Sculpture @ Coburg Lake Reserve

Coburg Lake Reserve is a large park built along the Merri Creek and in the old granite bluestone quarry where prisoners cut the stones for the walls of Pentridge Prison. A dam on the Merri creek has made part of the former quarry into an ornamental lake. It is the most attractive place in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg.

In the last decade the park has acquired some sculptures; there is a winner of previous sculpture shows, a donation from sister cities and even an abandoned sculpture. However the scale of the park with its the tall eucalypts tends to dwarf even large sculptures. (I have written blog entries about the sculpture “Man of the Valley” and about other sculptures in the City of Moreland in Sculptures in Brunswick and the Moreland Sculpture Show).

The Moreland Sculpture Show was shown in the park for several years and this has contributed two permanent sculptures to the park by Melbourne-based artists. The sculpture show was moved out the Coburg Lake Reserve due to persistent vandalism to the sculptures (and the annual sculpture show was last year replaced with an installation show).

Lisa Jane Miller, “Fish Out of Water”, 2002, ceramic tiles on ferro cement

“Fish Out of Water” by Lisa Jane Miller was Moreland Sculpture Award Winner and Public Choice Award Winner at the Moreland Sculpture Show 2002. Decorated with a mosaic of ceramic tiles on ferro cement, with a large fish rising out of a dry basin. This sculpture is a plea for Australia to treat refugees more humanly, written in the glaze of the ceramic tiles. Another “Fish out of Water – Inhumanity 1” won the Northcote Pottery Award at the 2005 Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show; it was, again, in Miller’s preferred media is ceramic tiles and ferro cement. When the sculpture was first installed the area of the park was largely undeveloped and it really looked like a fish out of water. Now it looks at home as there is a children’s playground next to it with a giant game of Twister, swings, a flying fox, seating and some colourful play-sculptural elements.

Liz Hewitt, “Ship to Warf”, 2003, painted cement

Liz Hewitt’s “Ship to Warf” is a series of three red knots of cast concrete. The sculpture was abandoned by the sculptor at the end of the Moreland Sculpture Show, donating it to Moreland City in 2003 (a donation that the council has foolishly yet to officially accept). “Ship to Warf” works well as public sculpture in that it is elegant, provokes the imagination and you can be stand or sit on it.

Coburg Lake Reserve is a popular park and a great place for a picnic. The park is well equipped with a hall/meeting room, a stage, several children’s playgrounds, picnic and BBQ areas. When I was photographing “Ship to Warf” there were a couple of galahs walking around on the grass (for more about the birds at Coburg Lake Reserve see Eremaea Birds).

Gahlah @ Coburg Lake Reserve

Coburg 2010

“Coburg – it’s beautiful. Look around. It’s a great place to live.” The young man said leaning out of his black car as he drove slowly past me.

This is Coburg, not the city in Germany, but it’s namesake, Coburg, a suburb in the north of Melbourne, Australia. The sky was blue, the bottlebrush trees were in flower, covering the sidewalk in drifts of yellow stamin, but it is just a suburban street. He must be high on something but he is right.

“It great place” I replied and he drove on.

Coburg is a friendly area; people still talk to each other on the street. The northern suburbs have a great street culture because people use the street, people walk, people shop on the Sydney Rd., rather than the hyper-reality of shopping malls. The 19^th century architecture of the longest shopping strip in Melbourne is part of the reason why Brunswick and Coburg has a good street culture.

When my Lebanese neighbour’s son got married I knew about it. Part of the festivities took place in the small front garden of their house. There was drumming, dancing, bride and groom held on people’s shoulders, ululation, car horns, rice thrown… a real wedding, not a hyper-real wedding at a wedding reception place where everything is perfectly contrived. Certainly the autumn weather wasn’t perfect but it didn’t rain on the festivities.

And the street culture is improving; in recent years there has been a marked increase in cafes on Sydney Rd., a greater variety of restaurants than the Turkish restaurants that Sydney Rd is famous.

Pentridge Prison, Coburg

Along with the prison a large amount of 19^th and turn of the century buildings were constructed in Coburg. There is the oldest school building in Melbourne along with other old buildings around the old Pentridge Prison. There are also magnificent turn of the century mansions on The Grove and The Avenue. And there are pieces of heritage listed architecture scattered around Coburg’s streets one of my favourites is the American Cottage on the west side of Moreland station at 21 Station Street.

19th century school building on Sydney Rd. Coburg

The Moreland City council has a bold ambitious $1 billion plan, the Coburg Initiative, to remodel heart of the suburb. Lorna Edwards reported on Coburg’s “Extreme Makeover” in The Age (18/3/10). So far the only materialization of this plan has been the redevelopment of the front of the Coburg’s railway station, the redevelopment of the former Pentridge Prison and the construction of more medium and high-density housing. Every possible old building in the suburb is being converted into flats.

The new entrance and surround to the city bound entrance to Coburg’s 19^th century, gothic revival train-station. It isn’t much just a few steps, paving stones and landscaping but the bicycle path is now safely separate from the train-station entrance. The new entrance replaces the bodged railings, paths, the over-grown shrubs and scraggly trees that formerly surrounded the station. However, the other side of the station is still a neglected gravel parking lot with a large open drain and no lighting.

I had a dream that I was returning home to my street in Coburg from a long journey. I found that my street has been grassed over and that my neighbours were playing cricket and having BBQs where there once was tarmac. The biggest problems in Coburg are the cars, the vast expanse of ugly parking lots that accommodates them and Melbourne’s poor public transport.

Victoria Street Mall Coburg

This small one-block pedestrian mall on Victoria Street in Coburg is a bustling micro urban environment is centre of Coburg’s shopping precinct. It is very popular, seldom deserted from dawn until dusk. Buskers have been making regular appearances in the mall and it is the location for two award winning sculptures. It makes a change from all the car parks, the major eyesores in Coburg shopping precinct. Waterfield Rd. has large car parks on both sides; the road is nothing but an extended carpark and loading bay.

Victoria St. Mall, Coburg

The mall is almost completely full of tables from the cafes and their customers. Most of the mall is made of cafes (the Half Moon Café does the best falafels) but there is also the public library, the post office and the tobacconist on the corner of Sydney Road. The addition of a large public picnic table in the mall has been very welcomed adding a large public table space. Out the front of the Coburg library the long row of seat are also very popular with a wide range of locals.

Robert Waghorn - Doorstop II

Robert Waghorn was the winner of the 2007 Moreland Sculpture Show. His winning sculpture, Doorstop II, is on exhibition in the foyer of the Coburg Public Library. The sculpture, Doorstop II is a rather ominous oblong work, with what appears to be a small prison door on a metal plinth. The prison door, with heavy bolts, chalk graffiti marks and a view window is held ajar by a pile of small brightly painted houses, a final optimistic note to the sculpture. The houses holding open the cell door made me think of the nearby conversion of the former Pentridge Prison into Pentridge Village, housing estate. Although the sculpture appears to be made of rusted iron it is painted and oxidized wood. The little houses are painted with bright brushstrokes of colour, contributing to their optimistic note and contrasting to the detail of the prison door. In 2006 Robert Waghorn received two highly commended awards at the Contemporary Art Soc. Annual exhibition for Doorstop and another similar sculpture. Both of these sculptures were earlier versions of the idea for Doorstop II. This demonstrates that there is some consistency in art prize judging in Melbourne and that the Contemporary Art Soc. is still relevant.

Coburg really needs a purpose built Library rather than the remoulded former supermarket currently used as a library. Such a library could accommodate Waghorn’s sculpture better and wouldn’t flood after heavy rain; every night the doors of the Coburg Library are ‘sandbagged’ with bags of old books. (A new drainage system in front of the library has reduced the chances of the library flooding but a purpose built Library is still needed.)

At the corner of Victoria Street and Waterfield Road there is another sculpture, a small bronze house, a simplified but typical of Australian house, on a mild steel plinth. This is Dwelling by Jason Waterhouse, the winner of the 2005 Moreland Sculpture Show. The house has a corridor with a corridor leading straight through it. Unfortunately this corridor is used, as so often these spaces are in public sculpture, as a place to put rubbish. It also suffers, like many public sculptures, from pigeon’s droppings.

Jason Waterhouse - Dwelling

There is obviously a great lack of pedestrian space and other infrastructure in Coburg and as in Waghorn’s Doorstop II, the door to this better life has just been held ajar.

Moreland Sculpture Show 2009

Early Tuesday morning I bicycled to see the Moreland Sculpture Show 2009 at Bridges Reserve in Coburg. Although it was only 10am I was not alone in the park. Some people were walking through on the way to the shops and they stopped to look especially after walking over Kitty Owens and Mary Zbierski pavement painting ‘Magic Carpet’ (Ghost Chinese Market Garden). And, also a class of children from Coburg Primary School, from just across Bell St., were looking at the sculpture with their teacher.

Kitty Owens & Mary Zbierski - "Magic Carpet (Ghost Chinese Market Garden)"

At the entrance of the park Tim Craker’s “Botanical Data Files” is a banner of images of leaves cuts from orange plastic fencing. Craker leaves the cut out remains under the installation. Over the years there has been an increased focus on the annual theme of the show; this year’s theme was “Growth”. There is increased interest in ephemeral art rather than traditional sculpture in permanent materials with the inclusion of a $1,000 Ephemeral Award (non-acquisitive). And the definition of the sculpture for the show has been expanded to definitely include installations. Last year’s winner “The Future is Now” by Joel Bliss is still on exhibit in the park. (See my review of last year’s Moreland Sculpture Show. )

Stephanie Karvasilis - 'The Grass is Greener'

Many of the works on exhibit were by artist-gardeners that incorporated living pants in the sculptural work; (see my entry on Artist-Gardeners). ‘The Grass is Greener’ by Stephanie Karvasilis is a portable garden, a suitcase full of grass. Karvasilis’s work exists in multiples, one of which can also seen in the Victoria St. mall, in Coburg’s shopping strip. Amanda Hills includes growing parsley in her sculpture/installation ‘Apiaceous (liked by bees)’. And Gina Cahayagan’s ‘Bird’, although basically a pot plant holder in the shape of a bird, is ingeniously made of mostly of plastic cable ties.

David Marshall - 'Petecormic Growth'

David Marshall’s sculpture ‘Petecormic Growth’ is also clearly a gardening sculpture. ‘Petecormic Growth’ is a fantastic concept using the Pete plastic bottles stuck into a large burnt log. During the drought in Melbourne people have these bottles stuck around their garden and Marshall has made this ordinary object look like beautiful crystals.

Laurie Collins - 'Seed'

There are sculptures in the show made of more permanent materials. Laurie Collins sculpture ‘Seed’ is a circle of found metal objects with a painted green sprout at the centre. And looking closer, on the green sprout a male and female figure sprout. Tony Farrell’s ‘Out of the Ashes’ a metal base relief scene made using found materials. Regina Wells followed recent trends of using mirrors in sculpture with her work ‘Still Reaching For The Sky’, a cluster of pine logs with mirrors on top reflecting the sky; the school kids said that it looked “like sushi rolls”.

Regina Wells - 'Still Reaching For The Sky'

The exhibition included two political works Liz Walker’s ‘Advance Australia Where?’ that was damaged on Sunday 14/6 had been replaced with a photo and a notice from the Moreland Council. Moreland Sculpture Show has had problems with vandalism for many years but vandalism with a Australian nationalist political agenda is new.

There was also an anonymous inclusion of a site-specific, post-minimalist, plastic-crate sculpture with collage details from the ‘High School for Coburg’ group that was not officially part of the show.

Marynes Avila - 'Ancient'

Alice Parker’s ‘Growth’ fabric minimalist installation didn’t really work. Dawn Whitehand’s ‘Earth Eggs’ made from unfired clay that would naturally decay was unspectacular. Helen Pollard’s ‘Carry the Message’ made of junk mail origami cranes were very ordinary. And Jo Zito’s ‘Roba Trovata’ was simply ugly.

Coburg

 

“Come to Coburg and experience tradition” is one the lines in the Coburg Traders Assoc. tv advert on Channel 31.

Coburg, Victoria  is on the edge of Melbourne’s old inner 19th suburbs and the outer 20^th century suburbs. A row of terrace houses on Hudson St. shows the point where cars started to influence Melbourne’s architecture; unlike the older inner city terraces, these terrace houses have been built separately to accommodate a carport.

I have enjoyed living in Coburg for two decades. There is a wonderful mix of people on the street from little old Italian men in three piece suits and hats, Muslim women in burkas and fashionably dressed youths. The traditions and bells of the Greek Orthadox church can occasionally be heard from the platform of the adjacent Coburg train station. But “tradition”, like ‘culture’, in Australia mostly refers to non-Anglo-American food and clothing. It is a superficial view of cultures and traditions; as superficial as Australians representing their culture with manufactured food products, like Kraft Vegemite.

The food in Coburg is inexpensive with good quality and variety. There is still a strong Mediterranean tradition influencing the choice of food in Coburg with Middle-Eastern fast food, falafels and kebabs, dominating. Many people in Melbourne know Coburg for its many Turkish restaurants that feature belly-dancers on Friday and Saturday nights.

Another cultural experience is Nila Restaurant that specialise in delicious south Indian style pancakes. The restaurant has TV sets at either end that generally play Bollywood music videos, except when India is playing cricket. On Moslem holy days the TV sets are switched off in the restaurant; this year I went Nila for their all you can eat Ramadan special.

Shopping in Coburg is easy for most items, except there are no bookshops; perhaps there are too many different languages in Coburg for a single bookshop to survive. In recent years more Indian shops have opened selling grocery shops everything from CD to rice and Indian clothing.

Mark Holsworth in Indian suit

I have just bought myself an Indian suit, so that I can me cool, comfortable and well dressed at the next event requiring ‘formal/traditional’ dress held on an extremely hot day. Is this a experiencing tradition or am I just wearing something different?

 

“Man of the Valley”

 

Antonio Masini’s sculpture “Man of the Valley” is a gift from the Italian cities of Viggiano and Grumento. The sculpture is, in the words of Antonio Masini, “a tribute to the thousands of Lucanian migrants throughout the world and in Australia in particular. This monument represents the determination and courage inherent in the immigrant.”

The 2+ metre tall, one-tonne cast-bronze figure has been given a spectacular location by Coburg City Council in Coburg Lake Reserve. It stands on a square concrete plinth located on top of a small granite cliff that overlooks the valley where the Merri Creek flows and the park’s main picnic area. The cliff is not a natural feature; prisoners from the now closed Pentridge Prison across the road it was quarried out to build their prison walls. The quarry has been replaced with a small lake and a park.

Antonio Masini "Man of the Valley"

“Man of the Valley” is beside the Merri Creek bicycle path. The best way to see Coburg’s sculpture is on a bicycle as most are located near bicycle paths. The park had a friendly atmosphere when I visited in the morning on my bicycle. There were ducks and two black swans with four cygnets swimming in the creek. There was Middle Eastern music playing as a band set up in the park’s band-shell. Families were setting up for picnics; the work ‘picnic’ is Turkish and Coburg’s Turkish migrant population makes good use of the parks. A man says: “Hello, my brother” to me as I pass, I prefer that to the nationalist political charged word – “mate”.

The sculptor Antonio Masini was born in Italy in 1933. He is a painter and sculptor in the New Figurative style (not that term means much as a description except that the images are not abstract). Masini has exhibited around the world; in 1977 he exhibited at the International Originals Gallery in Melbourne. “Man of the Valley” is a companion to “Man in the Wind” (2001), a bronze sculpture dedicated to the Italian migrants in Canada, located in Montreal.

The man is just a man, it is not a portrait but he has a pleasant face. His body is not classical or elegant but the simplified form of a clothed modern man. His arms are raised allowing the sheet or cloak that he carries catches a fresh wind. It is a point between the symbolic and ordinary emotion of determined exaltation made monumental. ‘Exaltation’ is to hold something up, represented in the figure holding up the sheet. The back of the sheet has some dynamic folds making the back of the sculpture as interesting as its front.

Coburg needs more sculpture to make the suburb feel more individual and to celebrate the variety of people from around the world who living here. And so I say, thank you to the cities of Viggiano and Grumento for the “Man of the Valley”.

Moreland Sculpture Show

 

The solution to the recurrent vandalism of the Moreland Sculpture Show in previous years has been found with a change of the location from Coburg Lake Reserve to Bridges Reserve. This along, with the threat of video cameras watching the sculpture reported in the Moreland Leader, has allowed even some fragile sculptures to survive, so far unscathed.

The sidewalks of the park are covered with stencil painted signs announcing the show; showing the extensive influence of stencil art on Melbourne.

The theme of the show is “the future is now.” Given the threat of global warning this was interpreted by most of the artist as an environmental concern. Recycling is a dominant theme of the show; 9 of the 19 artists used recycled material in their sculptures. The use of recycled steel by Mark Cowie in “The Kneeling Square” or Kelly-Ann Lees “Totem After Kippel” demonstrate that good non-figurative public sculpture can be made from recycled materials. Tanja George’s “Tur Door: Please Open”, uses recycled steel in the tradition of Ernst and Picasso’s sculptures transforming these found materials into a figure.

Bonnie Lane took the use of recycled materials to an interesting extreme with her work “All You Need”. Lane found all she needed on the streets of Moreland, obviously making good use of the recent hard rubbish collection. She found enough for a home, well, a letter box, front door, chairs, coffee table etc. And she arranged this as a home behind the wire fence at the back of the pool to surreal effect.

Not all of the sculptures with an environmental theme were made of recycled materials. One of the best sculptures in the show is Jim Howson’s “In need of reversal”, showed a historical view of the local environment in a series of four elegant eucalyptus leaf forms in steal and wood. Candy Stevens went further on the environmental theme creating a living sculpture of grass, titled prosaically “Keep Off the Grass”.

With all of the sculptures on environmental themes or using recycled material it is important to note that there were other good sculptures. Paul Allen’s impressive “Mandala #3” a rather two-dimensional sculpture of milled steel painted red, yellow and black that transforms the view of the park when you look through it. And, David Marshall’s “Quinta Essentia” of stone and steel makes a hero of the humble paperclip without looking like a Claus Oldenburg.

Some of the sculptures would be better suited to private or smaller gardens, like Liz Walker’s “Shop Till You Drop” (I last saw it in a gallery but it looks even better out in a garden with a small tree growing in it). Yoshi T. Machida’s “Where to?” would look great in a smaller intimate garden; it looks like a large bird with elegant curving metal legs and body of wood and stone.

Melbourne needs more public sculptures especially in the suburbs and it is good to see so many strong works in this year’s Moreland Sculpture Show. I hope that other city councils follow Moreland’s example.