Move over NY subway grafitti style! Here comes dot-painting…  And if you want to bulk-order your boomerangs, you can go here. These treasures (and the background research) is thanks to Bill Kruse, in Djakarta airport.

the architect of this UniLodge building in downtown Acton (the west facing wall here photographed at 2.30 on a sunny afternoon) said: “Merde! (he’s from France) We put the sunshades on the wrong way round! Do you think anyone will notice?” (Answer: only the residents. And they’re OK on the other side of the building. And they’re probably OK in France.)

This may have been the same architect who scattered this other kind of ineffectual shading on this other building across the road in the same complex. Clearly the designer does not subscribe to the design aesthetic (or should that now be ethic?) that works to reduce the heat exchange load of a building by designing solar-effective shading. Just provide the politically-correct appearance of same and it will look contemporary enough.

As opposed to the Tax Building in Civic, from the same angle as the first image, which looks good to me in every sense.

Look! A person! Despite which, it seems the Dead Heart of Canberra is truly a lost cause. Every August 23rd for the last four years your iconophiliac has been pointing at these sick little public artefacts in the centre of Canberra, and asking: who takes responsibility for this run-down, derelict space between the Melbourne and Sydney Buildings? Follow the thread. You’ll be amazed at what you see.

It’s a public disgrace. No amount of dinky fairy lights can disguise the fact that this abandoned space gives a dreadful impression to every visitor to this (apparently) soulforsaken city. I’ve suggested pavilions, like the Serpentine, but nobody is listening. But now we have a new Chief Minister, a new Minister for the Arts, and a new Director of the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery (among other things). Memo to all: get advice. Do something really significant. Like the Serpentine does. And yes, they’re for sale…

So while Singapore has its Supertrees, Canberra has its petuniae. Each is memorable in its own special way…

Postscript: The power of the press! Three days after this was posted, the objects have vanished! Nonetheless the pervasive sense of ennui remains…

Read the spin here on ArtDaily. Or just join the dots… Here’s a clue…

P.S. Damien Hirst made a killing in the first days of the last GFC as well…

]]> http://www.iconophilia.net/what-is-wrong-with-this-picture/feed/ 0 http://www.iconophilia.net/earth-art-not/ http://www.iconophilia.net/earth-art-not/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:06:25 +0000 Nigel http://www.iconophilia.net/?p=11785 Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan, 63, has signed his name in sand on an island he owns with letters so big they can be seen from space.

The sheikh is president of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates and boasts a personal fortune second only to the Saudi king’s.

Let’s explore these Views and Vistas. The lesser vista to the West brings you to this view of the rear of the Telstra building. Not to be missed.

And what was it like along the way? Pure Heritage.

But the pièce de résistance is the Vista to the South, where your gaze is directed to the back fence of Daramalan College, just across the stormwater drain.

How about that? Or did we miss something along the way?

The Tradies! Of course! At this point on one of the Plan diagrams there’s a notation, a reminder to “improve connection to the drain.” But could it get any better than this?

Apparently such vistas of “fine grained shopping precincts” are to be preserved. “Most blocks have been developed with smaller shops creating the fine grained built form and scale that is typical of the retail core.” Except that there’s a roadway being planned to divide the Tradies Club and Motel in two, and there is provision for six story buildings where we now enjoy the “fine grain” of the Caltex servo, Premier Instruments, Canberra Auto Parts, Bells Drycleaning, Foxy’s Fast Foto, Asian Groceries, Curves, El Dorado’s Steakhouse, Michelle’s Hair and Beauty, Dom’s Barber Shop, The Cheesecake Shop, and Keir’s Radiators, just to the right of this photograph. Now preserving the authenticity of this fine graininess will present quite a challenge for future town planners and heritage buffs.

Chastened by recent debates on this site, your iconophile has thrown convention to the wind, and in the construction of his latest domestic installation he has adopted uncritically many of the design criteria espoused by his erstwhile friend Ron Radford (to whom we are indebted for the odd turn of phrase). When it comes to a work such as this, nothing is more important than the blend of architectural form and the harmonious experience of function.  Everything must express its proper relation to each other, in its evocation of its historical and contemporary cultural antecedents and environments.

And so in the midst of this post-phenomenological moment, whilesoever the body-to-body paradigm remains the conventional mode of address for the artist-beholder, so it remains the primary consideration for our critical engagement with an art object such as this. These are matters on such a high aesthetic plane that the search for meaning in social or cultural practice allows no room here for distraction, no space for disciplines other than the purely aesthetic and art historical. Whenever a replica or an analogue of The Fountain is installed, every consideration of matters of natural and cultural significance should be weighed and measured. If precedents exist, they must be properly acknowledged.

Prominence is a critical aspect of the placement of such an object, and thus this Fountain has been given a prime position just inside the door, so that it may be displayed to its full advantage as a distinctive and beautiful installation away from other things. The idea is that visitors will encounter and experience the work with a complex sense of the interior/exterior spatial relationship, in circumstances enhanced by natural light and the circulation of air to maintain its unique environmental considerations with respect to the rest of the building. Sensitive to both light and humidity, it took a great deal of consideration to get all the elements correct. The overall aesthetic consideration was to reduce the introduction of alien materials in its display so that The Fountain remains the central point of attention. The final materials surrounding the Fountain are those already embodied in the object and its surroundings, all handled with dignified simplicity.

The process of installation and design engineering set out to create a harmonious context for this great work. The vitrified china (a kind of protoporcelain) body of the Fountain itself is reflected in the ceramic tiles on the walls, which being specially imported from the historic Stoke-on-Trent potteries, reflect the complexity and contradictions of our postcolonial heritage. The stones that make the floor (tumbled grey granite sourced from Byron Bay) are part of the earth and are an ideal material for the space as they serve several purposes. They prevent humidity moving vertically downward, and they hide the unsightly infrastructure below. The stones also fulfilled our requirement for a material and colour that blended with the external surroundings of the building, which are a part of the original palette of the house, and other works within the immediate environment. We have consciously used such materials in the new space to help link the old with the new.

A substantial amount of work has gone into ensuring natural daylight would be the predominant illumination for the Fountain. Blinds on the windows come down if the light levels are too high. Artificial light can be manually adjusted to ensure a correct balance throughout the day. We have gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to achieve this lighting for this great work.

Contrary to conventional curatorial practice, during the early planning stages of his project your iconophile was assisted by an historian and anthropologist, in consultation with plumbers, electricians, tilers and others to ensure that this important work was displayed respectfully and beautifully. Visitors to the installation have unanimously agreed the new Fountain has been displayed with more dignity and more beautifully than ever before.

P.S. (which is an appropriately euphonic acronym, in this instance). As if to prove a point, (de faire un point, ostensiblement, as the ghost of MD reminds us) on this past March 24th this other Fountain appeared in Grange Park, Toronto, just next to the Ontario College of Art and Design. For one night only, alas…

…if you’re selling Aboriginal Art and it’s out of copyright/moral rights. This from page 7 of the Weekend Oz today.

As a footnote to a previous post (The Rhetoric of the Frame) I’ve only just noticed that the new extension of the National Gallery of Australia is itself framed by the ugly basalt rubble known in the trade as Nimmitabel Blue. In the symbolic gap between the old and new, there is this window which marks the transition from the old children’s gallery to the new Indigenous galleries. And there, hey presto, you may see find a box gutter full of the stuff. It beggars the imagination to think that it’s OK to use the same material to re-frame the Gallery’s most sacred and significant work of Indigenous art, The Aboriginal Memorial, and at the same time use it to mark the transition between the old and new buildings. Or just to improve the look of a gutter visible from the galleries inside…