Architecture & Fashion

I saw a few exhibitions this week that united art, architecture and fashion: “Transitions” at No Vacancy and the combination of Denise Wray’s “Compartments” and Jake Preval’s “Costumes for the Ark” at the George Paton Gallery. This seems an odd remark because I rarely see exhibitions that unite art, architecture and fashion and yet what is the difference between them?

“Transitions” by Make Shift Concepts: Armando Chant, Donna Sgro and Oliver Solente is part of the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival’s cultural program. “At first glance it will look like just a video and some sculptures.” Oliver Solente (from the exhibition paper.) It did look like that but the suspended dresses and video of the dress worn on the catwalk reminded me that this was a fashion exhibition. The suspended dresses were not hung to suggest a human form but hung to show potentials in their architectural form, much like the angular architectural forms of the sculptures.

It was these angular architectural forms that reminded me of the structure of the masks in Jake Preval’s “Costumes for the Ark”. Preveal’s exhibition isn’t in the fashion festival’s cultural program but it should be, it is like the queer alternative. The exhibition is basically a series of photographs of queer couples wearing only black underpants and Preveal’s cardboard masks. The architecture of the couple’s bodies as they posed together is what made the photographs. Love the scattered black underwear around the room, suggesting that the couples from the photographs had stripped off their costumes and left the ark.

Denise Wray’s “Compartments” definitely united art, architecture and fashion. If art and architecture is about filling or not filling a space than Wray’s four works did that, with stitched zips, acrylic on canvas, polyester twine and leather strips. It looked like Wray gone mad after reading too much Greenberg and books on Duchamp and had raided a leather garment factory’s bins to make ‘art’. I liked it is ironic in punk deconstructionist way.

I wouldn’t say that I’m a big fashion, design or architecture fan; it is too cool for me. I want passionately engage – this why I’m very interested in sculpture and I enjoy writing about it. It is odd because sculpture and architecture are so similar – it is often difficult to distinguish where one begins and the other ends – visually it is often difficult to distinguish them, they might be indistinguishable. But what is the difference between sculpture and architectural or fashion forms? Function appears to be too simple an explanation as sculptures are also functional (see my post on the Uses of Public Art). Given that I can’t clearly distinguish between sculpture and architecture I don’t know why I feel differently about them.

The difference between sculpture and architectural forms is not an insubstantial issue and can have legal, as well as, aesthetic implications. The Copyright Website reports that in the case of Leicester vs. Warner Bros. the Los Angeles “district court found that the towers (Andrew Leicester’s sculpture Zanja Madre), although containing artistic elements, were actually part of the architectural work of the building.”

Uses of Art in Public Space

The Uses of Art in Public Space was a free public research symposium on Tuesday 12^th of March hosted by RMIT University’s Design Research Institute and convened by Quentin Stevens. Held in the “Design Hub” (RMIT Building 100); that building on the corner Victoria and Swanston Street covered with round plates of glass.

The conference looked at public art in a broad sense to include commissioned and unofficial artworks, memorials, street art, advertising, and street furniture – all topics that I’ve looked at in this blog. Jane Rendell of University College London in her opening address on “The Use of an Object” spoke via video about the use value of public art as distinct from exchange value of private art. Rendell also noted that to use an object is to relate to it.

This was followed by two talks about the unconventional use of public art and street furniture by parkour and skateboarders. Mirko Guaralda presented a paper by himself and Christopher Rawlinson, QUT on “The Art of Parkour of Art”. And Mat de Koning and Tim Yuen from Perth gave an excellent talk on “Skate Sculpture” (check out their website). Both parkour and skateboards change the normal navigation features of the city; edges become paths and the presence of spectators can change a path to a node.

Anton Hasell, the artist who created Melbourne’s Federation Bells, spoke about “Art in Public Space as Multi-Sensory Sites of Experience”. Hasell is a technological optimist who wants shared creative interactive public spaces.

Karen A. Franck from New Jersey Institute of Technology in her paper “The Life and Death of Public Art Works” gave a basic structure to what can happen to public art: occupation, addition, subtraction, multiplication, (re)moving and destroying. Another paper that gave structure to the issue was Quentin Stevens “The Ergonomics of Public Art”. Stevens looked at the opportunities afforded by public sculpture: a table, a shelter, holding on to, leaning on, a challenge or something to fall off. As opposed to the way that city councils think about how to make areas less useful with anti-seating, anti-climbing, anti-skateboard knobs and skate-stoppers.

Then there were several papers that looked at specific examples of using public art. Shanti Sumartojo from Australian National University spoke about “Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth: creating and contesting national identity”. Julia Lossau of the University of Bremen talked on “Tree Planting: The use of public art in an urban regeneration project in Glasgow”.

Kate MacNeill from the University of Melbourne gave a paper on “The quotidian life of art in public places” looking at the ordinary, unmediated engagement with public art: touch, play, emersion and contemplation with examples from familiar Melbourne public sculptures. And, to complete the variety of public art covered by this symposium, Lachlan MacDowall of the Victorian College of the Arts spoke about “The Uses of Street Art”.

Finally there was a panel discussion that ranged across a variety of topics that had not been covered in the symposium from the relationship between artists and architects to the moral rights of the artist to determine interactions. The symposium presented lots of ways of looking at the use of public art that will influence my thinking on the topic for years to come.

Melbourne’s Footpath Decorations

I’ve been doing a lot more walking recently, as if I didn’t do enough walking already. When I’ve been walking I’ve been looking down at the footpath decorations. There are so many of them in Melbourne’s footpaths marking trails – Melbourne’s golden mile or something or how far out pavement dinning can extend. But I’ll concentrate on the ones with artist intentions.

In the 1990s the Melbourne City Council (MCC) has installed pavement markers that are part of various walks around the city, for example, “Another View Walking Trail”. Created in 1995 by Ray Thomas (Gunnai tribe Gippsland Victoria), and Megan Evans, in collaboration with Aboriginal researcher/ writer Robert Mate (Woorabinda/ Berigaba tribe Queensland). The trail includes red granite and brass pavement inlays by Ray Thomas and Megan Evans.

Ray Thomas and Megan Evans, “Another View Walking Trail”, 1995

There is “People’s Path”, 1978-1979, in the Fitzroy Gardens, created by co-ordinating artist, Ian Sprague and participants from the public. The “People’s Path” is made of terra-cotta bricks designed individually by community participants, including myself when I was on a school excursion. Not that this gives me any kind of sentimental attachment to any of the bricks, as I have no memory of the impersonal decorative design that I created that day. Do these community projects, especially in a city like Melbourne with a large population create any sense of identity? As a path, the “People’s Path” goes nowhere, round in a big circle.

There are brass pavement inlays outside of the front of the Melbourne Town Hall and a little bit further up Swanston is Robert Jacks graffiti inspired “Personal Islands”, 1992, in brass and bluestone.

Brass ticket outside Brunswick Town Hall

Footpath decorations can also be found in the suburbs, there are brass pavement inlays outside the front of the Brunswick Town Hall. The brass inlays survive much better than pavement mosaics, the ones along Brunswick St in Fitzroy have deteriorated; I don’t know how the Hotham Hill Pavement Inlay by Bernice McPherson from1995 has faired (it is located on the corner of Buncle St and Catyre Cr in North Melbourne).

Deteriorated mosaic in Fitzroy

Although Melbourne has many footpath decorations and a great street art scene writing/tagging in wet cement has not become a street art form. I have never seen anything in sidewalk concrete that could be called art, no matter how broadly you want to apply the term. It is the most basic of text and slogans. Scratching into wet cement is a largely an opportunistic act. (The character of Wanda from the Canadian sit-com Corner Gas is a serial wet concrete graffiti writer, see Season 5, Episode 16 “Coming Distractions”.) See also my post Maps &  Trails about trails of street art.

Hamer Hall – architecture & garden

The Melbourne firm of architects, Ashton Raggatt McDougall (ARM), designed the new Hamer Hall. ARM also designed RMIT’s Storey Hall, the Melbourne Recital Centre and other notable projects in Australia. ARM have the art of architectural redevelopment down with earlier project including redeveloping Melbourne Central Shopping Centre and adding a Visitor Centre to the Shrine of Remembrance where the character of original building is not lost but simply and subtly improved.

Hamer Hall

The new riverside front of Hamer Hall with its dynamic curves and cut away windows reminded me of Hive, graffiti architecture, only on a larger scale. (See my post: Graffiti & Architecture.) The contrast with the old, mossy stone of Princes Bridge designed by the architect John Grainger (1854-1917), the father of the composer, Percy Grainger.

Kaeru, a garden of recycled materials on the upper lawn terrace of the new Hamer Hall is a temporary, environmental art project. Created by Japanese installation artist, Hiroshi Fuji in collaboration with Melbourne’s Slow Art Collective and the people of Victoria. The Slow Art Collective is Tony Adams, Chaco Kato, and Dylan Martorell; they have impressed me in the past with their installations especially the audio aspect. I have seen works by their members before at Gertrude Contemporary, the Counihan and Lamington Drive (See my 2009 post: Dylan Martorell @ Lamington Drive.)

Kaeru Garden, Melbourne, 2012

Hiroshi Fuji has done a number of installations using found plastic. There is so much plastic in the world that it will pollute the world for a thousand years, so you might as well reuse and enjoy what is already around. Kaeru demonstrates that this is possible.

Kaeru all looks like a giant spider web made by a psychedelic spider. There were some great seats where I sat and watched the Yarra River run by in the early spring sunshine and enjoyed the audio elements of this garden. Gardens are not silent – only the dead are silent and even an unnatural garden like this needs sounds. There is the rattle of pinwheels, the occasional clang of metal from wind chimes and hanging speakers attached to glass balls emitting ambient sounds.

Seating in Kaeru

Graffiti & Architecture

If graffiti is a major design movement, the contemporary equivalent to art deco, a total style from graphics to fashion to architecture. When I first wrote about street art and architecture in 2009 there was very little to write about apart from bigger walls. Now there are whole buildings.

Reka on building in East Richmond

Painting whole wall or whole building is becoming more common in Melbourne with works by Reka, Ears, Ghostpatrol and others. Most pieces use a section of wall as simply a support for the paint without consideration about the size of piece in relationship to the size of the wall. Going around the corner, looking at the whole wall or painting a whole building is something else.

But it is still just another façade.

Hive Graffiti Apartments in Carlton

In 2011 ITN Architects built Hive Graffiti Apartments. Located in the inner city suburb of Carlton. The project is the architect’s home; I went along to see it when it was open to the public as part of Open House Melbourne 2012. It is a joint development by the architect Zvi Belling and Melbourne old school graff artist ‘Prowla’, both of whom reside in the building. For more images and a floor plan of Hive see DeZeen Magazine.

‘Prowla’ was a member of the Rock Da City graffiti crew (1987 – 2009) – his dog was calmly watching all the people waiting in the garage from the stairs to his apartment.

On one side of the building large concrete letters and windows spelled “Hive” along with a couple of arrows on the upper floor and some dynamic old school design. But what apart from the façade was graffiti about the apartments? It is hard to know as this may well be the first graffiti style building in the world. The Hive is the first in a promised series of Hip Hop buildings designed by ITN Architects maybe when we see some more it will be easier to say. Perhaps, it is the collaboration in the design, or, incorporating existing urban elements – from the original street face of the old tailor’s shop, the old brick walls and the laneway entrance. The house is like a fresh new piece in an old laneway. Inside the lines are crisp, it is compact and the angles flow with a cool direction.

The street art collection hanging in the house was familiar – I’d seen some of it at a Melbourne Stencil Festival exhibition many years ago. The house was also familiar in a way, there was no feeling of being unable to imaging living there; it is like a typical flat only cooler.

Art Deco Coburg

According to real estate agents there are plenty of art deco houses in Coburg but real estate agents are not experts on architecture and most of these claims are based on some ceiling moulding and a few other left over features. There are some art deco buildings in Melbourne’s northern suburb of Coburg but art deco in Coburg was not prestige buildings rather it was new facades for old factories, pubs, shops, garages, houses and a community hall. Art deco architecture was a sign that the upwardly mobile working class industrial suburb was keeping up with the times.

Now that the old Union Knitting Mills has been gutted and transformed into multi-story flats I started to consider how the “modern geometric style” (as art deco was then known) was received and used in Coburg. The new building is a dramatic change but sensitive to the old streetscape and preserves the best aspects of the architecture. The renovation retains the original curving banded art deco façade and entrance. Even the original factory sign has been restored.

A block down from Union Knitting Mills the Post Office Hotel also has an art deco façade covering an older building. The façade has recently been restored – I’ve enjoying several meals at the Post Office Hotel and the pub has gained a reputation for its superb food both in its restaurant and counter menu. The iron ribbon lettering of the Post Office Hotel sign is similar to that of several pubs in North Melbourne.

There are other touches of art deco in the suburb. Richard Broome, Coburg – between two creeks, (Lothian, 1987) reports a building boom immediately after the Great Depression, people had been waiting for better economic times before starting their construction. There are modern/art deco elements in facades of a few Coburg factory facades along Sydney Road dating their construction.

Akins Auto Service on Nicholson St. is another example of the modest art deco buildings in Coburg. Akins Auto Service was established in 1932. There are also art deco elements in design of the façade on the Progress Hall and parts of the memorial opposite the Coburg Town Hall on Bell Street. The memorial is dedicated to the first Coburg resident killed in WWII: the griffons on the memorial are impressive.

For more of Melbourne’s art deco buildings see Art Deco Buildings blog by David Thompson. Although he has not written about Coburg, Thompson does look Art Deco in many of Melbourne’s suburbs.

Pentridge Rehabilitated

Pentridge Prison has been rehabilitated. Pentridge Prison was built in 1850 to cope with the over crowded Melbourne Gaol and the prison hulks in Port Phillip Bay. The prison closed on the 1st May 1997; wreaking historian Richard Broome’s 1987 prediction that the “it is likely to last another 136 years.” Richard Broome, Coburg – between two creeks, (Lothian, 1987)

Penal history is a major feature of Australian colonial history and Pentridge Prison is the gravesite of Australia’s most famous folk hero/outlaw, Ned Kelly. Although some Australians take pride in a convict past the residents of Coburg didn’t and repeatedly called for the removal of the prison. Pentridge Prison haunted the upwardly mobile aspirations of the homeowners and residents of Coburg for generations. The city changed its name attempting to disassociate the city from the prison. Now Coburg won’t be forgetting Pentridge with parts of the prison now being classified for its heritage value and other parts being replaced by a slowing growing housing estate. The rehabilitation of the former Pentridge Prison into Pentridge Village has slowly progressing for several years.

I am not interested in spruiking the real estate; I am interested in the cultural issues of this urban redevelopment. I am interested in the mix of historic, residential and retail that the transformation includes. At least Pentridge Village is not another anonymous housing estate or apartment block; there is plenty of the prison’s character preserved and the new residents won’t forget the history of the place. This is not to suggest that the architecture of a 19^th Century prison does not have its charm or that the new flats and apartments look like a prison. The better bluestone construction has been preserved; the granite “bluestone” was mostly quarried, cut and built by prison labour (except for the external walls for obvious reasons). Barred windows, old signs and other features are being preserved as the prison is being rehabilitated. Some streets have been named after part of the prison like “Warden’s Walk” but others are just bizarre property development words.

Pentridge Village does feature some new innovations; Warden’s Walk utilizes permeable paving to capture of storm-water runoff.  The storm-water harvesting and reuse (I saw some enormous water tanks) is used, in part, to water the extensive rose bush planting as a symbolic reference to the past (the prisoners maintained a rose garden within the prison as well as poetic reference). Some of Pentridge is still a building site and wasteland and in other parts residents have been living there for years. The spaces for shops and businesses are still vacant except for one restaurant. Although the heritage space has been used for fashion shows and old cells transformed in to boutique wine cellars according to Style Melbourne.

Having lived in Coburg for decades I can remember the prison in operation, closed the location being slowly rehabilitated. I can still remember hearing the howls that came from Pentridge at midnight on New Year’s Eve in 1991 when I was living very close to the prison walls. I also saw and photographed parts of the prison shortly after it closed. The escape proof Jika Jika Unit that looked like Space Station Despair has been demolished; although the architects could build on the nostalgic ambiance of the 19^th Century parts of the prison, the modern penal architecture of the Jika Jika Unit could never be reformed.

Pentridge Prison, Coburg

The historic entrance and other parts of the historic precinct of the old Pentridge Prison are yet to be rehabilitated. The front of the prison still stands looking abandoned with heritage issues yet to be resolved. There are no statues yet in this redevelopment and the front of the prison definitely needs a suitable statue that is sensitive to the history without being mawkish. (For information on the art of prisoners see my post about Prison Art @ Pentridge)

Perhaps saying that Pentridge Prison has been rehabilitated is going too far; it scrubs up well and has taken significant steps to reform its character but it is still a work in progress.