Anthony Pryor “The Legend”

“The Legend”, 1991, stands at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It is a steel sculpture with the upper part suggesting the movement of the football in play. Anthony Pryor wanted it to be a climax of exuberance and energy.

Anthony Pryor, The Legend, MCG

Daryl Jackson describes “The Legend” as a “gateway, an arched figure through which people may journey to the game.” (Joanna Capon, Anthony Pryor: Sculpture & Drawings 1974-1991, Macmillan Education AU, 1999, p.6) When I last saw “The Legend” there were orange bollards around it. I don’t think that the orange bollards around each of the steel pillars were part of the original work but something had to be done for health and safety reasons – just one of the perils of not having a plinth.

The maquette for “The Legend” was made at the studio that Pryor shared with Geoffrey Barlett and Augustine Dall’Ava at 108 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. The actual sculpture fabricated at J K Fasham Pty Ltd a firm that specialize in architectural metal fabrication. (J K Fasham Pty Ltd in Clayton South fabricated many other public sculptures including Deborah Helpburn’s “Ophelia”, Inge King “Sheerwater” and Edward Ginger’s “The Echo” in Melbourne.) The sculptures commission was associated with the re-development at the MCG. It was completed and installed just before Pryor’s untimely death in 1991; he was only 40.

The youngest of three siblings Anthony Pryor was born in Melbourne in 1951. His father Ron Pryor ran a knitwear manufacturing business. Pryor grew up in Melbourne’s northern suburbs where attended Reservoir High School and Preston Technical Collage. It was a tough place in a young man in the late 60s and Pryor thought that he wanted to be an engineer. He changed his mind mid way through an engineering exam and studied sculpture at RMIT. There he met fellow students, his friends, and now, also notable sculptors, Geoffrey Bartlett and Augustine Dall’Ava.

Anthony Pryor, The Performers, 533 St. Kilda Rd.

Pryor’s sculptures are dynamic even though they stand still. They have so much energy zapping around them that they have are lighting bolts and motion blurs. His curved marble forms have metal wings.

Anthony Pryor has other public sculptures in Melbourne, as well as, in Brisbane, at Bond University, in far north Queensland and in central Victoria. There are several of his sculptures outside corporate buildings along St. Kilda Road. In the foyer of 607 St. Kilda Road there is his “Tree of Life 2”. And at 553 St. Kilda Road “The Performers” 1989 metal and marble commissioned by Pomeroy Industries for its development now occupied by the American Consulate General. There is another figure titled “The Performers” at Box Hill Central. This is not the only Pryor sculpture in Melbourne’s outer suburbs; Templestowe City Council acquired “I am a Man Like You” in 1986.

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Shane Warne Bronzed

It was a big day for Melbourne’s public sculpture, a sunny summer morning at the MCG on Thursday the 22^nd of December, 2011 – I wasn’t there I was watching the live broadcast of the event on the ABC News 24.

There were speeches from the Australia Post sponsors and the former cricket captain, Mark Taylor. The speeches were about Shane Warne being “immortalized in bronze” and joining the other statues of Australian sporting heroes at the MCG. After the statue was unveiled Shane Warne made a speech. Speculating on the bowling action of the statue Warne said: “ it looks like a leg break”.

In all the speeches there was no mention of the sculptor but this is typical fate for sculptors, like architects are often anonymous. This is because a sculptor, like an architect, cannot work alone; they need commissions and must work within the tight constraints imposed by those commissions.

The larger than life statue of Shane Warne is by Melbourne sculptor, Louis Lauman who has made all the statues around the MCG. Louis Lauman was born in the Netherlands in 1958 and immigrated to Australia with his family two years later. When he isn’t modelling statues in clay, he works as a technician at Meridian Sculpture Founders and lectures in sculpture at RMIT. Lauman has made many sports statues, religious statues, war memorial statues and the ‘Magic Pudding’ sculpture at the Children’s Garden in Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne.

The new statue is located at Gate 2 of the MCG. It is part of the Australia Post Avenue of Legends series. Australia Post has agreed to sponsor five statues for in Yarra Park over the next five years. (See my post about the other sports themed sculptures in Melbourne: Sporting Heroes).

Sporting sculpture in Melbourne continues to reflect the classical ideals of classical Greek sculpture. The point of classical Greek sculpture was to create memorials to idolized individuals, like athletes. Lauman is aware that the contemporary art world “loathes my sort of work; it has a visceral hatred of it. It took me a decade to make my mark and I realised that if I wanted to do this, I’d have to give something up, and I gave up the gallery circuit a long time ago.” I must admit that I don’t admire Lauman’s statues but I loath Shane Warne more.

Melbourne Shrines – especially the unofficial

Melbourne has many shrines, memorials and monuments, official or unofficial. They are one way of understanding Melbourne’s culture and its variety of religious practices. Although many Australians claim to be Christian their actual religious practice, as indicated by Melbourne’s shrines, includes Australian rules football, culture heroes and ancestor worship.

The Shrine of Remembrance and its the surrounding gardens are the most obvious, best known and largest of Melbourne’s shrines. The MCG is also frequently described as a “shrine to footy”, indicating its religious significance in Melbourne. There are a few Catholic shrines in Melbourne in Kew there is a shrine dedicated to “the Mother Thrice Admirable and Queen of Schoenstatt” (an obscure title of the Virgin Mary) and the St. Anthony National Shrine is in Hawthorn.

It is a curious feature of Melbourne that there are so many shrines, memorials and monuments to people unconnected with Melbourne. There are plenty of 19^th century monuments in Melbourne to monarchs and heroes of the British Empire, including Queen Victoria and General Gordon. The Treasury Gardens contains an ornamental pond with a monument to President John F. Kennedy created by sculptor Raymond Ewers in 1965. This shrine to an American culture hero physically marks Melbourne’s transition from the British to the American sphere of political and cultural influence. The Shrine to Elvis in Melbourne General Cemetery is the only officially approved Memorial to Elvis Presley outside Graceland in Memphis. The religious significance of the immortal Elvis is further explored in an essay by Jennifer Phipps, the Curator of Australian Art – Late Modernism at National Gallery of Victoria.

Roadside shrine in Brunswick

So far I have mentioned only official memorials but there are many temporary and unofficial shrines and memorials in Melbourne. Roadside memorials to the victims of traffic accidents are a common custom. Bunches of flowers, photographs and other mementos are attached to poles or laid on the side of the road close to the spot where the accident occurred. These traffic accident memorials in turn become dangerous distractions to other drivers.

There is a large improvised shrine in the gardens of the Collingwood housing commission flats for the stolen generation and other members of the aboriginal community. It is maintained by the Parkies Inc., a local aboriginal group.

Shrine to the stolen generation

On my explorations of Melbourne’s laneways I encountered an improvised memorial shrine to Nicholas Kennedy (1980-2004). There are a neat row of candles and a vase of sunflowers behind some rubbish bins. Who is remembering him with such dedication all these years later?

“Sue Anne Ware, a landscape architect, has pursued her investigations to a conclusion with a temporary street memorial to people who have died of heroin overdoses [Melbourne Festival 2001, St. Kilda] and a memorial to young people who have died on a country road [2003 ongoing, Gippsland].” (Leon Van Schaik Design City Melbourne, Wiley-Academy, 2006, England, p.113)

Official or unofficial these memorials, these public shrines and monuments map changes in culture and values in Melbourne.

Sporting Heroes

Sport Sculptures in Melbourne

The heritage-listed neon sign of the Italian cyclist Nino Borsari at the eponymous Borsari’s Corner, on the corner of Grattan and Lygon Streets, is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about public art and sport in Melbourne but I had to mention it. The Basil Sellers Art has made me think and write more about art and sport. It is one of the intentions of the art prize not just to have an exhibition and a prize but to encourage a dialogue about art and sport. I’m not so sure that there isn’t this dialogue already. Leon Van Schaik discusses the influence of sport on design in Design City Melbourne, (Wiley-Academy, 2006, England).

Louis Laumen "Sir Donald Bradman" bronze

There are many sports themed sculptures located at Melbourne’s many sporting venues. These are, mostly, conservative, hero-worshipping sculptures in a traditional figurative form, in bronze, on a plinth. They link recent sports with the traditions of commemorating athletes with statues from Ancient Greece. These statutes allows Australian sport create the illusion of history and traditions even though all of these statutes are fairly recent. “The Pathfinder” by John Robinson, 1974 in the Queen Victoria Gardens is the earliest. The statue of the hammer thrower clearly looks back to classical Greek traditions.

There are 10 sculptures by Louis Laumen “sporting legends” at the MCG. The 10 sculptures, on their black marble plinths each with a biography and sponsors logos (really classy), were finally all installed for the 2006 Commonwealth Games redevelopment. At Gate 1 there are the cricketers Bill Ponsford and Dennis Lillee. At Gate 3 there are the women sprinters Betty Cuthbert and Shirley Strickland- Delahunty. The footballers Leigh Matthews and Ron Barassi are at Gate 4. There are more cricketers, Sir Donald Bradman and Keith Miller, at Gate 5 and more footballers, Haydn Bunton and Dick Reynolds at Gate 6. Also at the MCG there is a statue of cricket batsman “Victor Trumper”, 1999 and “The Birth of Australian Rules” 2001- both by Louis Laumen. Louis Laumen  dominates statues of sports stars in Melbourne and has also created the sculpture of John ‘Kanga’ Kennedy, 2008, at Hawthorn Football Club, Waverly Park.

There is a statue of Jack Dyer by Mitch Mitchell, 2003 at Richmond Headquarters on Punt Road. At Flemington Race Course there is a statute of Phar Lap by Peter Corlett, 1988, commissioned by the Victorian Racing Club to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary.

detail of Louis Laumen "Leigh Matthews", bronze

I don’t really care for any of these sculptures as art especially Louis Laumen’s conservative realism that reminds me of Soviet Realism. The conservative proclamation, glorifying the winners, made by these sculptures is shallow and archaic.  Less antiquated, but I don’t know if any more successful, are the non-figurative sports sculptures Simon Perry “Threaded Field”, Docklands Stadium Melbourne (2000) and Anthony Pryor, “The Legend”, 1991 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Simon Perry is best known in Melbourne for his sculpture “Public Purse” in the Burke St. mall. Anthony Pryor, “The Legend” 1991 is a dynamic steel sculpture the upper part suggesting the movement of the ball in play. I don’t think that the orange bollards were part of the original work but something had to be done for health and safety and vehicle access – the perils of not having a plinth.

Anthony Pryor, “The Legend”, 1991

Maybe Melbourne does need some better sports themed sculptures. Nick Farr-Jones will be on the judging panel for the third biennial Basil Sellers Art Prize – maybe a sculptor might win (instead of a video artist for the last two prizes). What do you think?