Public Art Intensive Course: Reflection

Confirmation & Challenge to My Notions of Public Art

I’ve had an interest, exposure and varying levels of interaction with public art for the better part of ten years. The Intensive Course provided an opportunity to review, expand, challenge and refine my pre-existing notions of public art through each of the focused topics and surrounding discussions. Some of the topics resonated more profoundly than others but they all both confirmed and challenged my notions of public art by providing an expanded framework of knowledge from which will assist me in drawing my own conclusions as my studies progress.

CHALLENGING

Urban Soundscape Project

My career, study, and personal interest trajectory has meandered in different directions with visual arts as its primary anchor. What challenged me most in the Intensive Course about my notions of public art was Dr Lawrence Harvey’s presentation on Art in Public Space (Sound Works). His presentation challenged my notions of public art as it blew wide open my awareness that my perceptions have been drawn, focused and valued around visual considerations and frameworks.

I was familiar with the existence of and have experienced sound art installations but have never given them very much thought or credence, especially in the public realm. The first exhibition I volunteered for at ACCA was a sound work but my strongest memory was that listening to it on a short loop for eight hours a day, for days on end had sent me feeling a bit crazed. I had enjoyed and was a big fan of Janet Cardiff’s piece, Forty Part Motet, at the Powerplant Art Gallery, Toronto but if I am honest my enjoyment was based around being able to listen to music while physically moving around the room and looking at the different speakers as I listened to individual voices or the choir as a group.


Janet Cardiff, Forty Part Motet, 2001

Lawrence’s presentation made me aware that the few perceptions I had regarding sound art embedded them as aural decoration for visual arts pieces in enclosed gallery spaces and that the advancement in my theoretical thinking around sound art was the sonic equivalent of “plonk” visual arts practices. I hadn’t considered “sound” and “sound art” for its own sake and certainly not with non-musical merits in the public realm. The level of complexity I was attributing to the possibilities of sound art, was similar to attributing no difference in purpose and complexity between muzak and an orchestral symphony.


Lawrence’s description of the research he had done with blind people; the concepts of acoustic ecology; aural attention; and audio horizon shortening made me re-think my thoughts on sound art altogether. The notion of being able to hear the distance between cars; the physical impacts of sound such as loss of body image and self when surrounded by low frequencies; the social impacts and acoustic geography awoke my awareness that the potential for artistic engagement and exploration with sound art, that has no direct relation to visual arts concerns, is immense, complex and goes well beyond mere hearing.

Learning that Melbourne has five dedicated soundscape sites (Signal, Barak Bridge, South Bank, Federation Square and Birrarung Marr) means that I am going to make a concerted effort to visit the sites again and “listen” to them with a new awareness that doesn’t involve my visual preoccupations.

I also hope to endeavour to approach my interactions with sound art in the public realm with a more open and creative mindset.

CONFIRMING
Determining what in the Intensive Course had challenged my notions of public art was quite simple as I recognized it almost immediately. Identifying a single element that confirmed my notion of public art was/is far more difficult.
The course examined multiple facets of public art practice that incorporate multiple media; implementation approaches and strategies; ideologies and politics; and personal tastes. What I have realized the course confirmed for me is that I’m still interested and excited by numerous aspects of public art practice and that I am not yet ready to identify my area of focus yet.

Ian DeGruchy, Melbourne Town Hall

I am fascinated by the monumental and visually transformative abilities of large-scale works such as projection art. I admire the way projection “sculpts” the architectural surface to create unique environments. I am particularly interested in how projection is used as a method to engage the public with art at night or contribute to revitalise a community, such as Dandenong. I am also interested in examining how large-scale commissions are planned and managed by stakeholders, including the practice of having artists on design teams.

Miso

I find drawings/stencils/paper-cuts on walls, alleyways or the pavement equally engaging, especially when I discover them unexpectedly, regardless of whether they were created with or without external approval. I am interested in examining how to balance support for this expression of public art without smothering or overexposing it so that it’s resonance and spontaneity isn’t overcome by commercial and bureaucratic overlays.

Banksy

I am drawn to the related discussion and debate that surrounds the “celebrity factor” and treatment, in and outside of the arts, of street artists, such as Banksy, as it is an area I would like to explore further so I can develop an informed opinion of my own.


Public Art Dedicated Websites
I am increasingly interested in international exchange regarding public art, particularly using the internet and other technological advancements. How it is being used to define place; explore creativity; establish a community; advance local practice and encourage collaboration and debate; and impact on the formation of policy and process in formal, academic, informal and grass-roots ways. I want to explore how these exchanges happen and work and whether their impact is decreasing the lag between the development of public art policy and practice in countries like Australia that were traditionally ten-years behind.

I am interested in how public art practice has changed and continues to change over time as a reflection of the culture of the people who inhabit place at particular moments in time. How in turn as part of this process the relationship with particular works and the public can change as attitudes shift, or in some cases, the work itself is moved or altered. Additionally how these cultural shifts impact on the decommissioning of works and their legacy.

Having the opportunity to reflect on what confirmed and what challenged my notions of public art through the Intensive Course more than anything else reinforced for me that I still have a great deal to learn. I am only at the very beginning of my exploration, that I have many opinions to form and then possibly discard and reform and that I find it all very exciting.