We caught it mid-construction, but the final results are spectacular. It’s Dale Miles’ work, Underworld.

I love that this terrific beast is arising from the dingy downstairs toilet at Taylor Square. A real underworld.

I walked by on Friday morning, as council workers tore plants out of their planters and pots, and tossed them into the back of their trucks.

They plant those flowers, take them out, plant them, erect new planters, take them away, without any real connection to what’s going on with the plants – they seem pretty healthy. Still, those planters have been strange from the moment they appeared.

I walked past later, at about midnight, and a fence had been erected around the Taylor Square public toilet. I peeked over the top, and this is what I saw.

I’m pretty sure it’s Dale Miles’s Underworld (the latest in the Taylor Square Plinth project – we blogged about Louisa Dawson’s work in October). He’s shown widely since graduating from the National Art School several years ago – see more here.

He says it’s a response:

to the mysteriousness of the shape of the space enclosed by the entrance fence and the two descending staircases. It is the mystery of the void inverted, the spider exiting its funnel.

The original idea is this. More pictures to come.

But as one of our readers, Tony, noted in the comments at the time:

Well, actually, this is not a nazi cross (Swastika) at all. The real cross is the other way around (mirrored image).

This ‘reversed Swastika’ can be found in numerous places:

1. The Nydam Bog (look at the bottom of the page).
2. A buddhist temple
3. The flag of the city Hirosaki, in Japan

So we could be facing a very angry Danish from the year 200AD, a peaceful buddhist monk, a Japanese backpacker eager to come back to Oz… or an angry (and probably drunk) kid that doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Place your bets ;-)

So there you have it, and it’s reappeared at the tail end of another summer holiday.

We spotted this loo a couple of weeks ago, on Craigend Street, at the corner of Surrey Street.

You could take it home and see if it works, or you could just find out on the spot if the urge was that great.

Denise Litchfield, of Newtown, had descended on the old below-ground toilet the night before with a cast of “lavatory assistants, urban knitters and crocheters.”

It’s Sydney’s last surviving underground toilet (not including those in train stations) – it’s a convenience that’s not that convenient, because it’s not open – though it gets a last gasp every now and again via an art project like this.

Denise, who also blogs here, knitted this as part of Sydney Design 09.