As part of Australia’s first 25Hours Hotel, the brief called for site-specific artworks that respond to the building’s former life as the West Olympia Theatre and its deep ties to Sydney’s Art House culture. The challenge was to create immersive room-based works that honour the experimental, rebellious, and emotionally charged spirit of 1970s Sydney, while remaining open-ended enough to allow guests to form their own interpretations.

Each artwork needed to operate not as decoration, but as an atmospheric extension of the hotel’s identity — encouraging reflection, curiosity, and engagement across day and night.

To realise the room-based artworks, 25Hours Hotel Sydney approached Sydney-based collage artist Kubi Vasak to develop four site-specific works responding to the building’s Art House heritage and the cultural energy of 1960s-70s Sydney. The artworks were developed in close collaboration with Shelley Indyk of Indyk Architects, ensuring the collage works and interior design evolved in dialogue with one another.

Two distinct but connected narratives were developed: Renegade and The Dreamer. Together, they explore the tension between disruption and hope that defined Sydney’s Art House era.

Collage was used as both a conceptual and material strategy — reflecting the way cultural change emerges through fragments, collisions, and reassembly. Rather than illustrating history literally, the works gather visual and emotional cues from the period and recombine them into compositions that feel lived-in, restless, and unresolved.

The approach prioritised mood, rhythm, and cultural memory over linear storytelling, allowing each room to function as a space of possibility rather than a fixed narrative.

Renegade draws from the raw energy of 1970s Sydney nightlife — Kings Cross, Town Hall, hotels, clubs, and informal gathering spaces where artists, musicians, poets, and outsiders formed a new creative language. Rough and refined elements sit side by side, mirroring a city in transition. The work reflects a moment where accepted norms fractured, and change seeped through walls, ceilings, and streets.

The Dreamer moves into a softer register — soaked in nostalgia and optimism. It references music, dance, nature, and altered perception as catalysts for freedom and collective imagination. Hope, movement, and emotional openness form the core of this work, with layered fragments washing across the space in a state of constant forming and reforming.

Together, the two works create a dialogue between rebellion and idealism — grounding the hotel’s Art House roots in both grit and grace.

The collages were developed as integrated, room-specific artworks designed to be experienced over time. Installed within guest rooms, the works respond to changing light conditions from day to night, encouraging repeat engagement rather than immediate resolution.

To realise the site-specific application, Kubi Vasak collaborated with Sydney-based printer Mr Wallpaper, working closely to translate the collages into a format that suited the architecture and material conditions of the rooms. This process allowed the works’ tactile qualities — edges, layering, and tonal variation — to be preserved and amplified at scale, reinforcing the vintage and hand-assembled nature of the original collages.

Their scale, texture, and placement allow the artworks to operate as immersive environments rather than standalone images, extending the hotel’s avant-garde ethos into the most intimate spaces of the building.

The project transforms hotel rooms into contemplative, culturally charged environments that honour Sydney’s Art House legacy while remaining open, contemporary, and emotionally resonant.

By translating the energy of Sydney’s creative past into layered collage works, Renegade and The Dreamer invite guests to reflect on what was, engage with what is, and imagine what might be — carrying forward a spirit of experimentation, questioning, and possibility.