ArtWranglers is mothballing this blog. However the archive remains alive, and we will continue to take comments on recent posts. In the meantime your blogwrangler will continue to publish with similar themes, observations, and opinions in a new format at iconophilia – with weekly rather than daily posts. For those who are suddenly feeling a bit nostalgic, we’ve archived all the embedded wisdom of the last two years of ArtWranglers’ posts on the new blog. If you were a subscriber (a Wranglerphile) you can now re-subscribe to iconophilia (and thus become an iconophile). Click over now, and enjoy, bookmark, subscribe, or just dabble – whatever your fancy dictates! See you there from time to time…

PS Wondering about the image? Who would have thought that “mothballing” something could unleash latent energy? The humble mothball is more than it appears!

…is that it’s very sticky. Once it’s there it has to stay there. So what’s the issue for the citizens of Canberra in relation to this next round of highway artefacts? Simple. That whoever makes the choice knows something about art. NOT the bunch of poets and architects who’ve exercised their taste so far. What are we to do? Let’s compose some letters to the CM which might have some useful political effect – so that we can all enjoy the experience of driving home… And then let’s hope we get something that a Jeffrey Smart wants to paint!

Here’s the letter I’m going to write – I encourage readers to do the same… (If you do, feel free to post it in comments)

The Hon. Jon Stanhope, MLA.

Chief Minister, Legislative Assembly, Canberra, ACT

stanhope@act.gov.au

Dear Mr Stanhope

I am writing in regard to your announcement in the Canberra Times (16th May, 2009) in relation to the decision to commission three gateway sculptures for the highways into Canberra.

The decisions your Government will make will affect the image of Canberra in perpetuity. It follows that the aesthetic decisions we make must stand the test of time, and be the result of the highest level of expert decision-making that it is possible to engage. These sculptures will become the badge by which Canberra is recognised. See, for instance, The Melbourne Gateway. I would like to make the following three observations which may assist you in making these crucial decisions.

1. I do not believe that those entrusted with the recent round of decision-making in relation to public art commissions have the appropriate background or expertise to make these crucial decisions.

2. I suggest you appoint an advisory committee of (say) three persons which draws on the significant pool of visual arts expertise present in Canberra and interstate. Curators with the specific expertise and a track record in the area of sculpture could be drawn, for instance, from the NGA, CMAG, or the AGNSW. These should be people with a wide knowledge of public art elsewhere in Australia and internationally.

3. You are correct in suggesting that the process of commissioning a work of art does not best proceed by applying the same criteria and processes as for (say) a rest stop, or a playground. Works of art, or proposals for the same, should proceed by invitation, adequate payment for concept drawings, and a commissioning process which does not cripple the project by including the costs of landscaping and other amenities, and the costs dealing with the multiple government agencies which result from the commissioning process.

I wish you well in arriving at an appropriate process, and an outcome of which we can all be proud.

Your sincerely

My name

so don’t miss the last weekend of RJROC’s fantastic show! We’re ‘at home’ from 11 to 5 on both Saturday and Sunday.

bet you’ve never seen anything quite like this. This is #4. Glitter Canyon 2009. (Synthetic polymers, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 825 x 1015)  and #5. Untitled, 2009, (Synthetic polymers, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 375 x 375).
Rachel Jessie-Rae O’Connor is on show from 11.00am to 5.00 pm from Saturday and Sunday, May 9th and 10th, and on Saturday and Sunday, May 16th and 17th, at 18 Morphett Street, O’Connor.

And we admire works which recognise their antecedents in a way that enhances both sets of experience: see #9 Untitled after Tony Woods, 2009 (Synthetic polymers, acrylic and glitter on canvas, 505 x 505).

GLITTER WORLD VIEW by Rachel Jessie-Rae O’Connor will be on show from 11.00am to 5.00 pm from Saturday and Sunday, May 9th and 10th, and on Saturday and Sunday, May 16th and 17th, at 18 Morphett Street, O’Connor. Outside those hours, during the intervening week, we’re happy to arrange to show you the work by appointment by calling 02 6257 0949 or 0402 726 951.

David Pope in Wednesday’s CT seems to have got the picture. There was potentially another cartoon in this story – the one where you couldn’t see the earless Chief Minister for the smoke from the burning Centenary Monument. A bit like short-listed sculptor Clive Murray-White’s early work, something a politician would understand. But Pope has caught the real issue here: canning the Monument was an excuse to remove the 1% policy to satisfy the interests of developers. Read more…

See the story in The Art Newspaper. And then read about the phenomenon of private museums in the U.S. (John Seabrook in The New Yorker) then Angus Trumble reviewing Sarah Thornton in the TLS, concluding “what it was once like to dance on the brink of a volcano”. (thanks to Breakfastpolitics for the last two leads).

you wouldn’t get away with anything like this in downtown Canberra! Far too challenging…

This is a work by Subodh Gupta, Nature Morte/Bose Pacia in Basel, where this summer the Messeplatz, sited directly in front of the buildings hosting the 40th edition of Art Basel, will once again become a stage for art projects in the public space. Eight works by internationally renowned artists Valentin Carron, General Idea, Mark Handforth, Jeppe Hein, Gabriel Kuri, Mathieu Mercier, John McCracken and Ken Price will be installed. Of course the advantage is that a project like this turns the city into a gallery: as we’ve argued before, temporary public art is a lot easier to live with…

…on the quietest media night of the year. So whispers a politician when he uses a potentially unpopular policy on public art  to scrap both the $1m centenary monument plus the commitment to the 1% for public art policy. It’s the wrong time to be spending $1m on a single work of art, says Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, invoking the global financial meltdown. How different was the story announced on February 3, 2008, when the shortlisting process was in full swing. Since then, the philistines have had him by the ear, and the combination of the backlash against public art in general, plus the underwhelming quality of the contenders for the monument has buried the idea of a arts splurge. How much this will effect ongoing spending (have two policies been killed in the same announcement?) remains to be seen.

Reported tonight on the ABC, the overall budget for public art will also be capped at $1.2m, but you’ll have to wait until someone’s back at work on Tuesday to read the details in a press release. Or rather, that’s where it should be: this is the original release I found when I resorted to Google…

ArtWranglers has long assumed the monument was a dead duck, in a city full of the little blighters. And so we can confirm – ArtWranglers’ nomination in August 2008 for a Readymade Monument (above) which has already been in place for 20 months – is hereby the frontrunner for Heritage Listing. Meanwhile, what opportunities are being lost? Surely all it needs is confidence, good advice, and some good stories to go with it to achieve some really Inspirational Objects.

This weekend Paul Keating strikes back at last weekend’s puff piece about Director Craddock Morton’s own account of the limitations of the National Museum of Australia. As you might expect, Paul can’t help a bon mot or two, describing John Howard as “possessing the cultural and artistic sensibilities of a filing cabinet”, as he gives his account of the decisions made on his own watch. “The salient point, however, is that having brought forth a lemon, the principal advocates of a museum of Australia are now setting up the apologia for its failure”. For our part, ArtWranglers has been more concerned with the micro than the macro: read back along the thread.