{"id":4756,"date":"2011-06-07T04:15:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T20:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/the-problem-with-public-art\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:06:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:06:42","slug":"the-problem-with-public-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/the-problem-with-public-art\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with public art"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Curtin University academic says the lack of ‘critical discourse’ about public art in Western Australia is to blame when statues and public sculptures fall flat.<\/p>\n

Darryn Ansted is Co-ordinator of Painting at Curtin’s\u00a0School of Design and Art<\/a> – <\/strong>one of the state’s handful of permanent, full-time jobs specifically designed to be undertaken by an artistic painter.<\/p>\n

In<\/span> Awkward politeness: public artwork in Western Australia and critical discourse<\/span>, Dr Ansted spotlights several issues that hold public art back in WA.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s too simplistic to say all public art in Perth is terrible or it’s all wonderful,” Dr Ansted told\u00a0Curtin News<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“It’s really hard to draw conclusions.<\/p>\n

“That’s why it’s a hard field to improve.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dr Ansted says that when mediocre public art rears its head, it is all too easy to blame the government agencies that commission it.<\/p>\n

“Many of the things in the public art scene are working relatively well,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not like (modern WA is) coming from a place steeped in tradition and representation that have carried down and formed an image of where we’ve come from and where we’re going.<\/p>\n

“We’re relatively very new and struggling to find an image, and often contracting out that job of finding an image.”<\/p>\n

PERCENT FOR ART<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Ansted’s paper points out that opportunities for commissioning public art – such as through the government’s Percent for Art scheme – have expanded greatly over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

Percent for Art quarantines a small proportion of a public building’s construction cost for expenditure on art associated with the project.<\/p>\n

While such expansion was welcome, Dr Ansted noted that critical discourse over public art had improved only slightly in the past decade.<\/p>\n

He also said that public art incorporated into government buildings ran the risk of being ‘tacked on’ to the end of projects.<\/p>\n

“What tends to happen is that because public art is often an afterthought in government projects, it manifests as something the project<\/em> needs to address – such as when the building needs more shade,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So the artist gets the brief to make a sculpture or installation but it has to provide shade or seating for example.<\/p>\n

“You get these strange artworks that are really more part of the architecture but done by the artist – which doesn’t necessarily do either the art or the architecture any good.”<\/p>\n

Dr Ansted said that when art was reduced to a function of providing shade or seating, or advertising a feel-good message, it\u00a0followed a more functional than artistic agenda.<\/p>\n

RULE OF THUMB<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The one rule of thumb, looking at a lot of public art around the world, is that the best work comes when it is an organic extension of the artist’s studio practice,” he told Curtin News<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“The best case scenario always seems to be when artists have a really rigorous and diverse studio practice where what they make or sculpt or paint develops and grows, and grows, and grows into a kind of bigger physical form.<\/p>\n

“In such cases, the artist has been able to ‘trial and error’ their concepts so that when the artist comes to a public space they can walk right in and it is only a small increase in magnitude and conceptual breadth from what they were already doing.”<\/p>\n

Dr Ansted said the benefits of an organic approach were highlighted in a recent review of a Percent for Art-like program that operates in Queensland.<\/p>\n

That review of the sunshine state’s ‘Built-in’ policy also said the lack of an overarching vision for public art was a problem.<\/p>\n

Dr Ansted said the finding was of great significance to Western Australia.<\/p>\n

Another recommendation of the Queensland review – appointment of a state curator – could help elevate debate and moderate the aspirations of all participants in the commissioning process if implemented in WA.<\/p>\n

Giving artists greater autonomy and responsibility to achieve the project vision, alongside more critical discussion at every level,\u00a0could also benefit the Percent for Art <\/em>scheme, Dr Ansted concluded.<\/p>\n

Photography: Sam Proctor<\/strong><\/p>\n

[youtube width=”560″ height=”345″]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PSiVO5KCxkE[\/youtube]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where is WA going wrong?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4275,"featured_media":516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_research-areas":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"research-areas":[],"class_list":["post-4756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"acf":{"post_options":{"":null,"additional_content":{"title":"","content":"","image":false},"related_courses":false,"credits":{"author":"","photographer":"","media":false},"display_author":true,"banner":{"image":false}}},"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/public-art-2.png","author_meta":{"first_name":"Curtin","last_name":"University","display_name":"Curtin University"},"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 20:39:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4756"},{"taxonomy":"research-areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-areas?post=4756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}