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UAP Urban Art Projects Incredible things don’t just happen; They’re created, nurtured, believed in. Spanning art, architectu

Incredible things don’t just happen; they’re created, nurtured, believed in. Arts, culture, and creativity have always played a vital role in bringing people together. We continue this tradition with an enduring belief that creativity can inspire incredible possibilities. Established in 1993 by brothers Matt and Dan Tobin, their modest Brisbane practice has evolved into a global art and design studio and workshop. Today, our network comprises three key studios and facilities in New York, Brisbane and Shanghai, and seven worldwide satellite offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Singapore, Los Angeles and Riyadh. From the design studio to the factory floor, we work across all aspects of the creative process, from commissioning and curatorial services, concept development, and design assistance to engineering, fabrication, and installation. With an ingrained culture of collaboration, our diverse team of creative specialists, strategists and practitioners share an enduring vision for the future. By pairing exceptional strategies and manufacturing capabilities with our team’s unrivalled dedication to excellence, we ensure that our generation creates timeless and relevant objects, ideas, and places that will inspire and connect people for generations to come. As a company, this is the common ground on which we move forward.

Kent Morris, ‘Bogong Moth’, 2025“Bogong Moth represents a cultural marker for reflection, connection and knowledge. I ho...
10/07/2026

Kent Morris, ‘Bogong Moth’, 2025

“Bogong Moth represents a cultural marker for reflection, connection and knowledge. I hope the design engages and inspires the community on their daily travels and visits, encouraging them to open their hearts and minds, to look and listen deeply on their journey through the site and to embrace the often unrecognised, First Peoples knowledge deeply embedded in Country.” – Kent Morris

The Bogong Moth pays tribute to one of Australia’s most remarkable migrations and the profound cultural connections it has nurtured over thousands of years. For at least 65 generations, First Nations communities have gathered in the Alpine region, in harmony with the arrival of the bogong moth, creating opportunities for ceremony, trade, knowledge sharing, and cultural continuity.

This sculpture honours the cultural and ecological significance of the bogong moth, while asking a powerful question: will this work become a remembrance of a species now vanished – or a celebration of its continued survival?

Their etched designs on the the Coolamons represent generations of continuous knowledge and connection. Though empty, they hold deep meaning and prompt us to reflect on what has been passed down, and what remains.

Barkindji artist Kent Morris, drawing upon his and the moths connection to the Barka (Darling River), uses the bogong moth as a powerful symbol of movement, interconnectedness, and the enduring presence of First Peoples' culture and knowledge within the contemporary landscape.

By intertwining the forms of the moth, migration lines, celestial navigation, and traditional cultural markers, the artwork speaks to the complex relationships between people, place, and ecosystems. It also reflects on the fragility of these connections, recognising the recent decline of the bogong moth as a reminder of the vital importance of caring for Country.

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Image Credit: Kent Morris

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Kent Morris, ‘Bogong Moth’, 2025Kent Morris’s artwork consists of three main elements placed on the site: the Bogong Mot...
10/06/2026

Kent Morris, ‘Bogong Moth’, 2025

Kent Morris’s artwork consists of three main elements placed on the site: the Bogong Moth sculpture, the animals, and the coolamons.

The Bogong Moth sculpture brings together cast metal, stone, and finely detailed finishes to celebrate the remarkable journey of the bogong moth. At its centre, a cast aluminium moth with a hand-painted automotive finish is suspended above a series of sweeping aluminium arcs that trace the insect's migration pathways to the Alpine region. Rolled to varying radii and finished in two-pack automotive paint, these elegant “migration lines” create a sense of movement and continuity, connecting the moth to its surroundings. Anchoring the work is a solid granite plinth, carefully polished and sandblasted with a chevron stencil to create a subtle diamond pattern. Powder-coated aluminium details and an inlaid plaque echo these geometric motifs.

The animals are comprised of four sculptural panels representing the crow, currawong, Richard's pipit, and mountain pygmy-possum, species that inhabit the surrounding landscape. Each panel is formed from 10mm aluminium, providing a durable backdrop for the animal forms, which are fabricated from layered 6mm aluminium plates and mirrored on both sides. This dual-sided approach allows the creatures to be encountered from multiple viewpoints.

Three sculptural coolamons were also created. Each form was hand-sculpted in pattern-making and cast in bronze, to evoke the enduring cultural significance of the coolamon. A chevron pattern was applied to the exterior surfaces, introducing layers of texture and symbolism, while a bronze patina or paint rub brought warmth and depth to the finished forms. The coolamons were anchored to granite boulders through concealed welded rods and grouted connections, allowing the sculptures to appear as though they had emerged organically from the landscape itself.

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Image Credit: Rachel See, courtesy of UAP | Urban Art Projects

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Kent Morris, ‘Bogong Moth’, 2025Barkindji artist Kent Morris, who lives and works on Yalukit Willam Country in Naarm/Mel...
10/05/2026

Kent Morris, ‘Bogong Moth’, 2025

Barkindji artist Kent Morris, who lives and works on Yalukit Willam Country in Naarm/Melbourne, reframes the environment through a First Peoples lens. His work reveals the continuing presence of First Peoples histories, knowledge systems, and cultural narratives embedded within Country.

Our team was happy to work with Tourism North East and Morris on his ‘Bogong Moth’ located in Eurobin, Victoria as part of the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail.

Guided by the curatorial vision “True Horizons", Morris’s work is an opportunity for truth-telling and reflection. Conceived as a First Peoples led experience, the curatorial vision invites visitors to pause and consider what the horizon might look like today had First Peoples been able to continue thriving on their lands uninterrupted.

Set within a region renowned for its expansive vistas, the work asks a powerful and necessary question: what's missing? In doing so, it creates space for the often-unheard stories, perspectives, and enduring presence of First Peoples to be acknowledged within the landscape.

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Image Credit: courtesy of UAP

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Our Golden Week journey continues to Tokyo, where cultures and creative influences meet. Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuy...
10/01/2026

Our Golden Week journey continues to Tokyo, where cultures and creative influences meet. Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuyama’s ‘Hanao-San’ reflects his own experience growing up between Japan and the United States, bringing Eastern and Western aesthetics together through monumental sculpture.
 
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Image Credit: Tomokazu Matsuyama Studio

 
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We’ll head to Kuala Lumpur, where light and nature come together overhead. At YTL Headquarters, Studio Sawada Design’s ‘Leaves’ captures the quiet beauty of sunlight filtering through trees, transforming an everyday natural phenomenon into an immersive suspended artwork. Inspired by Komorebi, the Japanese word describing sunlight streaming through leaves, the work layers materials that bend, refract and diffuse light.
 
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Image Credit:  Courtesy of Studio Sawada Design. Photography by David Yeow
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In Hong Kong, Australian artist Lindy Lee’s ‘Eye of Infinity’ embodies a sense of ascension, encouraging travellers to look outward while reflecting on our connection to the world around us. Drawing inspiration from Lee’s Chinese ancestry and her engagement with Taoism and Ch’an Buddhism, the monumental bronze sculpture resembles a seed, a portal, and an eye, symbols of growth, transition, and perspective.

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Image Credit: Image Credits: Kris Provoost. Rachel See. UAP | Urban Art Projects. Video by Francisco Guerrero and Shing Fung Cheung.

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We’ll also head to Singapore, where art creates space to pause and reflect. At Yale-NUS College, Singaporean artist Grace Tan’s ‘Mater’ asks viewers to consider what they see, what it means to them and how our perspectives evolve through experience.
 
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Image Credit: Courtesy of UAP | Urban Art Projects
 
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Siem Reap, Cambodia is our next destination where a ribbon of gold brings ideas of movement, happiness and renewal into the public realm. Created by PMDL Architecture + Design, ‘Luminous Ribbon’ draws inspiration from ceremonial robes and the Khmer word for “brilliance

Today marks the start of Golden Week, making it the perfect time to reconnect with culture, and explore new destinations...
10/01/2026

Today marks the start of Golden Week, making it the perfect time to reconnect with culture, and explore new destinations. Here are a few public artworks that you can’t miss on your travels.

In Suzhou, ‘Magical Gusu’ embodies these themes in the public sphere, celebrating the city’s rich artistic heritage through a contemporary lens.
 
Created by artist Jacky Tsai, the vibrant murals take inspiration from Suzhou’s classical gardens, featuring flowers, plants, koi fish, and soaring birds intricately woven into the historic Sanjian Wall and Watchtower at Yanlord Cangjie. By blending traditional Chinese influences with a modern visual style, the artwork offers a fresh perspective on Suzhou’s cultural identity, linking the city’s past to how people engage with it today.
 
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Image Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Jerome Huang of UAP | Urban Art Projects
 
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In Beijing, Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel’s ‘Universal Connection’ brings that idea to life through a vivid landscape inspired by traditional Chinese art.
 
Mountains, water, birds and squirrels are transformed through Okuda’s distinctive geometric forms and intense colours, expressing ideas of equality, diversity and peaceful coexistence. At the centre of the work, a squirrel holds a golden egg, an auspicious symbol of hard work and ambition, while the wider landscape reflects on finding harmony between people and the natural world.
 
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Image Credit: Courtesy of VICITU
 
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We’re also heading to Shenzhen, where tradition and the contemporary city collide. ‘Artificial Paradise’ brings the visual language of traditional Chinese landscape painting into a landscape shaped by rapid urban change.
 
Artist Yang Yongliang translates classical shanshui, a painting style, into an urban landscape, weaving mountains, trees, and architecture into an expansive contemporary scene. The result brings nature and technology, as well as the past and present, into the same frame, depicting a city that is continually being reshaped.
 
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Image Credit: courtesy of UAP
 
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Marshmallow Leaser Feast (MLF), ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’, 2026Marshmallow Laser Feast creates immersive experiences ...
09/29/2026

Marshmallow Leaser Feast (MLF), ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’, 2026

Marshmallow Laser Feast creates immersive experiences that reveal parts of the natural world we cannot ordinarily see. Bringing together collaborators from across disciplines, their practice explores new ways of seeing and understanding the world, through immersive experience, XR and film.

‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’ transforms the first-floor lobby into an immersive encounter with the hidden ecological systems that sustain life. Presented across an eight-metre-tall LED screen, the 11-minute multimedia work celebrates the oak tree as a living monument, revealing the intricate relationships between species, air, carbon and the vast underground networks that connect them.

Using fluid dynamics, light particle point clouds, sound and scientific research, the work shifts between microscopic and monumental scales to make otherwise invisible processes visible. From nutrient flows and fungal mycelia to intricate networks of carbon, ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’ invites audiences to look beyond the limits of everyday perception and reconsider their relationship with the living world around them.

As public art curator, our team developed the wider art strategy for the building and worked with Marshmallow Laser Feast's practice to connect its themes of nature, technology and sustainability directly with the architecture. Working across artist, client and design teams, the work was developed for the eight-metre lobby screen as part of a broader collection of site-specific experiences.

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Image Credit: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, Dave Burk@SOM

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Ben Mazey, ‘Bronze Flag Carpet’, 2026‘Bronze Flag Carpet’ forms part of an ongoing exploration of the flag as a shared c...
09/25/2026

Ben Mazey, ‘Bronze Flag Carpet’, 2026

‘Bronze Flag Carpet’ forms part of an ongoing exploration of the flag as a shared cultural symbol. Each panel began as a hand-sculpted wax form, folded and stretched by the artist before being cast in bronze. The gestures of this process remain visible across the surface, captured like slow, painterly movements within the material itself.

Finished with contrasting raw and polished surfaces that shift with the changing light, the work brings together a field of forms that feel both unified and individual. Installed across the façade, ‘Bronze Flag Carpet’ creates a space for gathering and reflection, celebrating the many voices, histories, and connections that continue to shape South Melbourne and beyond.

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Image Credit: Courtesy of Fortis

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Ben Mazey, ‘Bronze Flag Carpet’, 2026Ben Mazey creates fluid and playful forms that are unexpectedly human. He bends and...
09/24/2026

Ben Mazey, ‘Bronze Flag Carpet’, 2026

Ben Mazey creates fluid and playful forms that are unexpectedly human. He bends and repeats forms into flowing, undulating sculptures. Surfaces are left raw and textural, while others are polished, creating a contrast between the earthy and the refined.

Mazey's latest work, 'Bronze Flag Carpet', is commissioned by Fortis for its newest commercial development, 122 Moray, in South Melbourne. The piece draws on South Melbourne’s long-standing history as a hub for community formation and cultural exchange. As the public art manager, our team developed 'The Meeting Place', a curatorial vision exploring how shared environments shape gathering, collaboration, and belonging. The vision invited artworks that reimagine the meeting place as both a symbolic and physical site of exchange. Working across stakeholder engagement, artist coordination, curatorial strategy, project delivery, and integration within the built environment, we guided the program from concept through to implementation, ensuring each artwork responded meaningfully to the site, community, and broader architectural vision.

Comprising twelve cast bronze forms for the southern façade, the work features unique surface patterns sculpted directly into wax by Mazey. Working closely with Meridian and our team, the artist shaped every detail by hand before the works were cast in bronze and patinated. With contrasting finishes, the flags balance material weight with a sense of movement and play, transforming the building façade into a dynamic architectural gesture.

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Image Credit: Ava Clifforth, Courtesy of UAP | Urban Art Projects

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Raul de Lara, ‘The Secret Life of Objects’, 2026Commissioned by Hermès Flagship Store on Madison Avenue, this cast bronz...
09/20/2026

Raul de Lara, ‘The Secret Life of Objects’, 2026

Commissioned by Hermès Flagship Store on Madison Avenue, this cast bronze vase began as a large white oak log that was then hand-turned by Raul De Lara. Designed to eventually hold wooden leaves in its final setting, the work explores the relationship between natural materials and their transformation into something long-lasting.

The green patina color is inspired by the bronze sculptures and scattered copper architectural elements De Lara saw while venturing around Central Park.

“For this particular window, I was inspired by my favorite tree in Central Park. Every fall, I go visit him for inspiration as it gives off the most beautiful leaves. I collected 6 of them and used their shape to create the large wooden leaves you see at Hermes. I used a variety of wood species to capture Fall’s color range. I was also inspired by the bronze sculptures and the scattered patina on copper architectural elements around the park. This inspiration led me to think on how to bring that patina color onto the surface of my wooden vase.” — Raul De Lara

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Image Credit: Courtesy of Hermès and Raul De Lara

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Raul De Lara, ‘The Secret Life of Objects’, 2026Raul De Lara is a Mexican-born sculptor based in Queens, New York who us...
09/18/2026

Raul De Lara, ‘The Secret Life of Objects’, 2026

Raul De Lara is a Mexican-born sculptor based in Queens, New York who uses objects as carriers of memory, folklore and identity. Working predominantly in wood, his sculptures draw on the cultural landscapes of Mexico and the United States, often transforming familiar forms into reflections on belonging and the passage of time.

For his latest commission for Hermès Flagship Store on Madison Avenue, ‘The Secret Life of Objects’ was created in collaboration with our Rock Tavern team. The vase was hand turned by De Lara, then cast in bronze through lost wax, followed by a detailed finishing process with patinated and waxed finish where De Lara worked directly with our patina team to craft a custom colour together.

In wood, colour helps reveal the natural grain; in metal, texture becomes the storyteller. The surface accentuated the varying levels of texture across the form, allowing the grain to emerge through subtle shifts in depth. The whole process was carried out in close collaboration with De Lara, ensuring the final surface remained true to his original material language.

“For this particular window, I was inspired by my favorite tree in Central Park. Every fall, I go visit him for inspiration as it gives off the most beautiful leaves. I collected 6 of them and used their shape to create the large wooden leaves you see at Hermes. I used a variety of wood species to capture Fall’s color range. I was also inspired by the bronze sculptures and the scattered patina on copper architectural elements around the park. This inspiration led me to think on how to bring that patina color onto the surface of my wooden vase.“—Raul De Lara

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Image Credit: Chris Roque, courtesy of UAP | Urban Art Projects

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