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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See how a work of art can be monumental without being a monument. This is the Richard Serra piece Promenade in the Grand Palais.

Plus some subtle illusionism: it sits lightly on the ground? I think not.

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Here’s an arresting self-portrait by Cesar as Centaure in the 6th in Paris. It presses all the right buttons as public art for me… Clearly whoever makes the decisions about what is to be seen in the public domain in Paris gets their criteria right! And the face is Cesar, the mask is Picasso – work that out!

No doubt in Australia this has elements the police would have to “evaluate”…

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China is everywhere: Chinese Design at the V&A was underwhelming and arty, and then here’s a work by Zhan Wang on loan to the British Museum. So in a sense it is “art in the public domain” in that the British Museum is seething with visitors, and the central courtyard is a grand place to hang out. So check this out and read the text account of his working process. It’s a spectacular thing, a reflective metal rock, but does it make it? As art, that is? By his numbering system, there must be lots of people in the world who need stainless steel rocks. Imagine one of these in your garden: “hey mom, quick, call the Terminator…” (and see how it’s morphing into a lion?)

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See what’s happening at the Tate. Waldemar Januszczak at The Times thinks it’s a wank: “watching an organisation as institutionally snobbish as Tate Modern trying to get down with the kids is already a ghastly sight. The art world is crazy about street art just now. And Street & Studio [the photography show inside] was mounted, I suggest, in a deliberate attempt to up the tone of the external graffiti.”

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This prize-winning pavilion sits underneath the three hundred year old plane trees of Bedford Square, just outside the Architectural Association. In making no false claims for its status beyond design excellence, it entirely avoids the use of hyperbole. And it’s popular! You can sit on it!

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P.S. there is no implied connection between this post and the previous…

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Contact: Between Memory & History is the annual photography festival in Toronto with 150 venues across the city. Here is the contribution of the Italian Embassy: works by Raffaelo Mariniello. More later…

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