They’ve infiltrated our city, towns, suburbs, roads, train stations and even deserts, and new ones keep popping up every day that either delight or confuse us.
They’ve infiltrated our city, towns, suburbs, roads, train stations and even deserts, and new ones keep popping up every day that either delight or confuse us.
Public art is in demand in Western Australia, driven in part by the community’s perception of its right to a richer cultural life and the increasing obligation felt by government and private developers to provide it.
And it’s not a new phenomenon either.
State governments have been pushing the case for public art for nearly 20 years, claiming that at least 1 per cent of all capital works budgets have been allocated to artistic initiatives since the introduction of a ‘Percent for Art’ scheme in 1989.
Local councils, and in recent times public authorities, have also recognised the benefit of the art form to communities, with some choosing to make the provision of art within developments a condition of planning approval.
The East Perth Redevelopment Authority was one of the first authorities in the state to implement a public art policy.
Since 2005, all new developments within its project areas worth more than $1 million must contribute 1 per cent of construction costs to public art.
EPRA chief executive Tony Morgan said public art brought vibrancy, colour and life to new developments, and helped create a sense of place in new communities.
The City of Perth, meanwhile, has more than 150 of its commissioned works scattered throughout the city centre, which provide an interpretation of the historical and contemporary identity of the city and its inhabitants.
Silhouettes of kangaroos holding briefcases racing back to Kings Park after a hard day’s work, and an unidentified photographer at the Barracks Arch peering through a camera lens at Perth of yesteryear provide opportunities for the people to stop and consider the works’ relationship to the environment.
Despite the works’ intentions, the diversity of public opinion surrounding the value of public art, in both a quantitative and qualitative sense, remains a major challenge for planning authorities to negotiate.
This issue was brought into sharp focus early last year when Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan unveiled a public art concept for the new Esplanade train station, incorporating 20 brightly coloured poles stretching 24 metres high.
Dubbed ‘Alannah’s Piles’, many supporters and detractors promptly came out of the woodwork to have their say before the proposal was put on hold and a series of more modest works were proposed instead.
While the city remains a major focus of the push for public art, a noticeable shift in demand for the art is occurring from the city out to the suburbs.
Developers of Perth’s newest and established residential estates are realising the benefits of creating a sense of community and see public art as a way to achieve that.
Peet Ltd managing director Warwick Hemsley said public art played a special role at a number of its estates and provided a good way to support local artists.
The company typically short-lists a number of local artists before choosing the best proposal.
“When we undertake these projects, we are looking for public art that connects with the natural environment, tells a story and is in character with the estate itself,” Mr Hemsley said.
The increased level of investment by residential developers in public art is also believed to be having a positive flow-on effect to artists themselves.
One of WA’s most prolific public artists, Phillipa O’Brien, said a significant amount of money was going into artists’ pockets in recent years, partly driven by the government’s public art scheme and the increase in development activity.
However, this has been tempered somewhat by lack of permanent jobs for artists, she said.
Ms O’Brien has been an artistic adviser of the Ellenbrook design team since 1990, designing and constructing almost all of the public art works in the established estate.
“I believe artists should be the equal of the architect and landscape architects. It’s really through these long-term relationships that artists can gain a decent living,” Ms O’Brien said.
A visual impact on the Perth-to-Mandurah line
When finally completed in July this year, Perth’s new southern suburbs railway will have an art collection to match its $1.6 billion price tag.
During the past four years, New MetroRail has commissioned many of Western Australia’s finest sculptors and public artists to create 14 individual public art works to reflect key themes derived from the local communities along the route from Perth to Mandurah.
Installation of the $1.7 million worth of work at 12 stations is now in the final stages, with suburban stations Cockburn Central, Kwinana, Wellard, Mandurah and Warnbro now complete and handed over to the Public Transport Authority.
MetroRail contracts manager stations, Felicity Dowling, told WA Business News the commissioning of the works under the government’s ‘per cent for art’ scheme began in 2003 at the conceptual design stage of the rail project.
“The idea was to get all of the artists on board as soon as possible to work one-on-one with the architects, so their ideas would be incorporated into the overall design of the stations,” she said. “The results are really exciting.”
Already making its mark on the Mandurah landscape is artist Coral Lowry’s Tuart Tree interpretation, the largest object commissioned along the route, reportedly at a cost of $70,000.
The soft-patterned steel work, which took a year to fabricate, has drawn a mixed community response after it was hoisted to the top of the station in November last year.
Ms Dowling said the overall response from the community had been positive, but there were some who said they could not “see” the tuart tree.
“There’s been a few mixed comments. It’s not meant to be representative of a tuart tree but draws on elements of the coastline and its vegetation,” she said.
While the piece remains openly subjective, Ms Lowry was given a brief by the government to create a land-mark sculpture above the low-lying Mandurah Station which reflected the natural coastal landscape of the area and symbolised new beginnings.
The spiral growth patterns of the shell-like base merged with the tall, sprouting tuart tree are indicative of this brief.
At Rockingham Station, artist Richard Coldicutt incorporated the tools used in constructing the railway to make three sea-themed sculptures at the junction of Wray Road and Ennis Avenue.
Dubbed the “techno creatures”, the colourful two-metre tall steel sculptures resembling a crab, seal, and man in a rowing boat are made of spanners, clamps and a sprinkle of nuts and bolts.
Further up the line at the $14 million Cockburn Central station, artists Rodney Glick and Marco Marcon have set about creating a contemporary visual art installation for the station’s entry tower by digitally merging hundreds of photos of people in the local community to generate two ‘unique’ images.
An average 5,500 people a day are expected to pass by two enlarged photos of an older woman and teenage boy on either side of the tower, titled ‘faces of the community’.
Other significant public artworks are located at Murdoch Station, and in particular the Esplanade and William Street underground stations in the city.
No expense appears to have been spared on these city stations, with the Sapphire Clock tower under construction on the William Street station concourse level, estimated to have cost the government about $250,000.
