With an immense body of work documenting and beautifully depicting Canberraโs Clem Cummings bus shelters over the last eight years, Newcastle-based artist Trevor Dickinson has now literally written the book on them.
As is so often the case, it took the fresh set of eyes of an out-of-towner to recognise, appreciate and capture the true eccentricity and distinction of Canberraโs iconic Clem Cummings bus shelters.
So many locals had grown up with or grown accustomed them and in turn didnโt think much of the funky 1970s era concrete cylindrical shelters.
โIt just felt very Canberran, but people of Canberra took it for granted,โ Dickinson told Canberra Daily.
โI like trying to find things that people donโt really notice.
โAnywhere you go, youโre lucky to find an urban structure thatโs just all over and just taken for granted because of that.
โItโs not often you get something that touches the whole city and almost defines it.โ
It wasnโt until Dickinson first spotted the bus shelters across town during a residency at Megalo Print Studio in 2012 and set about drawing an initial series of them, that they started to get the recognition they deserved some 38 years after they were first designed.
โI did the bus shelter early on and it was quite popular โฆ Right from the first one I realised people appreciated it.
โThat always makes me think Iโm onto something because I like the work to connect to locals.
โI dipped my toes into it and realised more and more that this was a project worth following.โ
Since then his works have been plastered across coffee cups, playing cards, stubby holders, tea towels, jigsaw puzzles and now a new book.
Titled Trevor Dickinsonโs Beautiful Bus Shelters of Canberra, the 166-page hardback book covers Dickinsonโs vast eight-year project.
After his run of initial illustrations, Dickinson wouldnโt have known just how far down the Clem Cummings bus shelter rabbit hole heโd end up going.
โI realised it would be a really good project to just record and do a drawing of loads of them for an exhibition, and in doing that I wanted to record all of them in Canberra,โ he said.
Between 2012 and 2018, Dickinson photographed all 483 of the iconic concrete bus shelters in Canberra over two to three years and illustrated more than 80.
โEvery time Iโd come to Canberra for a market I would actually go off and collect bus shelters and tick them off like a nerdy train spotter,โ he said.
โI was trying to get different times of year, different times of day, different weather and I realised it was actually a portrait of Canberra I was getting as well.
โMore and more, it felt like I was actually doing something that hadnโt been done.โ
Part one of Beautiful Bus Shelters of Canberra contains all of Dickinsonโs final artworks, plus original drawings and other associated imagery.
It opens with a succinct history of the then-controversial shelters, including snippets from local news coverage, copies of original design documents, and a bio of Clem Cummings himself.
Part two is a photographic record of all 483 bus shelters in Canberra listed alphabetically in suburb and street order for easy reference.
It also goes to some length to show the groundswell of community engagement Dickinson has enjoyed since embarking on the project.
โSomeone took my cards and went out to every bus shelter and took a picture of it with the card,โ he said.
โI love it. It feels like Iโm really doing my job, Iโm saying look at these and people are responding.โ
Trevor Dickinsonโs Beautiful Bus Shelters of Canberra is now available online here or in store at selected outlets.
