Entries Tagged 'AVERT YOUR EYES!' ↓

When you paint an office building, you have to clean lots of rollers everyday. So you use the Dulux Envirowash System, don’t you? Gives a good impression, doesn’t it? Corporate responsibility at its best…

And then at the end of each day you empty about 100 litres of grey paint into Lake Burley Griffin, and then you hose down the evidence.

Positioning it over the stormwater drain opening should have given the game away…

What the? Iconophilia wonders what set of smarts idiots thought that Fascist Realism would be the right style to stir up the annual jingoism around the Australia Day holiday? Yes, multiculturalism has slipped out of political fashion, but what other-than-Ayran ethnicities (with the exception of the designer boy-girl with olive complexion and well-plucked eyebrows) might feel included in this “celebration”? Indigenous? Indian? Anyone? Who is the Government Minister responsible for the creative genius on the Australia Day Committee who thought is was a good idea? At least some lowly layout designer at The Oz got it right: Think Again… And maybe patriotic Indigenous Australians like Maria (below “XOZX”) have another apology coming?

PS. We haven’t seen it since – perhaps its been pulled? Nothing on the official site… Or does this Australia Day advertisement mean Sam Kekovich has gone mainstream? Only The Punch seems to have noticed…

PPS. Ad agency CEO Russel Howcroft (George Patterson Y&R) takes the credit for it. See the comments below…

PPPS. Yesterday the blog for ad enthusiasts The Inspiration Room posted a story claiming it’s just great, and have reproduced better images, if you’re interested, and name all those who actually did the work: executive creative director Ben Coulson, copywriter Annie Egan, art director Ryan Fitzgerald, illustrator Mark Thomas and retoucher Hung Nguyen. Makes you wonder…

Iconophilia invites you to make up your own minds which version of this Rick Amor sculpture on Childers St and University Avenue you prefer. Vote Christo or anti-Christo? It’s the latest instance of the ACT Government’s iconopathic spree on public art. Apparently we specialise in minor works by minor artists – Rick Amor was unknown to the world of three dimensional art until his unhappy black dog was unleashed on the unsuspecting art world as a (tongue-in-cheek, surely) farewell gift to the last NGA Director Brian Kennedy. And who decided this glowering feetless Relic would be a great symbol for the entryway to the Australian National University? Is the CM having a lend of the VC?

Or it it the Family Law Court it’s referencing? Abandon hope all ye who enter here… It seems the ACT Government’s public art fashion sense has shifted to beaky, lumpy, semi-figurative bronzes which evoke British art from the 1950s. And good lord! It (presumably another copy) won the McLelland Award in 2007!

And it’s been a sculpture ‘launch” a week for the Chief Minister’s publicity machine recently. Iconophilia bets this one is destined to sink without a ripple in the dark waters of art history… And let’s hope there’s an exit clause…

Oh dear. It’s a fizzer. This “sculptural marker” for Canberra’s non-existent “Latin America Quarter” looks as gimcrack and temporary as the reports of its Sydney sojourn promised. Did the ACT Chief Minister really choose it himself? Maybe he only saw it in the dark… Either way, to elevate this tinny temporary effects $90,000 public artefact to the status of (permanent) “public art” is, I’m afraid, a bad joke all round… Plus there’s the budget for the “launch” – complete with marquee, portaloos, nibbles and drinkies. Incidentally, what the CT first reported as the “Latin American Quarter” is now the “Latin American Plaza”… And then in the CT’s breathless style the sculpture “took the artist three months to make” – well there’s an index of quality for you… one Phillips head screw every three days…

Seems designed to defeat drunken larrikins. A non-voting sector. Except those who vote with Phillips head screwdrivers. We’ll be watching it’s progress with interest. You have to wonder, is this the standard we’ll get for the Glassworks commission? How long before the etched gal rusts, and it’s dented and graffiti’d? C’mon Jon, get some better advice…

A reader of Iconophilia has heard the annual petuniafest in the streets of Canberra costs us $1.5m! Does anyone know if this could be true?

Designed somewhere in the old Soviet Union for the recession we have to have. See the full story on designboom. Compare with the real retro 1987 Nissan Pao…

…how many April firsts do we have this year? How many Halloweens? The CT’s report last Sunday claims the Chief Minister chose this $90,000 beauty himself to enhance the “Latin American Quarter” which is, apparently, at the corner of Childers and Rudd Streets, to the west of Civic. Even the artist admits “it’s a tongue in cheek” work… And according to the lucky artist, our CM is demonstrating “just how pro-active Jon Stanhope has been”. He would, wouldn’t he? He’s probably already been paid once for the Sydney gig, and he’s already working on a commission across the Lake (we specialise in multiple commissions in this town). It’s a revealing article. Being unaware of a Latin American Quarter so close to his place of work, your Iconophile investigated the address as he drove home. He can now assure you the Quarter will be enhanced by many thousand percent by the addition of this symbol of public taste. Coming off a very low base. See the 360 degree view below to experience the compelling virtual ambience of The Quarter.

Architecture has captured the Haha, once popular in lunatic asylums, so this movement towards public-sculpture-as-lame-joke needs another name. We’re surrounded by it. Humour-rage is the new aesthetic. Just when things seemed to be looking up (with new expertise on the public art panel) you discover where our Cultural Masters’ priorities tastes lie. Apparently we’re still catching up with earlier acquisitions by our ACT Public Art Connoisseurs who bought this Danish sculpture off-the-shelf at Sculpture by the Sea. What an extraordinarily focused policy. Not. Or is it April 1st?

Relating this acquisition to the “enormous political controversy… as a result of the percent-for-art scheme”, the Chief Minister continues to fudge the issue. What was unpopular was the ways in which the ACT Public Art funds have been spent. On excruciating kitsch, for example. Together with the GFC the two issues have been conflated to serve the interests of developers and to get Public Art off the political agenda. What a transparent subterfuge!

Who owns the soulforsaken piece of territory at the heart of our National Capital? I mean, really, who is responsible for the wasteland that symbolically lies between the Sydney and Melbourne Buildings? Clearly, nobody takes responsibility for its bleak, run-down appearance. What does it say about our Civic pride, our aspiration to cosmopolitan sophistication? It says: don’t stop, keep driving, turn around, go back..

Two years ago ArtWranglers jokingly nominated these aniconic steel structures as “readymade monuments”, as if they were a part of the A.C.T. Government’s Canberra Public Art Program.

The joke’s turned sour. They’re STILL THERE! Clearly whoever was contracted to provide the four perky sign posts proclaiming the “City Centre” this way, or that way, somewhere, went broke after the first one. But nobody has the responsibility to fix the left-over foundations, or rip them out. They now compete with the thousands of empty rings on poles which we look at for six months of every year waiting for the next crop of nasturtiums in plastic bowls. Very attractive. Very sophisticated. Very ambitious. Not.

Dear Chief Minister, Forget your Gateway Sculptures! Fix the Dead Heart! And you can’t say we haven’t tried! ArtWranglers invited Frank Gehry, but nothing came of it.  And just look at what St Louis has done to fix the same kind of problem…