Interloop Included in 2025 HSC Visual Arts Examination

Interloop (2017), Chris Fox's large-scale installation sculpture at Wynyard Station in Sydney, was selected as the subject of Question 3 in the 2025 Trial Higher School Certificate Visual Arts Examination, produced by PEM (Professional Educators of Merit). The 12-mark question — worth approximately a quarter of the exam's total marks — asked students to "Discuss how Chris Fox's installation pays homage to the past while also signifying the future."

Interloop hangs from the ceiling of Wynyard Station's York Street concourse, hovering above the escalators that descend underground. The approximately 50-metre installation weaves 244 wooden treads and four combs salvaged from the station's original 1931 escalators into a continuous looping form. Commissioned by the Novo Rail Program Alliance for Transport for NSW as a heritage interpretation artwork, the work was designed to celebrate the stories and journeys of the millions of people who used those escalators over more than eight decades before the station upgrade.

The exam paper presented students with four plates — photographs of the installed work, a construction photograph documenting the installation process, a pre-installation photograph of the original escalator site, and a technical CAD elevation drawing at 1:50 scale — alongside a brief extract describing the work's context. Students had not previously seen the work; the question assessed their ability to analyse images, draw connections between source material, and form interpretations in response to the key HSC content area of artistic practice: intentions, choices, and actions.

The inclusion of *Interloop* in a state-level examination paper reflects the work's significance as an example of practice that bridges art, architecture, heritage, and public space — demonstrating how the intentions behind a commission, the material choices made in response to a site, and the actions taken to realise a complex fabrication and installation can be read together as a coherent artistic statement.