animal themes and connects with the diversity of animals within the zoo. Evoking childhood memories, it invites the user or passerby to ponder the relationship between ourselves and other animals. Playing with scale and colour, capturing the essence of the richness in diversity, the satin surface finish and smooth form is designed to invite touch, exploration and connection.

The work subtly embraces the cycling narrative with it spacing and orientation to the existing brightly coloured rack. Within the entry plaza the form and colour is conceived to integrate and complement the landscaping and forms. In contrast to the bright yellow bike racks within the space, the circular shapes seek to connect with bicycles wheels and animal diversity.

The artwork seeks to connect with the contemporary cafe and food culture and as a free standing element. 

The Melbourne Street precinct is a vibrant blend of retail, residential and business. The pavements bustle and the area is well known as a popular eating place offering a range of restaurants. The artwork seeks to affirm the cafe scene, to entertain and provoke enquiry and is seen to be a statement to the independence and identity of Melbourne Street as a destination within the broader context of Adelaide.

The current resurgence of the animal print trend is captured in ‘Mrs. Robinson’. Leopard prints are used as the basis to modify standard stainless steel bike racks, transforming our impoverished urban realm with the most exotic of animal simulations.

The location and the numerous ‘heads on plinths’ that line North Terrace generated the concept for this work. ‘Brown Paper Bag‘ is a contemporary and quirky take on ‘the establishment of success’. 

Michelle Nikou considered shyness, anonymity and the feeling of not wanting to be seen – or perhaps even negating the pressure to be great when creating this work. Whilst the work does have a serious undercurrent it is also, perhaps foremost, humorous and playful. There is something most charming about little people who play with the anonymity of putting a brown paper bag over their heads–moving in circles and bumping into things.

This work of Michelle Nikou will mirror what exists beside it but perform a ‘softening of the rules’. It was not possible to construct a conceptually difficult work in such a fast paced zone, however, in the most gentle of ways Michelle hopes to shift perception with ambience of material and humour. 

Bronze always says ART and in this way the material is able to insert itself into a ‘dictated space’: changing the paradigm and presenting no rules. From the experience of having parked in the spaces just near this zone, Michelle realised they require some inspection to avoid a fine. Adding to the mix of that inspection is a blank – a blank parking pole and signs made from traditional artists’ materials, it has no instruction on it and therefore remains a space to project oneself on to, appreciable in today,s graphically overloaded world.