We now realise that this diminutive “monument” has been in the centre of Canberra for nearly a year. Would you believe we first posted this as a Public Artefact in August last year! This Ode to Marcel Duchamp is the clearly the readymade solution to the Monument dilemma. ArtWranglers has nominated it for heritage listing, and no doubt it will be registered on the National Estate as THE Northbourne Monument. See our previous Open Letter to the Chief Minister on the issue…

Well, actually, it’s a small miracle nobody has tripped on it and sued the A.C.T. Government for enough $$$ to build the big one… But as we’ve often noted, it’s a no-man’s land between the Melbourne and Sydney buildings.

In relation to the missing Million Dollar Monument, our spies in the corridors of power tell us the short-list has been reduced to three, there’s a miniscule additional fee provided for resubmission of the contenders’ proposals, and guess what? The new due date is October 1st. So we’re unlikely to hear anything before the election! No controversies in October, please!

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Pavilion opens today at the Serpentine Gallery. Take a look.

And see his previous wood and glass exercise on AGO in Toronto.

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…as an aesthetic impact. According to New York Mayor Bloomberg: “Public art is a signature of New York City and we are proud to welcome Olafur Eliasson’s exciting new project, the Waterfalls. Not only does public art excite and inspire New Yorkers, it helps draw visitors and adds millions of dollars into our economy. Olafur Eliasson’s innovative and monumental project reflects the revitalization of our waterfront throughout the five boroughs, and I thank the Public Art Fund for bringing this unforgettable work to our City while taking steps to protect the environment.” Take a look. And see our previous post on this artist’s work at MoMA… And (thanks to Max) see this great review in the NYT. And read what they think about it in Toronto: a public art show even a mayor can love, by Simon Houpt (Globe and Mail). Essential reading for Public Art in Canberra 101…

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…what the A.C.T. Liberals would make of an *!#@artwork#@!* like this! If you translate the plaque (below) you’ll see that the golden pot by Jean Pierre Raynaud has been to capital cities all over the world. Will it make it to *!#@Canberra@#!*? Not *!@#likely#@!* (another Forbidden City? see below).

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We’ve just seen the A.C.T. Liberals’ first shot in the TV commercials in the upcoming election campaign: “…no-one asked me if I wanted an *!#@artwork#@!* instead of finishing Gungahlin Drive.” We’ve never heard artwork narrated with that particular inflexion before… Unfortunately mediocre “sculptural markers” will always be an easy target for reactionary politics. See our take on the Chief Minister’s dilemma. The relevant questions are: can the commission process deliver better outcomes? or, is any art better than none?

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Can you make good art out of a subway entrance? Click to this Anish Kapoor proposal and this Jean-Michel Othoniel reality. The interview with Kapoor gives some interesting insights into the fraught relation between artists, architects, and public officials. Of London’s new Lord Mayor Boris Johnson he says: “He’s a fool. He hasn’t the faintest idea and he ought to keep his mouth shut.”

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Most of the sculptures in the Jardin des Tuileries are what my colleagues used to call “plonk art” - sculptures located in formal garden-like settings as if they had dropped from the sky - and the Tuileries is the mother lode of this kind of public art. However in one corner there is a jungle which surrounds this most intriguing example of art which takes its inspiration from the environment, and which re-creates a wild park-like environment of an absolutely distinctive kind. This work, Arbre des voyelles by Giuseppe Pennone, (1999) takes its origin from the wind storm that swept this part of the world in the 90s which overturned thousands of ancient trees and forests across Europe. Thus the fallen tree in this part of the Tuileries is a bronze cast of an oak tree - one of the casualties of the storm - and at each extremity of its branches is planted a new tree, now all healthily reaching skywards. Magical. Click the thumnails below to see more. Or see how it looks in winter here…

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Now that the scheduled announcement of the commission of the Northbourne Monument is a month overdue, may we assume you have taken wise counsel and gone back to the drawing board? In early February you announced that a final decision would be made in April, and it’s now June.

ArtWranglers is hoping that the silence around this question is the result of some real Authority, and that the Arts ACT Public Arts Panel has resolved not to recommend any of the four finalists. The decision to adorn the southern end of Northbourne Avenue with a million dollar work of art is not one to be taken lightly. As we’ve commented previously, if it to stand the test of time, it first must pass the test as a work of art, and three of the four tail-waggers are the works of designers and architects. While “design-art” is a bit of a marketing fad overseas (see the recent articles in the International Herald-Tribune) please don’t give us another expensive “sculptural marker” like those scattered along the Gungahlin Bypass… A “sculptural marker” (the term used by your own PR people) will never make it as art, will never be remembered or cited as art in the public domain, and will have no identity, influence or impact on the course of contemporary art - except in the negative sense.

In May ArtWranglers went on an international quest to find the best examples of art in the public domain, thus creating a database of truly impressive works in the Public Artefacts category on our sidebar. Take a look at what is to be seen in New York, Toronto, London and Paris.

Dear Chief Minister, your problem is now how to do it better, so that the selection process encourages real artists to make submissions for a work that will indeed be a destination work of art, not just a signal of a zone change. How about inviting artists of the calibre of Fiona Hall, Imants Tillers, Jennifer Turpin, or even  a crossover like Marc Newson to make proposals and really get the process cracking?

As we’ve noted in previous posts the committee of experts has only one artist representative (Chrissie Grishin, a.k.a. G.W.Bot) and one invitee (Betty Churcher) with any visual arts expertise. Chrissie has recently been making bronze avatars of her print imagery, and of course Betty has the overview of a stellar career in the National Cultural Institutional world. But neither have expressed a particular interest in sculpture per se, but there they are. First step: appoint a specific panel with national credibility.

In an earlier post we offered a checklist of the kinds of questions you might ask to determine whether a Public Artefact is in fact a Work of Art. It’s a eight star system. Ask your experts to account for their decisions in a rigorous way. See what they come up with.

1. Does it have a story to tell? How eloquent is the telling?

2. What language is it speaking? How well does it articulate its meanings?

3. Does it have a history? How well does it tell it?

4. What sensual and material pleasures does it offer? How does it make us feel?

5. Does it tell me something new? Is it worth knowing?

6. Does it ask questions of itself? Can we access its dialogue?

7. Does it move me? Up or down?

8. And then (based on the above): is it a work of art?

Over to you. Some of the best decisions about public life are made after due consideration and advice. Do it over again. Invite some real artists.

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ARTWRANGLERS WISHES TO ADVISE VIEWERS OF THIS POST THAT SOME OF THE IMAGES AND WORDS THAT FOLLOW MAY DISTRESS THOSE VIEWERS WHO ARE AFFLICTED BY ARACHNOPHOBIA (OR BOURGEOISMANIA).

…or mixed metaphors. See our friend from New York? She suffers too…

At the risk of being consumed (or ostracised) I am not alone in thinking the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Centre Pompidou is… patchy… Once you’ve seen a few spiders, they start to look a bit formulaic, and a bit trite in what they signify. And the knitted figures are downright mawkish. There’s also the sense of “art direction”, lots of production, interpreted and realised by somebody, with not much sign of the artist’s hand. Best are the urgency of the early works, and the houses and rooms. (Now run for your life, Nigel!).

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Sorry, Jean, it’s not the work of an architect. It is the work Hommage a Arago by Jan Dibbets. It is a piece consisting of 135 medallions which stretches from the north to the south along the Paris Meridian, and commemorates the famous (but absent) scientist and astronomer Francois Arago. His bronze statue was melted down by the Nazis during the occupation of Paris, and was never replaced. Except, conceptually, by Dibbets, one of whose medallions is to be found on the plinth. Not all the medallions have survived… But as we have noted, Paris respects its axes… From this one at the Palais Royale you are lured towards a Daniel Buren, and then…

a Pol Bury. Rich pickings, eh?

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