People’s Choice Vote: Jewell Public Art Competition

Design - by Open Journal

Neometro and VicTrack invite you to the exhibition opening of the four shortlisted proposals for the Jewell Station Public Art Competition and a chance to have your say in a People’s Choice Vote. The People’s Choice Vote will be considered by the judging panel when making their final decision in March.

Have your say via the People’s Choice Vote either by:

Voting in person at the Shortlisted Proposals Exhibition at 15A Union Street Brunswick from Monday 27 Feb- Sunday 5 March.

Voting online via the link below from Monday 27 Feb- Sunday 5 March.

Have Your Say: People’s Choice Vote Here

The four proposals are:

James Geurts- Telescopia

CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT

Standing at Jewell station, railway lines disappear into the distance, converging and vanishing into points to the North and the South; the lines are reminders both of where you have been and where you are going.

Telescopia evokes and extends this perception of lines converging that marks our experience of passing time. The sculpture gives shape to a propositional vanishing point reaching out infinitely towards the sky, towards an imaginary constellation. At the same time, the five lines that form Telescopia seem to project downwards into the earth. The inversion of the upward gaze, and sense of grounding, is reinforced by the black meteorite-like granite base. The sculpture shifts the picture plane and proposes multiple viewpoints at the same time.

Standing close to the sculpture or within the body of the lines, the visitor acts as the conduit or the fulcrum of this experience of projection; the experience invites a pause in the perpetual motion of the day-to-day. The visitor experiences an active state of looking, lining up their sight with the directional force of the geometric sculpture. Viewed from a distance, the sculpture appears to connect earth, station and sky.

Telescopia responds to the deep time of the site, and situates the station in a broader contemplation and reality of journeying. The sculpture symbolises the generations of humans who have looked to the stars for understanding about their place on earth.

James Geurts- Telescopia

Sanné Mestrom- Diamond Green

CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT

As I become older I become increasingly aware of my body; not because of it’s agility, strength and potential, but because of it’s various creaks and moans. It is my inabili ty – not my abilities – that draw my attention to the physical being of my body. And yet when I sleep at night, I am still jumping off rooftops and swinging through tree canopies. In my dreams I am weightless and free.

Quite to the contrary, as a ‘sculptor’, the one material I am coerced to work with everyday is gravity: the weight of things de nes the limitations and the potential of any sculptural practice. For Diamond Green, I seek to create an ode to both the potential and the limitations of matter – in particular, to the matter of our selves – the physical and the metaphysical self, the corporeal and temporal body, the burdensome and the invisible.

Diamond Green is an ensemble of elements that form a sculptural whole. In this work, it has been my intention that the viewer becomes part of the artwork, blurring the usual boundaries between spectator and sculpture. Inviting the viewer to playfully encounter the work, play itself becomes poetry in motion; as Octavio Paz said, “To read a poem is to see it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears”. The usage of everyday forms further softens the separation of art and the poetics of everyday life.

There are numerous questions and debates around the understanding of play as a creative, social, cultural and political notion and mode of practice: to play is a conscious practice – it actively, consciously affirms our being in the world. This affirmation is partially submissive and partially resistant: submissive in the ways we yield to the forms that allow us to play, and resistant to those forms determining our physical and imaginative limitations.

It is my hope that children and adults alike will develop their own creative encounters amidst these sculptural elements, providing not only outlets for the potential of play, but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, and ultimately, tools for social change. It is through its ‘softness’ that play has the potential to open up a space to escape certain logics, and denying logic is in itself a subversive – and therefore political – act.

Sanné Mestrom- Diamond Green

Jessie Stanley- A Place to Meet

CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT

This interactive sculpture is inspired by the preexisting River Red Gums that flank its siting at Jewell Station. River Red Gums thrive in inland flood plains (or river beds), and prefer clay soils. These two features describe their symbiotic relationship with the geological assets of this place, and echo our own.

Prior to European settlement, this area was known as Iramoo by the Wurundjeri-willam: who regarded its fertile flood plains as hallowed hunting grounds for tens of thousands of years. Post European settlement, new settlers discovered Brunswick’s clay deposits: fuelling Brunswick’s brick and clay manufacturing boon in the 1800s, and spurring its transformation into an industrial town. These two epochs reveal the pivotal aspects that have shaped Brunswick: and the relationship between people, culture, geology and time in shaping place.

A Place to Meet contemplates a deep-time perspective of the history of this place. With a typical lifespan of 500 to 1000 years, River Red Gums dwarf human lifespan. Formed from River Red Gum, and featuring a tree-ring timeline developed with community members: it seeks to reconcile Brunswick’s history, and provide a place to come together for a shared future.

The sculpture is to be primarily formed from seasoned River Red Gum timber, hand-crafted into a series of layered platforms. Each layer is eschewed to create a delicately cantilevered form, and reveal dual stairways. Text featured on the face of each of its two stairways speaks specifically of the symbiotic relationship River Red Gums have with Brunswick’s geology, and how that has been echoed by the Wurundjeri-willam: ‘Together we thrived in the fertile flood plains’; and European settlers: ‘Together we found our footings in this clay soil’. By ascending the stairway, the audience navigates these pivotal aspects of Brunswick’s evolution: to arrive at a platform engraved with a graphic tree-ring timeline, and embellished with cast bronze. The timeline will be developed in collaboration with the Wurundjeri Tribe; local community members in a series of workshops; and in consultation with a historian to capture key aspects that have shaped Brunswick. The corner joint of each layer is detailed with a cast bronze arrow. Experiencing this interactive sculpture draws attention upwards to the existing River Red Gums on site, and is intended to encourage thought and discussion about our own relationship to time, geology, culture and our environment.

Jessie Stanley- A Place to Meet

Fleur Summers- Making Sense

CONCEPTUAL STATEMENT

Making Sense is a branching steel and bronze sculptural work designed to create community connections through touch. The work will reflect networks, growth and renewal and promote different ways of thinking about landscape. Importantly, it will encourage active touch by the local community during making and once completed.

The form of Making Sense is derived from branching networks and botanical structures. It will be constructed from cut and welded segments of tubular steel painted black. These branches will perforate the ground and bend like windblown grass or a branch heavy with fruit. Like a rhizome, brain neuron or train network, each branch will feature a terminal node which will be cast in bronze.

These nodes are a central feature of Making Sense. They will be hand formed in wax and then cast in bronze using the lost wax method. This process will capture the fine detail of touch creating textured ends similar to native button flowers or brain synapses. As part of the community consultation process, I will work with Brunswick Secondary School art students. This process will give students the opportunity to develop an enduring connection to the site by creating an indelible impression on the surface of the bronze through touch.

On completion, the bronze ends will be arranged on the branching structure at heights facilitating touch. Bronze is materially receptive to touch and continuous skin contact will gradually expose reflective bronze surfaces on the most touched areas. The work is low to the ground and will be accessible to all ages including those will mobility issues.

Fleur Summers- Making Sense

Background:

In November 2016, Neometro and VicTrack announced a public art competition for Jewell Station. Working with art consultant Melissa Loughnan of Utopian Slumps, artists and creative teams were invited to submit stage one expressions of interest.

The brief called for proposals for a unique public artwork that would reflect the ethos of the development. It is intended that the artwork will operate as a key feature of the new development and should appeal to the common interests of the residents and local community.

After an overwhelming response, the judging panel has selected four artists from the Stage One applications to progress to Stage Two, where they will be able to further develop their proposal for the final selection of one major work. These artists are James Geurts, Sanné Mestrom, Jessie Stanley and Fleur Summers.

Jewell Station will form a New Urban Village by Neometro in partnership with VicTrack. The project promotes the idea that well-designed apartments support wellbeing and connection in the community. The apartments at Jewell Station are more than a place to spend the night – they will be home to likeminded people who value community, good design, urban living, sustainability and a balanced approach to life.

The judging panel is made up by:

Jeff Provan, Design Director, Neometro
Aoife Kealy, Development Manager, VicTrack
Simon Knott, Director, BKK Architects
Mark Gillingham, Director, Glas Urban
Dr Geoff Hogg, Lecturer and Director of CAST, RMIT
Dan Mitchell, Public Art, Moreland City Council
Melissa Loughnan, Public Art Consultant, Utopian Slumps