Metro South from Nicholas Building 2018

Summary

Jill Anderson is represented by the Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, located in the historic Nicholas Building, on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane. The building overlooks not only the city’s main bitumen artery, but also the Town Hall station site of the Victorian government’s Metro Tunnel project. A complex piece of infrastructure comprising five new stations and many kilometres of underground tracks, the Metro Tunnel project builds on the existing commuter rail system to meet the city’s ever-expanding public transport needs.

In March 2019, Anderson exhibited a suite of detailed pencil drawings made the previous year, documenting the work at the Town Hall site. Freezing a moment in time, these drawings cast the site as a wound in the urban fabric – a body undergoing graphic surgical reconstruction. This drawing and two others were purchased for the city collection at the time of the exhibition, titled ‘Site Work’, at which gallery-goers could look out the window to view in real-time the project’s progress. The bird’s-eye perspective of this drawing reveals the high-vis team responsible for dismantling and reconstructing this section of the urban building site. The three works form a conversation of sorts with an earlier drawing by Anderson held in collection that shows nine views of central Melbourne from the same building before the tunnel works began. You can find this composite drawing by searching this website using the artist’s name.