Increased interactions with public sculpture

I was asked how to increase interactions with public sculptures, and my first thought was: “do you really want that?” Like the fairy stories where wishes become your nemesis.

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For example, consider Brunswick Street in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, which was once alive with rock music. The plinth on which the statue of Mr Poetry perched was covered with band posters. This was the sculptor’s intention; “Post Bills Here” declares the stencil letters on the plinth. It was not the artist’s intention that the accumulated posters would then be set alight by drunken revellers, but it would happen regularly, making way for more.

A couple of trucks have hit Mr Poetry in his lifetime, but being a bronze sculpture can be repaired. After the death of the model, Adrain Rawlins, the sculpture became a memorial with the addition of another plaque. The sculptor intended neither of these. (For more on the statue see my post on Mr Poetry.)

When they are first made, sculptures are veiled. Some public statues are dressed up for religious or secular reasons. Statues were regularly dressed up in ancient Rome and Greece. The ancient Roman historian Suetonius reports that Emperor Caligula had a statue of himself that was dressed in an identical suit of clothing to the one that he would be wearing that day. Idols are bathed in milk, oils, perfumes and cosmetics. And my neighbours give their garden statues a fresh coat of paint. Hindu idols are covered in garlands of orange and yellow flowers. Statues might still be dressed on special occasions, like the Japanese Ojizo-sama or Kitsune statues with red bibs.

Melbourne street artists who have dressed up the statue of Redmond Barry in front of the State Library, or, more frequently, The Three Businessmen who brought their own lunch. At what point are these alterations and additions subverting the sculptor’s intention? When the prankster takes over the sculpture to create their own platform.

Extinction Rebellion subverting The Three Businessmen…
(photo by XR Darebin Group, 2020)

There are sculptures that the public use to illustrate the times: like Melbourne’s The Three Businessmen… dressed up in face masks for the bushfire and now for the COVID-19 virus. (I don’t have any photos of these statues as they were temporary; I wasn’t regularly visiting the city then.) The Three Businessmen… isn’t great as a sculpture, but it does work as a public sculpture. Accessible because it is not on a plinth. It presents the opportunity for public interactions, from putting a cigarette in one of their pursed lips to holding their hands and touching the hand so much that it broke off due to public interaction.

The public has an involuntary relationship with public art. People climb, skate on, or tag; some might even find it an obstruction, an intrusion, or even an object of oppression. Artists and the people who commission public art often think about increasing interactions with public art, but you don’t want all the interactions.

Generations of people may have sat on it and climbed on it; touching and sitting are the most common interactions with public art. You can see where the surfaces of sculptures are worn by their touch. Other times there are accidental interactions. These interactions cannot be controlled any more than the weather. No one wants to collide with a sculpture, but accidents happen. Nobody intends to have sculpture porn, other controversies, kleptomaniacs, vandals on ice or accidental interactions with cars and trucks. Be careful of what you wish for.

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Statuemania

Statuemania (noun) is a portmanteau word used for over a century to describe the obsession with erecting statues.

Barbara McLean’s Daphne Akhurst bust

Statuemania is alive and well in Australia. However, Australia’s love of statues is like a gambler who has already lost a fortune but keeps placing bets. Having spent a fortune erecting a memorial, Australia tries to solve more problems by erecting memorials and statues. And consequently, per head of dead or living military personnel, Australia has spent more on war memorials than any other country. The Australian government is spent $140m-plus for the WWI centenary, compared to the British government spending £55m ($94m) Paul Daley reported in The Guardian (15/10/2013). Lest we forget that Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance was the most expensive sculpture commission in the country’s history.

But the multitude of military memorials is just the pointy peak of Australia’s statuemania. More bits of cast bronze are scattered across the country like shrapnel. A statue of Shakespeare in Ballarat, a city that never existed in Shakespeare’s life. A whole street of statues and other memorials along North Terrace in Adelaide; the avenue of heroes, a feature that Melbourne aspired to but could never agree on what road, Swanston Street, Exhibition Street, or St. Kilda Parade.

There is a circle of thirty-two bronze busts on grey concrete plinths outside the Rod Laver Area. One of every person who has won the Australian Tennis Open. The Australian Tennis Hall of Fame is all the work of one woman, Barbara McLean. McLean specialises in making sculpture portraits from photographs. I’d prefer to see one of McLean’s leggy surrealist sculptures than another of her portrait busts, but I can guess which one pays the bills.

Phrenology should not be conducted on these busts because it will reveal nothing. The image of the Australian Tennis Open winner does nothing to our understanding of their place in history. The shape of the skulls of those depicted means nothing but the monied influence of their supporter says everything. What these statues show is political power and how it distorts history. They create the antique relationship to public space where private money can buy a position in a public space forever, preserving a world where money buys respect; the statues of Michael Gudinski (also at Rod Laver Arena), or General Sun Yat Sen in Chinatown, for example.

Why is it a problem? You might be thinking, why aren’t I enjoying all this public art; after all, I am the author of a book on the topic, Sculptures of Melbourne. Sculptors won’t tell you it’s a problem, not while people put money in their pockets. Statuemania keeps foundries and sculptors in business. It preys on the weakness of uninspired, uninformed people who want to do something good. In the last decade, new sculpture foundries have been established in Melbourne to cater to the increased demand.

These statues are “art” in the same way that photographs of bananas in a supermarket advert are “art” as opposed to “copy”. And in the past, statues were serious art, which doesn’t ensure they always will be. That public money is spent on a statue takes away from better public art.

Statues were once exhibitions of technological accomplishment, wealth and power, shock and awe. The technical achievement of casting a giant bronze statue was a public demonstration that the society had highly skilled professionals and the wealth to employ them. Now the technology of making sculptures has been superseded. However, colossal statues are still made as demonstrations of wealth and power. Statue measuring competitions exist because they are erected by patriarchal dicks.

”For more on this topic, read GaryYounge’s “Why Every Single Statue Should Come Down”.

Barbara McLean’s Patrick Rafter bust

Kangaroo Apple

In a small garden beside a road to the Frankston foreshore, near a beachside restaurant, there is a giant Kangaroo Apple fruit. Not another giant roadside tourist attraction, like the Big Pineapple, but a sculpture by prominent local Indigenous artists Vicki Couzens (Gunditjmara) and Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/Yorta Yorta/Wamba Wamba/Boon Wurrung). Unlike the big things, the Kangaroo Apple is not painted to appear real, although there are two green patinas on the surface of the bronze, a dark green for the fruit and a lighter green for the stem.

Kangaroo Apple, Vicki Couzens and Maree Clarke, 2009

Couzens and Clarke have often collaborated on public art, from Frankston in Melbourne’s east to Footscray in its western suburbs (sometimes with other Indigenous women). There is Kangaroo Apple in Frankston from 2009, Frog Dreaming in Point Cook from 2009,  Spirit of the Land in Oakleigh from 2010, and Wominjeka tarnuk yooroom (Welcome bowl) in Footscray from 2013. (For more about Wominjeka tarnuk yooroom see my post about Public Sculpture in Footscray. And my review of the Maree Clarke exhibition at the NGV, the first solo show by a living Victorian Aboriginal artist at the NGV.)

The sculpture is of the bulbous fruit of the Kangaroo Apple (Solanum laciniatum) a native shrub with purple-blue flowers, represented by the star-shaped floret on the side.  It is a symbol of the arrival of ‘eel season,’ a harvest festival where women would wear the Kangaroo Apple flowers.

Kangaroo Apple was part of the Frankston foreshore renewal public art project. It is an example of relevant public art city councils should be investing in.  It is not a major landmark sculpture for the area (nor in the career of the two artists). It is a way marker showing and reminding us where we are and where we have come from. A sculpture connected with the location, with connections to Country that give added meaning to a place.

Ersatz culture

Not that I approve of throwing trash into rivers, but I sympathise with the guys who threw a Gillie and Marc bronze statue of baby Sumatran orangutang into the Yarra last month. For post is about rejecting substitutes filling in for culture rather than sending sculptures to a watery grave. 

It is possible to produce something made from acorns that almost tastes like coffee. Like ersatz coffee, ersatz art provides aesthetics without any stimulating quality. The borrowed German word for a substitute implies a diminished experience rather than an alternative.

Ersatz culture is presented as a substitute for something of superior quality. It is fake, a pretend, simulated or imitation culture that can be used to fill a space that would contain culture. It might appear to be the same as the real thing on a quick pass, but there is no depth. It does not comment on current issues or events. It does not risk failure. It uses sentimentality, nationalism and other affiliations to distract the audience from thinking about what is in front of them.

It occurs when an artist’s or organisation’s ambitions fail to rise above being popular with the public or the ruling elite. When the expedient, cost-effective and safest options are taken. If sincerity is the credit rating of an artist, the insincerity of ersatz culture bankrupts the future. Sure it fills the space and tastes like it, but it does not make for a meaningful life.

I’m not alone in describing statues as ersatz. When the U.S. Postal Service mistakenly featured a half-sized Las Vegas replica of the Statue of Liberty on a new stamp, a “stamp collector noticed the error when he spotted differences in the ersatz statue’s eyes and hair.” (Slate, April 15, 2011) And Melbourne, like Las Vegas and most big cities, is full of substitute culture, from statues by Gillie and Marc (or David Bromley) to reality tv shows.

The problem is culture substitutes fill in the space that culture occupies without providing a sense of identity or recognition of your existence (aside from selling you the t-shirt and other merchandise). Cultural impoverishment results in a lack of meaning in many people’s lives; an empty psychic space filled with addictions, despair and rage.

If hotel room art and other such vacuous stuff is the only part of your cultural diet, then there are problems. Sugar is not a substitute for fruit. It is why I prefer to look at, and even review, exhibitions by amateur artists rather than work by competent artists/designers like Ken Done, David Bromley, or Gillie and Marc. There is something essentially different between art desperately trying to achieve something, even if it fails, then commercially successful stuff.

Bad art is only a failure, but ersatz art occupies the space that would otherwise be filled with art. Bad art rots and rapidly breaks down, an actor dies on stage, and from that compost heap, new art grows. Ersatz art does not decompose as rapidly; nothing grows from it, as it fails to inspire. It neuters the generative power of art and will generate nothing but superficial sentimentality communicated in easy-to-read images. It has no impact on future arts and culture.

Gillie and Marc’s sculptures have no value other than a selfie feedback loop of ever-diminishing relevance. They tempt city councils and other controllers of property with the offer of free sculpture exhibitions that do nothing but raise the profile of Gillie and Marc. (Read an earlier post about a street artist’s reply to Gillie and Marc’s “Paparazzi Dogs”.)

Visiting McClelland Sculpture Park

I remember climbing on the pile of white bubbles with my siblings when we first visited the NGV. Health and safety have changed significantly since then. “Don’t climb” reduces the meaning of Peter Corlett’s Tarax play sculpture 1969. Corlett’s inspiration was from a formal teaching exercise about sculpture, starting with a composition with different-sized balls of clay.

Peter Corlett, Tarax Bubble Sculpture at McClelland Sculpture Park

It is no longer at the NGV but part of a collection of about a hundred sculptures by notable local and international artists at McClelland Sculpture Park. The park is a not-for-profit organisation located on sixteen-hectare property in Langwarrin on the city’s eastern edge. Like Melbourne University’s Parkville campus McClelland is a place where sculptures go to retire from public life. And along with the Bubble Sculpture, Ken Reinhard’s Marland House Sculpture 1970-72, Lenton Parr’s Customs House screen 1966 and Zikaras’ Untitled (GPO) 1964 all had previous lives as public art. Since 2012, the Southern Way McClelland Commissions have been installed along freeways. One moves from the freeway site every two years to McClelland’s sculpture park. However, I didn’t see Gregor Kregars Reflective Lullaby (aka Frankie the chrome gnome) because it was on loan to Frankston Council.

The collection attempts to tell the history of Melbourne’s post-war sculpture from the modern to the contemporary. Zikaras’ Untitled (Eta) 1961-62 is the earliest sculpture in the park. Phil Price’s spectacular, kinetic sculpture Tree of Life 2012 is the most recent.

Many of the sculptors were post-war modernists with optimistic dreams. The Centre Five group of Vincas Jomantas, Julius Kane, Inge King, Clifford Last, Lenton Parr, Norma Redpath, and Teisutis Ziakaras are all represented; an early Inge King recognisable from the bubbling molten and arty edges on the black steel.

Norma Redpath, Paesaggio Cariatide (Landscape Caryatid) 1980-85

There are notes of dissent and critical views. Ken Scarlett’s Monument to a segregationist is amazingly prescient in its critique of monumental colonial sculpture. He could see this in 1966; we are playing catch-up to his critical vision of the history of sculpture. Along with the more recent work by Colin Suggett, National Anxiety Index 2010 with a dragon ripping the rating arrow out of its scale.

Although the gallery had a retrospective of Fiona Foley, no Indigenous artists are in the permanent collection. Still, hopefully, the new board member, Associate Professor Michael-Shawn Fletcher (Wiradjuri), Director of Research Capability at the Indigenous Knowledge Institute and the Associate Dean (Indigenous) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne, will work to rectify this.

There have been new acquisitions, including two audio works that caught my ears: Terrance Plowright’s Tubular resonance 2012 and David Chesworth’s In The Dark Wood At The Bottom Of The Garden 1996.

Adding natural synergies to Peter Blizzard’s jazzy constructions of stone and steel. The bush setting worked for some of the works. However, nature is irrepressible; birds nest in Louis Paramor’s sculptures, and spiders spin webs in David Wilson’s.

Dean Colls Rex Australis, the king is dead long live the king 2012

It is not an easy walk around the grounds, especially in wet weather where the paths can be slippery or the low parts of lawns sodden. Dirt paths lead to some sculptures; some can only be seen from a distance on islands in ponds. A small boy in gum boots enjoys the puddles, and a visiting dog looked like it was having its best day seeing Dean Colls’ Rex Australis.

I enjoyed seeing works by familiar sculptures by local artists. Even more was the encounter with the unfamiliar sculptures Gary Diermenjian, a surreal sight, evoking urban infrastructure and the remains of a failed civilisation.

The elegant minimalist breeze block gallery, gift shop and cafe building, designed by architects Munro and Sargents in 1971, is another modernist statement reminiscent of Heide I by David McGlashan in 1963.

Gary Diermenjian, Flake 2010

Four Adelaide Sculptures

Considering two sculptures at the Adelaide Station Environs and two in Rundle Mall. The former are two prominent local late-modernist sculptors; large sculptures focused on formal qualities. The latter are contemporary sculptures focused on facilitating interactions.

Robert Kipple’s Bronze Sculpture Number 714 1968 has a reflexive quality like all of Kipple’s mature sculptures; its subject refers to its own creation. An assemblage of wooden parts used for casting steel machine parts cast as bronze sculptures. The machine aesthetic of Dada and Surrealism played out a casual conglomeration.

There is a balance of tones, curves and straight lines in Akio Makigawa’s Elements and Being 1989. It is one of his largest sculptural groups with five separate elements: a column with a pillow on top, a square pavilion with a round roof, a curved form and two obelisks topped with a flame and a cloud. Lyrical, but its black and white stone appears cold and unapproachable.

Makigawa’s time in Australia reminds me of the end of the White Australia Policy (before that, Australia was an apartheid state like South Africa and now Israel). Makigawa was only allowed to move to Australia because the policy was officially over. For more on Makigawa, see my earlier post. 

People passing by barely glance at these sculptures. The Makigawa looks like it is part of the entrance to the Intercontinental Hotel. Both the Kipple and Makigawa sculptures project the statement that this is art, so do not touch.

Compare this to sculptures of the animals in the Rundle Mall: the four pigs and the pigeon. A bronze pig is going for bronze rubbish atop an actual rubbish bin. It is not high art, it doesn’t mean much, but it does a lot of work in the mall. A Day Out 1999 is the work of Sydney-based sculptor Marguerite Derricourt.

These are much-loved pigs; their noses and bodies polished by the hands of many people. Sat on by children and a few adults. The pigs were named by members of the public in 1999. Horatio, Truffles, Oliver, Augusta; plaques record the pigs’ names and the names of the namers. 

A boy runs up and taps the chest of the stainless steel and brass Pigeon before running back to rejoin his family; his younger sister follows suit. This is not some feral pigeon; the ring on its leg indicates it is a racing pigeon or a pet. The angular metal pigeon, geometric rather than realist, is a recent addition from 2020. It is the first public sculpture of Paul Sloan, not the American actor, director and screenwriter, but the Adelaide-based artist.

These are more than selfie-props; they serve as waymarkers, physical elements of the mall outside the commercial. Unlike Kipple and Makigawa, neither Derricourt nor Sloan are well known. The aesthetic difference between these four sculptures is reflected in a debate in the Adelaide City Council about replacing words in their public sculpture commissions from “cheeky” and “subversive” to “beautiful”. If they want “beautiful” they should quadruple their budget because it is that much rarer.

Enjoying the absence of Batman

In the light of the removal of the statue of James Cook in Cooktown earlier this year and the Hobart City Council’s decision to remove the statue of the racist head-hunter and state premier William Crowther earlier this month, I look at the absence of two others. And find out what happens when statues of the city’s founders are removed.

At 433 Collins Street, on a block bounded by Collins, William and Market Streets, and Flinders Lane, amidst Melbourne’s cathedrals of commerce, the gothic revival banks, with their carved stone and stained glass windows, there once stood an icon of modernism. Built in 1964, the National Mutual Building had 20 floors of office space, a retail area and a rooftop restaurant.

In front of it, the modernist architecture continued with a wide forecourt, with steps, concrete paver, and planters. Symbolic of the capitalism of the area, the Melbourne pub-rock band, Painters and Dockers, played “Die Yuppie! Die!” in the plaza. Also in the plaza, symbolic of implicit greed, were two statues celebrating the colonial establishment of Melbourne. The two figures were distanced, for neither were friends: John Batman and William Fawkner.

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  Stanley Hammond, John Batman Memorial, 1978

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  Michael Mezaros, John Pascoe Fawkner, 1978

Gary Foley was decades ahead of the Black Lives Matter when he put the statue of Batman on trial in 1991. Foley and fellow activist Robbie Thorpe put the figure of Batman on trial for his genocide against the Indigenous population of Tasmania, rape, theft and trespass. Of course,  Batman was found guilty, anyone who looks at the evidence would know that, but there was a desperate Australian nationalism that wanted to ignore it.

Its end came in 2012 when a slab smashed onto the forecourt. The ‘experimental’ architecture attaching the skin to the building was failing. The building sat empty, waiting for demolition. The statue of Batman by Stanley Hammond was removed without any bullshit by the site’s developers. The two statues are currently in storage, there are no plans for them, and it is unlikely they will ever return to public view. And for those concerned, Melbourne still has more than enough Batman memorials.

What has been put in place of Batman and Fawkner is more engaging. The seventies were severe, hard-edge geometric. You could sit around the raised garden beds and statues, but it wouldn’t be comfortable. Around the new building, there is a native, drought-resistant garden flowing down the hill. Instead of a bronze figure, there is a bronze fountain in the shape of a Banksia seed pod. A water feature that uses very little water. It wanders playfully between rocks and can be opened and closed with a sluice gate. Nearby a water wall flows down the side of the building.

There has been no evidence of any loss of knowledge of history nor any sanitisation of history. Nor was there any other disaster predictions made about removing statues in recent years because they were uninformed brainfarts from conservative commentators. Instead, it appears that people are enjoying the absence of Batman.