Dead Heart

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…