The Nest in Darebin Parklands

“Look, a sculpture!” A cyclist says to her companions as they roll by following the curve of the cycle trail through Darebin Parklands.

David Michael Bell and Gary Tippett, The Nest, 2012

The Nest by David Michael Bell and Gary Tippett is obvious. A brown sphere positioned halfway up a hill, half surrounded by a pond. Large enough to be a minor landmark in the park. The round form fits with the undulating landscape.

Although it can be seen from the cycle trail, access to the sculpture is via a circuitous route. You can’t walk directly to it because there is a pond is packed with rushes and reeds, providing a home for waterfowl in front of it. You have to walk through natural a parkland of indigenous flora and fauna to reach sculpture.

The simple round form of The Nest, made from recycled wood, becomes more complex on closer inspection. The pieces of wood making the form creating patterns. Their brown painted hand chiselled surface. You can look at an easy to navigate 3D sketch of The Nest and even see inside it.

David Bell, Raising the Rattler Pole

Its sculptors have an unusual career path. Bell moved from being a theatre stage manager to a prop maker to public sculpture. “Five years ago, I did my first public artwork with Gary Tippett, a film industry colleague, in Wodonga’s main street. Since then, public art has been my full-time passion and interest.” What’s On Blog’s interview with Bell. Bell’s up-ended tram on the corner of Spencer and Flinders Street Raising the Rattler Pole – The Last of the Connies. (Bell and Tippett are not alone in moving from theatre to public sculpture; there is also William Eicholtz.)

Bell and Tippett know how to make a dramatic statement dressing the urban stage. The main problem with their sculptures is that they are set dressing, meaningless decorations that get looks but say nothing. The best that can be said for them is that they fit in their location. They are passable but not great; the cyclists don’t stop for a second look as they pass by.

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Fairfield Industrial Dog Object

Banks, bakeries, hairdressers and dry cleaners are the basic requirements of local shopping. Where once there were newsagents, milk bars and tobacconists, there are now yoga studios and cafés. There are almost identical pockets of shops around train stations across Melbourne. More or less, indistinguishable roads, intersections and train stations except for Fairfield that has FIDO.

The city council had tried to bring art to the area to make the intersection less anonymous. The City of Darebin was formed in 1994. In 1994 they installed four mosaics by a young Simon Normand. Normand went on to do more public art in Victoria and Northern Territory. The mosaics have local references to the rail crossing. Mosaics were once fashionable for public art in Melbourne, the whole town was covered in tiles; from pubs to butcher shops. (See my blog post Time and Tiles) But you can’t see the pavement from the train. Something larger was required.

The Fairfield Industrial Dog Object (FIDO) by Ian Sinclair, Jackie Staude, David Davies and Alistair Knox is a big dog. It is large enough that a man can walk under it without ducking. And only 29 cm shorter than the 579 cm golden statue of the ruler of Turkmenistan’s favourite dog, so not the biggest dog sculpture in the world.

Made of recycled hardwood, painted brown and standing beside the railway at the Fairfield Station. A geometric industrial mongrel, there is a bit of Mambo and Keith Haring’s dogs in it. It is somewhere between another ludic sculpture for public amusement, like Larry La Trobe, and, as the acronym suggests, Emily Floyd’s self-descriptive Signature Piece (Rabbit).

There was the usual controversy about the sculpture when it was first proposed in 1999. People who believe that local government should only be about road and rubbish collection objected to money being spent on anything else. Like Cassandra, their predictions of doom were ignored; unlike Cassandra, they were wrong.

The dog is not a Trojan Horse with a couple of Greek heroes hiding in its hollow torso. The metal access hatch in the belly is cut with stars and, the other metalwork on the dog is by Jackie Staude. It provides access to the machinery that operated the dogs interactive functions. The interactive parts stopped in 2006 but FIDO continues to serve as a minor landmark for the suburb.