Another one of those weeks has passed in a blur of commitments and deadlines. I won’t burden you with the details. My sole disinterested social activity was to catch up with David Humphries, who has been in the public art business since the 1970s. In a career spanning 50 years, David has been responsible for some of the biggest public art projects in Australia and is now wondering what his legacy will be. It’s a source of frustration that many people don’t seem to regard him as an artist, merely a designer or project manager.
If public art had been managed so superbly in Sydney that David Humphries and his Public Art Squad could be consigned to the history books, we’d be in a fortunate position indeed. Instead, what is actually going on remains both a mess and a mystery. Of the three much-vaunted projects the Sydney City Council announced several years ago, only one has come to fruition: an expensive and inconsequential bunch of little bronze birds by Tracey Emin, scattered in the vicinity of Bridge Street.
Hany Armanious’s notorious $2 million giant-sized milk crate, and Junya Ishigami’s much-revised Cloud Arch ($22 million & rising) are officially “on hold”. It would be no tragedy if neither saw the light of day, apart from the tragic amount of money already committed to these selections.
But it’s not just the council that needs to take the blame for Sydney’s public art shambles. Property developers, with a few notable exceptions, have been slow to commit to worthwhile projects, resenting every dollar they are obliged to invest in works of art. The latest group to jump on the public art bandwagon is Woollahra Council, which has just unveiled another shiny sculpture by Lindy Lee, outside the Woollahra Gallery. Personally, I’ve got nothing against Lindy’s sculptures, but I still believe the $14 million commission for the National Gallery of Australia is a scandalous abuse of NGA funds. What’s disappointing with Woollahra, is that a seven-person “Public Art Panel” (which includes Michael Brand and David Gonksi, from the Art Gallery of NSW) came up with an utterly conservative, vapidly conformist choice of work. Is Lindy now the only sculptor in Australia? Many sculptors would argue she’s not even a sculptor. She’s certainly much more of a pure designer than David Humphries, but I doubt that some of these same experts would even know his name.
I felt equally non-plussed when I saw John Nicholson’s Rise – a memorial to the victims of gay hate crimes, recently commissioned by Waverley Council. A series of shallow brick-coloured plateaux, emblazoned with the names of those who have been murdered, it’s a low-level, non-descript affair. The names gave me the creepy feeling that plenty of space had been left for further additions!
It’s frustrating to watch the way public art is managed in Sydney and depressing to see the way artists are selected for projects that might cost millions of dollars and remain in place indefinitely. The selection committees are so iredeemably focussed on artists who are having their moment of shallow celebrity that they never seem to imagine there are dozens of others who might be more appropriate to the task.
With someone like David Humphries, if the art managers are going to drop him in the dustbin they should at least be prepared to recognise the work he has done and give it some space on the public register. Even if you’re intent on stuffing up the present, there’s no need to be resentful about the past.
This week’s art column looks at the seventh Singapore Biennale, otherwise known as Natasha. It’s a show with a whole swag of pros and cons (not the least problematic bit being the title), but one can only be impressed by the way the Singaporean government has got behind art and culture. Singapore, for all its quasi-totalitarian stiffness, is a far more active and adventurous sponsor of the arts than any state or federal body in Australia, and the Biennale is just one of the high-profile projects that have been raising the island’s status in the international art game. Although I can’t ever feel at home in Singapore, one can only be impressed by its sense of purpose. In Australia, we are more notable for distraction and spin-doctoring.
The film being reviewed is The Woman King, which is a textbook example of the way particular kinds of movie are praised and promoted today for all the wrong reasons. Even though it’s basically a limping melodrama punctuated by bloody battlefield scenes, reviewers and fans are entranced by the idea of a group of women warriors in Africa fighting against evil slavers. The fact that the historical record says almost exactly the contrary, is not seen as a problem. I wish I could be so blasé about the way films distort history – and about the way public art is managed in this city.