Aurora Alum designs keystone artwork for Atlassian Central

Brook Andrew is a Wiradjuri/Ngunnawal artist and 2017 Charlie Perkins Scholarship alum. Source: Brook Andrew

Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal artist and 2017 Charlie Perkins Scholarship alum Brook Andrew is creating the keystone artwork for the upcoming Atlassian Central project to be built above Sydney/Eora’s Central Station. Titled giwang dinawan yiray (moon-emu-sun), the work will feature three illuminated silhouettes in LED tubing: a waxing moon, an emu constellation in the dust bands of the Milky Way, and a sun, the colours of which will be synchronized to daily temperatures.

For the work, Brook took inspiration from an ancestral spirit that appears in several Dreaming stories. The work will be interactive and synchronised to changing seasons, weather patterns, and the position of the moon. Depending on the time of day and year, the sun will change colour, appearing magenta in extreme heat and pale yellow when the weather dips below ten degrees. The moon will be lit to show the phase and placement of the moon in the southern sky.

Pictured: Brook Andrew’s art on a mockup of the Atlassian Central project, opening in 2026. Source: Dexus-Atlassian via the Sydney Morning Herald.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, he said: “It’s such an interesting building, I was inspired to look up. The whole idea of the artwork is to encourage people to view the world differently and connect with nature… For thousands of years, Indigenous people have been gazing in the night sky and at the changing seasons. [I wanted] to make visible the way that Atlassian Central site is placed in Country while being connected to planetary systems.”

Brook’s piece was chosen alongside Korean American artist Soo Sunny Park’s installation (titled Prometheus) for the project out of over 100 submissions from Australian and international artists. We are thrilled for him and look forward to seeing the piece at Atlassian Central in 2026.

Brook is a 2015 Aurora International Study Tour alum and 2017 Charlie Perkins Scholar. After completing his Bachelor of Visual Arts and Master of Fine Arts (Research) at the University of Western Sydney in 1999, Brook returned to study in 2017 as a Charlie Perkins Scholar, completing a DPhil in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art and St John’s College at Oxford University.