PS: Potential Spaces is a collaboration between three disciplines – law, architecture and art. The installation makes apparent the 'invisible' legal framework of Tank Stream Way and Hamilton Street, originally a single continuous street built directly over the path of the stream. The installations make reference to historical records such as property and planning boundaries, and written descriptions and paintings of the area. This information is translated onto the laneways via survey, making visible the once natural geometry of the site as well as referencing other interesting historical anomalies.

The language of the installation is that of the survey – permanent customised bronze markers, iridescent paint, and weighted ropes representing a plumb bob and string. Temporary street furnishings are deployed as an indication of possible future habitation with a strong relationship to the history of the site. Plantings in the street lounges are representative of the once fertile banks of the Tank Stream.

The bronze survey markers embedded in the laneway contain symbolic references to the elements that have formed the site over time – with its history as the main fresh water source of Sydney, an element of demarcation (firstly between classes of convicts and later between parishes), a bottle washing yard and steam biscuit manufacturer that became prominent features of the street. Whilst relating to these specific historical elements, the shell and bottle are also symbols of fresh food and water, but also of discarded empty vessels, as early settlers began polluting the stream turning it from water source to sewer and resulting in the eventual covering over of the stream. In a transhistorical gesture, the contemporary markers quote John Hamilton of the Steam Biscuit Bakery, who in a letter from 1861 noted as the Tank Stream was being covered over: 'The street is now being formed'.

The City of Sydney and the project team gratefully acknowledge the support of the following companies: