Mini artworks return to laneway

Regular walkers through Bridge Mall’s Time Lane may have noticed several eye-catching fixtures of the alleyway have been missing throughout the year.

After months away to allow for the development of Bridge Street, the Incidents in Time installation, the passage’s public art staple for more than a decade, has returned.

The project’s artist Jason Waterhouse reinstalled each piece late last month, and said it’s been humbling to hear how people missed the laneway’s little artworks.

“It’s been interesting to revisit this and it’s been nice to see the interactions on social media have been overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “It’s really nice to see that work’s resonated with the public, that it was missed when it was gone, and it’s appreciated when it’s come back.”

Originally installed in 2011, the pieces depict various surreal miniatures nestled into the naturally weathered brickwork buildings that flank Time Lane. “[The laneway] historically had a clock repairer and so when I got the commission for this all those years ago, I didn’t want to reference the human elements behind time like clocks and mechanical stuff,” he said.

“I wanted to represent time as memory and moment but make these pieces really strange and inquisitive as well.

“The lane itself had holes in the walls and missing bricks so it was important it fit into that incidental architecture.”

Waterhouse said many of the pieces have been modified in keeping with its overhauled setting.

“When I removed them for the City of Ballarat, I did a bit of a rejig and a refinish, and some I had to redesign because of the change in level to the footpath,” he said. “There’s one specific piece, the raft one, that’s been modified to fit. It used to have a waterfall previously but now it’s spilling out of the wall instead.”

The reinstallation is being followed up with a new addition, which Waterhouse said will be much larger in scope than the original works.

“I actually went through my old sketchbook from that time and I’m revisiting an old concept that never came to fruition,” Waterhouse said.

“It’s going to be a one-to-one piece, slightly larger than life size this time, and it’ll be up in the sky which should be a fun moment for people to see.”

The new addition is expected to be launched by the end of the year.