Spring has picked up it’s pace and my walks in the middle of long work days at home have moved from the treadmill to parks near my home. I live in a pocket of an inner Melbourne suburb defined by an eclectic mix of the edge of the CityLink, the 2008 Commonwealth Games Athletes’ Village, a youth detention centre, Melbourne Zoo and extensions of Royal Park. Today, not enthralled by taking a head-clearing stroll by the barb-wire gates guarding incarcerated teens, I took a section of the Capital City Trail within Royal Park’s White Skink Habitat.
While this trail has moments where you are completely surrounded by nature, a rare treat when you live in the inner suburbs, the aesthetics of this are often ruined by train lines, large tanks from nearby properties and protruding parts of the CityLink. I came up to an area where I usually feel like the landscape is spoiled by discarded chunks of cement and building material in an untidy mess of weeds (or skink habitat? I am not sure how they keep their designated homes). However, the discarded chunks of cement had changed. Someone, or some people, had come through in the months I had not frequented the trail in the cold of winter and rearranged the abandoned mess.
Looking at the pictures, you may think, this is still a junk pile and I am crazy to think some artists have come to a shitty part of an average suburban trail and transformed it. However, while still randomly assorted, the junk piles suddenly have form. The arrangements are subtle enough on glance, one could think nothing. However, on inspection, the different arrangements are too particular to be unintentional.
The matter and form reminded me of growing up on a rural property. My brothers and I would use discarded material to build little houses or to invent games. One game would involve my older brother and I stashing as much junk as we could in an old rainwater tank in less than a minute and jumping on top of the tank once our time was up. I wonder if my parents felt similar to me on this trail, finding discarded material once scattered randomly having been moved intentionally despite its useless nature.
However, the arrangement of material here was not undertaken by children. It had a mature, sculptural quality. Plus, much of the material is quite heavy and sharp- to be handled carefully. Among the dozen or so sculptures, there was a delicate approach to their resulting forms, bringing subtle beauty to otherwise ugly rubbish.
Some questions can be raised here. Melbourne is not a stranger to public art, with its famous graffiti alleyways. When I lived in Bristol, art appearing in public space was part of daily life. However, the power of this “public art” was its place in a hidden platform, tucked away on a trail mostly used for commuting bike riders to the CBD. Public art usually begs to be seen by the masses, outside of the restricting bounds of the gallery. Here, on the edge of a park known for its mini lizards, one has to glance twice to perceive that the pile of junk is, in fact, an arrangement of junk.
Also notable is the lack of artistic name. All you know is, someone or some people (or maybe the skinks?) have come and created form from the disarranged. They did not introduce their own material nor leave their name attached. The process stands out, however: the artist/s transformed the space from scattered junk to an art space and changed the material from rubbish to sculpture. From disarray to intended form.
Though, going up close to these pieces, my ankles got bitten by ants and I felt nervous about the long weeds in the warm weather. For most passer-bys, the work might go completely unnoticed. This begs- for whom is this for? It is largely lost in the landscape and the ugly material will cause most to quickly dismiss the site and look to the rolling green hill on the other side.
I propose the junk sculptures are not for the artist’s notoriety nor the commuters or lunch time walker’s enjoyment.
Maybe, the transformation which occurred was for the material. The forgotten, discarded but non-decomposing public waste was transformed into art for its own sake. No longer must it remain as rubbish but t can exist as sculptural beauty in its own right, with a new lease on life for some little skink tenants to admire.