He decided to enter the Signature of M art award. At the time, with a $150,000 prize, it was Australia’s richest art award).

But 12 years ago – when Underbelly was the best show on TV and Empire of the Sun was blowing our minds musically – Cohen was fresh out of uni with a little too much time on his hands.

By day, Josh Cohen is a pianist who runs his own music school (he also moonlights as a Radiohead-approved songbook writer ).

“I had all these old Metcards, and friends who had some lying around, and I bought some on eBay as well,” Cohen says. “It took ages to make.”

He began replicating some of Melbourne’s most famous icons – Flinders Street Station, the Arts Centre, Luna Park, a newly minted Eureka Tower – using expired Metcards, which predate Myki as Melbourne's public-transport ticketing system. The goal was to eventually combine them into a single, immense collage.

“The idea of the competition was to create something that was very ‘Melbourne’ and I thought, ‘Metcards are a pretty “Melbourne” icon,’” says Cohen.

Metcards were uniquely suited to Cohen’s project for two reasons. One: unlike Myki, the papery cardboard was easily moulded into art. And two: they were covered in colourful ads. With enough tickets spanning different time periods, you got a colour palette broad enough to recreate the bold entrance to Luna Park, the pale pinks and greys of Fed Square and the golden hues of Flinders Street Station.

The project took Cohen the better part of six months to complete and thousands of Metcards, so many he can’t recall the final tally.

Now, with the country under strict coronavirus lockdown, Cohen finds himself at home with plenty of free time once more. He’s been sharing his Metcard art on Reddit’s Melbourne page, which loves anything with a whiff of old-school Melbourne about it.

“Metcards were a bit of a Melbourne icon so it reminds people of those days. I thought it would be nice to reveal the art that I’d done because it was so lighthearted,” says Cohen. “It felt like the right time to distract people and get their minds off all the doom and gloom.”

In the comments sections of his posts, he’s fielded requests to “do Revs next”, been asked where the Metcards came from, and been told some of his creations are “better than the real thing” (that one was in reference to the much-maligned Melbourne Star).

The final landmark added to his online folio is the MCG, and he's just revealed the pièce de résistance – all the works together, framed. Cohen's been fielding plenty of requests to make prints of his art to sell, so an upcoming exhibition or an online print shop is on the (Met)cards.

And as for that art prize? Cohen came fourth, but his dad outbid the Metlink CEO in the public auction to keep the collection in the family.

“It should have won,” says Cohen. “I was robbed.”

Check out the works here.

metcardart.com