Sorry regular viewers you may have seen a few of these works before but I'm contributing to a discussion hosted by Regional Arts Victoria called Small Town Transformations. Someone enthusiastically mentioned Candy Chang in connection with transformative works, it made me smile a little as I made many of these before she was born. She may have been in primary school when I did the one above, Two Gates (obviously this is a detail!) in the Foyer of 101 Collins St, for the Australian Sculpture Triennial.
1967, Fragments of a larger system, yep, you can go to any hardware store and add them to your own collection if you like and yours will be just like the ones in the NGV, this work of mine along with several others from the same exhibition are the first conceptual works ever made and exhibited in Australia - which is funny really because in 1967 the word was not in common usage.
1971 transforming Queensland Uni and much of St Lucia with military grade smoke bombs, we also did it in Uni NSW and the McClelland Gallery.
This is actually very pertinent to this project, first done for the Adelaide Festival in 72 (I think) this version in Carlton 73 pretends to sell off one of their favourite squares; nothing makes people think about their towns quicker than the thought that some developer is going get control of their favourite park!
1995 Temple of the Southern Cross, a touring installation for small country halls and disused buildings (it actually went to RMIT Gallery as well, the flag you see on it's portable pole was called Night Sky. Shown here outside the Boisedale Hall.
2011 - Sara Delaney - a head of her time, seen here in Fed Square as part of the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture, first shown in 2010 McClelland prize. It's pretty much where I'm at today........from the catalogue essay. "It is a sculpture that challenges conventional concepts about site specifics and urban sculpture by concentrating not on the aesthetics and narrative of space but on the people for whom that space was originally designed. Each person's mind is a specific site.
By claiming air rather than ground this work activates an urban spacial area with no built baggage."
