100 years from now people will be looking at the winner of the ACT Government’s $1m public art work – to be built at the end of Northbourne Avenue to commemorate the centenerary of the ACT – and they will be asking: is that how they thought about art? The interesting issue, then and now, will be: how did they make that decision? And, incidentally, how does it compare to the Walter Burley Griffin legacy of the first century?

The Chief Minister has just announced that four “teams” have been shortlisted: however one of them is not a “team”, but recognisably a sculptor, of considerable standing, it must be said. Clive Murray-White, has proposed a monumental portrait of WBG, photoshopped with a piercing gaze down the northern axis of the city. Presumably WBG’s searching for some representation of his wife and partner in the project, Marion Mahony, whose fabulous drafting skills probably swung the deal. That was when women’s suffrage was all the rage, but perhaps this is a symbolic absence…

The attribution of the other proposals to three “teams” (Arcimix, Aspect Studios, and Hassell is itself a worry – contracts for such monuments favour artist/architect/engineer consortia, and thus we’re likely to see an outburst of “sculptural markers” of the kind we find along the Gungahlin bypass.

The shortlist of four have been invited to “refine their designs” (plenty of time for CMW to photoshop a companion bust of MM) for a final decision in April. The panel is interesting, in that there are no sculptors (except for G.W.Bot, who in the past couple of years has been making bronze analogues of the graphic forms found in her prints) and only one with curatorial and art historical expertise, ex-NGA Director Betty Churcher. The others (Paul Hetherington, Ian Templeman, Graham Humphries, Jack Waterford, and Sir William Deane) have no obvious artistic expertise, but presumably they know what they like.

ArtWranglers would love to know how these worthy citizens will make up their collective mind? Are they looking for the best art, or some other criterion which justifies such an important contribution to the aesthetic experience for the rest of us, as we whiz past to and from work and play. What’s the basis for their judgement?

For those members of the public who only have a passing interest in art, this business of art in the public domain is often the most ambiguous and provocative artistic experience they will have. ArtWranglers hopes there will be long and lengthy discussions which will test the “good art” status of the objects proposed. Our spies tell us that the heat is on in the meeting room, and deep questions echo down the corridors of power. Is it legitimately a piece of sculpture, or some other kind of architectural feature? If the former, does the piece have antecedents, what is its background, how does it progress our understanding, in art historical terms? How does it relate to the author’s oeuvre, and what ideas and values does it develop? Does it have a story to tell, or will it offer sensual inspiration or phenomenological pleasures to its audience? Of course, if it isn’t art, we don’t have to ask these things, it’s just an ambiguous object.

If you follow the link on the Chief Minister’s Press Release before midday on a Monday, you’ll mysteriously be taken to the Federal Government’s site. After 12.00, it will have been fixed, and you’ll then go to arts ACT but you won’t actually find out any more. A nice little loop. Perhaps this is why the Canberra Times Reporter Sonya Neufeld cut and pasted to make “her” article directly from the Chief Minister’s press people. Accurate reporting at its best. If anyone can find some better images than those on the cover of the Sunday Canberra Times please let us know and we’ll keep you posted…