Entries Tagged 'PUBLIC ARTEFACTS' ↓

In his speech today at the ANU School of Art, ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope revealed that his motivation for dropping the two-year-old percent-for-art scheme was based on pre-election polling and focus group sessions, which revealed that dissatisfaction with the Public Art Program was consistently in the top 5 reasons why voters would switch to the Libs. So, hidden amongst other announcements, the policy was dumped just prior to the last local election. His speech (I’ll link to it when I find it) gave a history of public art in Canberra since the 60s, and some sense that some millions were still to be spent – presumably from other sources. What went wrong? he asked. He had hoped that his “expert independent advisory panel” would have taken some of the heat, but no, it all came back to him, as he “launched” one after another of the new sculptures, a fair proportion of which were “off the shelf” from commercial galleries and Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea. As I’ve often commented (follow the thread at Public Artefacts in the sidebar), his “expert independent advisory panel” includes only one person with wide-ranging visual arts expertise (the recently appointed CMAG’s Deborah Clark) plus a token visual artist (Chrissy Grishin, aka G.W.Bot). Little wonder the streets of Canberra came to look like a weirdly chaotic private collection, with minor works scattered around higgledy-piggledy, in a manner that seems to lack any vision other than to hedge against the vicissitudes of popular taste. Speaking of which, he has just announced this horrific non-sculpture planned for the streets of Gungahlin. It’s a disaster zone. What’s the answer? 1. Appoint a Curator of Public Art with the authority to clean it all up, to curate the public spaces of Canberra. 2. Emulate Sydney’s Sculpture by the Sea and fill the city with temporary works every year or so. 3. Commission new works rather than just go shopping (sometimes it’s the CM himself). 4. Commission public works that are not necessarily lumps of bronze. 5. Emulate the Serpentine Gallery’s Pavilion program and install great works of architecture in the Dead Heart between the Melbourne and Sydney Buildings. But bronze Bunyips? It may already be too late.

…seen on the road between Waikerie and Burra…

is by Jean Nouvel. See here on ArtDaily…

all eyes on the main game

a reasonable result, all things considered.

great graphics had Tim out of the car and tugging at the cable ties – all to no avail…

Don’t you love that attitude towards public art meets public transport!

…clearly the eponymous Bill Indman now walks the streets of Freiburg. In the Black Forest you can’t see the art for the trees. With due deference to Mel Ramsden for this arcane art historical reference…

on Anonymous Works. Which is a blog worth bookmarking. More about the series of disasters in Guatemala here.

Photography Makes It Real. At first glance. Or rather ghostly when you take a second look… Reconsider your Picnic Plans.

Or as Tory Maguire observes maybe you can photograph your way out of danger…

Thanks to Iain McG for making the heroic u-turn to enable me to capture this image.

P.S If I was more adept at Photoshop, I would have inverted the photograph for you…

Ivan Solotaroff writes in The Guardian: Philadelphia is a city of murals. More than 2,800 have been commissioned by the civic Mural Arts Program, which itself grew out of the city’s Anti-Graffiti Network. Typically, murals here celebrate ethnic traditions or Philly mainstays like jazz, or basketball legend Julius “Dr J” Erving; but these messages are far closer to graffiti, their boldness drawing attention to their huge words and whimsically postmodern cartoons and motifs. Unlike traditional graffiti, however, where the message is often simply the artist’s street-name, these are consistently positive and amusing, equally thought-provoking and eye-pleasing.

They are romantic, too: visible from the commuter train, as if one is riding through a billet-doux. A Love Letter for You is a collaboration between the Mural Arts Program and Stephen Powers, a 42-year-old artist who emerged on West Philly walls and rooftops 25 years ago, under the street-name ESPO. As a 17-year-old hoodlum then, Powers was inspired by Cornbread, the seminal graffiti writer who covered Philadelphia with his name to catch a girl’s attention. Cornbread spraypainted not only walls but police cars, the visiting Jackson 5′s private jet and an elephant in the city zoo. Love Letter reads like a series of notes left on a bedside table or refrigerator…

See the series here