Remembering: Aboriginality, public art and urban design

Notes

• W.E.H. Stanner, After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians-An Anthropologist's View, Boyer Lectures 1968, Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1968, p.25.
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• In this paper, in keeping with advice from the Aboriginal Research and Resource Centre at the University of New South Wales, I have used ‘Indigenous’ (capitalised) when the term is used to refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Much of the paper addresses issues pertaining to Sydney which is built on Aboriginal, not Islander, land. For this reason, when the argument specifically refers to Sydney I retain either ‘Aboriginal’ or the broadly regional ‘Koori’ because both words include a range of Aboriginal nations of the Sydney region (e.g. the Eora, Dharuk, Gandangarra and Tharawal) or significantly represented in the Sydney population (e.g. the Waradjuri of which Mum Shirl was a proud member). Where options exist, I have chosen terminology consistent with the adjacent quotes and argument, so as not to make too great a feature of the nomenclature.
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• One recent addition to the repertoire of works in suburban Sydney by an Indigenous Australian is Laurie Nilsen's life-size bronze portrait bust, Bungaree c.1765/72-1830, 1999, at the entrance to Mosman Council Chambers and positioned opposite a similarly-scaled bronze bust by Judith Engbert-Shead of Archibald Mosman (1795–1863), 1998.
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• For example, S. Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991; B. Matilsky, Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations and Solutions, New York: Rizzoli International, 1992; J. Bird et al (Eds), Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, London/New York: Routledge, 1993; A. Raven (Ed.), Art in the Public Interest, New York: Da Capo Press, 1993; H.F. Senie and S. Webster (Eds), Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context and Controversy, New York: Harper Collins, 1993; B. Wallis (Ed.), If You Lived Here. The City in Art, Theory and Social Activism: A Project by Martha Rosier, Seattle: Bay Press, 1991; D. Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995; S. Lacy (Ed.), Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, Seattle, Washington: Bay Press, 1995; T. Winikoff (Ed.), Places not Spaces: Placemaking in Australia, researched and written by L. Barnes, C. Murphy and A.M. Nicholson, Sydney: Envirobook, 1995.
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• The architects, Denton Corker Marshall, and artists were jointly awarded the Lloyd Rees Award for Civic Design by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1995.
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• J. Holder, ‘Casula Powerhouse Regional Arts Centre’, Art and Australia, vol.33, no.1, Spring 1995, pp. 40–41; and A. Nimmo, ‘In the public realm: Edge of the Trees’, Art Monthly, November 1995, no.85, pp.17–18.
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• S. Best, ‘The nature of things: the special power of installation art to thematise our relation to the environment’, Real Time, no.20, Aug./Sept. 1997, p.5.
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• B. Genocchio, ‘Postcards from the edge’, Third Text, no.39, Summer 1997, pp.59–66.
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• ibid, p.65.
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• City of Sydney, Public Art Policy, Sydney: City of Sydney, 1994, p.6.
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• ibid, p.5.
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• See ‘Motion for reconciliation’ put by Prime Minister John Howard, 26 August 1999, http://search.aph.gov.au/search/Parllnfo.ASP?…/26+August+1999&action+view&WCU.
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• This lack of engagement with the arts and scholarship is especially galling as the work rests on the site of the Garden Palace, the building that housed the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition. This project brought together products from metallurgy, manufacturing, education and science, machinery, agriculture and horticulture, which together were seen to reflect an educationally and economically smart society (see Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879, Sydney: Thomas Richards, Government Printer, 1881).
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• Byram Mansell's Woolloomooloo mural is on the Police Citizen's Boy's Club (Cathedral Street, corner of Riley Street, Sydney); amongst other works by Mansell in the Sydney environs is the mural on the library and auditorium of the Willoughby Council building (Victoria Ave, Chatswood).
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• M. Langton, Well, I heard it on the Radio and I saw it on the Television. An essay for the Australian Film Commission, North Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 1993, pp.33–34.
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• ibid, p.35.
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• ‘Art and politics—living here and now’, forum, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, 20 August 1999; comments based on notes taken by the author.
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• Activist non-Indigenous photographers of the period include Sandy Edwards, Michael Gallagher, Juno Gemes, Elaine Pelot Kitchener, Jon Rhodes and Wes Stacey. Activist Indigenous photographers include Brenda Croft, Kevin Gilbert and Alana Harris.
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• Architects engaged with Indigenous projects include Greg Burgess, Jane Dillon, Col James, Glenn Murcutt, Peter Myers, Paul Pholeros, later Julie Cracknell, Dillon Kombumerrie and Alison Page, and Peter Stutchbury.
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• Commitments was curated by Nick Tsoutas from the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 9 September-2 October 1993, later at Artspace, Sydney from 15 April-28 May 1994 and the Canberra School of Art, 10 June-2 July 1994.
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• See note 2 above.
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• Data on these projects in Gablik, Reenchantment…; and Matilsky, Fragile Ecologies….
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• Data on de Bretteville in Hayden, The Power of Place; Turpin's and Crawford's Fairfield projects are discussed in David Cranswick, ‘Bridging art and ecology’, Artlink, vol.18, no.2, June/Aug. 1998, pp.47–49; Phillip R. Goodwin, ‘The craft of water features’, Landscape Australia, no.3, Aug./Sept./Oct. 1998, pp.256–59; Barbara Schaffer, ‘Water stories’, Habitat Australia, vol.24, no.5, Oct. 1996, p.30.
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• The Arts Council of New South Wales (now Regional Arts New South Wales), ran the Creative Village program from 1992–1995. Simultaneously, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) participated by way of an integrated art, design, architecture and landscape architecture studio for undergraduate students. Since 1996 when funding ceased for the professional program, the UNSW has adapted the program to deal with urban communities. For an overview of its early years, see H. Armstrong, ‘Australian collaborative design paradigms: universities, designers, communities’, in C. De Lorenzo, T. Laurence and R. Samuels (Eds), Emerging Paradigms in Design Education: Conference Proceedings, University of New South Wales: Faculty of the Built Environment, 1997.
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• See C. De Lorenzo, ‘Integrating public art, environmental sustainability and education: Australia's ‘Creative Village’ model’, Journal of Art and Design Education, vol.19, no.2, 2000 (forthcoming).
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• Urban Design in Australia, A Report by the Prime Minister's Urban Design Task Force, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 16 November 1994, p.7.
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• ibid.
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• Public Art Policy, City of Sydney, 1994, p.2.
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• ibid, p.1.
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• The Sculpture Walk, commenced in 1999, to date comprises seven works in the city centre, the Domain and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
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