Hayley Megan French

Maddocks, Sydney 2025

Commissioned by Maddocks for the 33 Alfred Street Offices, 2025, Photos by Katherine Lu

This series, commissioned for the Maddocks offices at 33 Alfred Street, is born out of a desire to locate myself in place—a way of responding to the city’s harbour as more than a backdrop, but as a lived space whose shifting light, architectural landmarks and continual movement animate everyday experience. My practice explores repetition, rhythm and pattern as a means of mapping memory and belonging in place. Patterns for a View transposes this methodology to the urban harbour setting.

Working initially in paint, I responded to the glint of sunlight on the water, the sweeping arc of the Harbour Bridge, and the sculptural sails of the Opera House—not as literal depictions but as abstracted motifs: triangles, lines, facets of light and form. These repeated shapes operate as visual echoes of the harbour’s geometry, architecture and atmosphere, offering a distilled sense of its presence.

The original paintings were then digitised and reproduced on vinyl as architectural interventions. Through this process, intimate gestures of paint shift in scale and material, becoming part of the spatial experience of the office. The works sit quietly within the office environment, creating connections between floors, deeply rooted in the locality outside the windows.

Art Strategy, Barangaroo Project, 2017

A private art commission featuring Ron Adams, Hayley Megan French, Daniel Hollier and Tom Polo, in collaboration with THERE and The Operative.