Bronze screens installed in Anzac Square naming Queensland towns
Commemorative bronze screens that cost more than $2 million and were specially designed for Brisbane’s Anzac Square have been installed in the central park as a final part of the area’s refurbishment.
The bronze screens carry the names of the Queensland towns that servicemen and women left to fight in battles across the world.
In May, the cost of the screens was scrutinised after Brisbane City Council admitted it had gone beyond the expected budget, but lord mayor Adrian Schrinner insisted the project was still in budget.
The refurbishments were made to Anzac Square as part of a joint state and council effort to upgrade and restore the parkland for generations to come.
More than 200 square metres of bronze screens, stretching along both sides of the park, were unveiled last week with designer and typographer Stephen Banham in attendance.
Banham, from Melbourne’s RMIT, said he came up with the idea for the screens from the Indigenous names of Queensland towns and places.
“I kept seeing the suburban station names with double ‘Os’ in them and it really struck me as being really unique. They were everywhere,” he said.
“I knew that this was the right concept for linking the design to place. When I pitched the idea to the Anzac Square Board officials, all Queenslanders, they were immediately on board and couldn’t believe they hadn’t seen it themselves.
“I guess sometimes it takes someone with that new perspective – in this case a Victorian, and a typographer – to see things that others see every day.
“It’s the training as a typographer that really made this approach possible, to see patterns and to create an underlying story specific to Queensland.”
The screens, which caused further delays to the refurbishment project and were criticised in May by Labor as a “cost blowout”, were described by council’s environment committee chair Fiona Hammond as “unique”.
With large curling script, the double 'O' in many of the names creates a link and room for visitors to place poppies in the screens.
The challenges involved in fabricating the screens were a further delay to the refurbishment project that was initially planned to be completed by Remembrance Day last year.