Even before you get there, as you drive along the Federal Highway from Goulburn to Canberra, you experience the need to name and mark everything. After a while, you realise you've passed half a dozen new conveniences named after recipients of the Victoria Cross. The kind of recognition nobody needs. And in downtown Canberra, we're experiencing a multiplicity of new public art works: in the last year there's been a flush of relatively minor sculptures plonked all over the city, sometimes twice by the same artist in the same street. And of course, being Canberra, these compete with the political 'monuments' at every turn, just as there are now 'sculptural markers' adorning the highways.

So what's the problem? The problem is that people don't like them. They've been worn out by drive-by art and avenues of politically correct monuments to fallen heroes (and others who have simply passed on). It's a bore. And now aspirant politicians tell us new sculptures in the public domain symbolise government expenditure without an apparent raison d'etre. You can't win. Tellingly, the A.C.T. Liberals' first shot in the TV commercials in the upcoming election campaign included: "... and no-one asked me if I wanted an artwork instead of finishing Gungahlin Drive." So what's to be done?

The background to our current shemozzle is the historical jigsaw puzzle of Canberra real estate responsibilities between the Federal Government (represented by the much depleted National Capital Authority) and the A.C.T. Government (represented by ACTPLA, the ArtsACT Public Arts Panel and other agencies like Roads ACT). These territories and responsibilities interpenetrate on both sides of Lake Burley Griffin - for example the infelicitously named Floriade Festival, which used to include a promising sculpture festival, and which pulls in more tourists than any other annual event in Canberra. Floriade takes place in Commonwealth Park - where, if you search hard, you will find a diminutive Barbara Hepworth sculpture, one of a very few in Australia, tucked amongst the trees. If it hasn't been pinched.

Historically, such precincts and older Federal buildings have had an admirable reputation for serious commissions and associated artworks, reaching back to when Civic, which is what we call the City Centre in this decentralised city, was itself a Federal responsibility. So if the best sculptures and public art projects around town seem a bit old school, it's a consequence of recent public art being caught up in local politics, and the decisions of advisory committees with little knowledge of the world of contemporary visual arts.

Highway art (or 'highway robbery' as one wag was heard to say) has captured the focus of the current debate: there's the 'Rhizome', the 'Dinornis maximus', and soon, the $1million Centenerary monument to be located on City Hill, at the southern end of Northbourne Avenue. The classic instance of this syndrome (and the subject of the ACT Liberals' ire) is the "sculpture" (or rather design object) titled "Rhizome" which adorns the Barton Highway intersection with the O'Connor Ridge Gungahlin Drive Extension, itself already the cause of much public controversy. This Public Artefact is one fifth of a five part commission won by the high profile 'artist/architect' Professor Richard Goodwin (CoFA, UNSW), who specialises in highway art, and has won many similar commissions in Sydney.

Well, it's not popular. But must public art be 'popular'? It depends on its status as art and its aesthetic effects. But this series of commissions fails in both senses. It aspires to the status of art, but isn't, and therein lies the source of its failure. If it's highway decoration, (a 'sculptural marker') and maybe that's all it is and we can all relax, and bear the expense. As ArtWranglers has argued elsewhere, when design gives Art a bad name, we're all a little worse off.

New Zealand sculptor Phil Price
Dinornis maximus
Located Woden, Canberra

The sculpture at the centre of the latest controversy is Dinornis maximus, by New Zealand sculptor Phil Price, located at the mother of all roundabouts, on the way to Woden, a shopping and business precinct to the south of the city. It's an open homage to the work of the US kinetic sculptor George Rickey, and maybe one significant consequence of its siting is its scale: in competition with its roadwork setting and adjacent objects, (cars, trucks, busses), it shrinks, it becomes but a diminutive element in this urban architectural/machine inhabited context.

However Dinornis maximus is not without its virtues: it moves beautifully in the slightest wind, and the curved blades change colour as they describe the most elegant imaginary forms, yellow and orange against blue. But you only gain this aesthetic experience if you take your life in your hands, walk up to it, and spend time looking. So as has been suggested, its siting is the source of most of its aesthetic problems. It's the antithesis of a "destination" artwork, as Blue Poles has become, because it feels transgressive to park and walk over to take a look, and by the time it has caught your attention, you're already somewhere else.

The Northbourne Avenue monument has sensibly been delayed until after the ACT elections, in October. Of the three short-listed tenders, only one has a deep history as a sculptor. The others are architects and design consortia. We fear the odds are in favour of another 'sculptural marker'.

So what's the solution? We suggest impermanence. Let's use the anniversary monument dollars to seed fund an annual sculpture festival - like the enormously successful (and popular) Sculpture by the Sea and its siblings like Bermagui's Sculpture on the Edge - to take advantage of Canberra's myriad open spaces and see how fast we can turn public opinion? Floriade used to have a sculptural component, which produced some great sculptural objects. People seem to be more willing to enjoy them if they don't have to love them forever ... And let's NOT have to experience them as commuter décor ...

If we approach it laterally, the predicament of the public's antipathy towards monumental public art can certainly be addressed. Our local arts agency already dabbles in such a project in a very small way: Domain 2007 - the annual public art project funded by the ACT Government, managed by the ANU School of Art - locates ten public art projects in and around downtown Canberra. How much better could this be if some real resources were provided to make this a real destination event to enliven the city and showcase its potential to overcome the dreary capital stigma?

It sure works in the Big 'A'. According to New York Mayor Bloomberg: "Public art is a signature of New York City ... Not only does public art excite and inspire New Yorkers, it helps draw visitors and adds millions of dollars into our economy." According to the mayor, over the past year, a series of innovative and monumental sculptural projects has caused revitalization of forgotten zones throughout the five boroughs, thanks to the Public Art Fund "for bringing unforgettable works to the City while taking steps to protect the environment." The point to be noticed in transitory public art projects such as these is their anti-monumental quality: sure, they may be large, but that's not what makes a monument a monument.

What counts in projects like these is that it's more like an exhibition: you see it, you experience it, but if you don't like it, you can relax in the knowledge it will go away. On the other hand, a public monument (as all Canberrans know) pokes you in the eye every time you encounter it, like an ugly building, or a stupid bit of road engineering: art rage and road rage are two sides of the same medallion, especially if the object of their attention is taxpayer-funded. The proven potential of transitory artworks in other cities is a lesson our local decision makers could well learn from.

Artwranglers
September, 2008

ArtWranglers is a Canberra based blog with an interest in public art in its local, national and international contexts. Their longstanding commentary on art in the public domain may be read in the blog's category 'Public Artefacts'.   http://artwranglers.com.au