Welcome to the public gallery

A pedestrian walks past one of Vernon Ah Kee's portraits on display inBrisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen Source: The Australian

THE battle to convince communities of the value of public art appears to have been won.

Judging by how much public art has been installed, overdoing it could be the next problem, with public artworks so much part of our streetscapes that they are almost obscured. Things have certainly changed since the only art installed in public spaces in Australia was bronze life-size statues of eminent persons

In one of the best-known cafe and retail strips in Brisbane's near-city New Farm, two large panels have been constructed above a newly renovated row of shops. For the next four to five months, those panels will display the work of Vernon Ah Kee: two of his drawings of faces, the same work that showed recently at the Sydney Biennale and in the Queensland Art Gallery.

The idea, says Josh Milani of Brisbane's Milani Gallery, evolved during discussions with the James Street developers, Patrick George and John James, who wanted a "public art component" but also something different, something other than an "architectural flourish". "These are spaces that could be given over to advertising and promotion, but instead they will be devoted to ideas that are culturally and socially significant," Milani says.

Ah Kee depicts the faces of his family: the two on display above the shops are his daughter, Annie Ah Kee, and an uncle, Lennie Miller, who grew up on Palm Island. The eloquent artist has spoken about how this series repositions Aboriginal faces as central and unabashed. The viewer is also viewed by the uncompromising directness of Ah Kee's subjects' gaze.

It takes confidence for a developer to take this approach, and Milani points out that George and James are long-time art collectors, comfortable with the philosophies of contemporary art.

"They represent a new attitude towards developing," Milani says of the commissioners for the project, which also includes a light-box patterning by Eugene Carchesio, giving the site an extra after-dark dimension. "It's not about erecting shabby buildings and squeezing rent, but about improving public and civic space."

Milani adds that this is particularly important for Brisbane, a city that continues to lose old and historically interesting buildings to the bulldozers of developers.

Recalling the Visible Art billboard project, which erected traffic-stopping art on a high-rise in the centre of Melbourne, Milani says the James Street decision to "take the public art initiative without the demands of government put upon them" opens up all kinds of possibilities for public art. "It's the freedom to do great things."

The largest such billboard dedicated to public art fronts one of the buildings in the Kelvin Grove campus of Queensland University of Technology, which has just put out a call for submissions to the curated site. Billboards can reduce the upkeep problems often associated with installations in public spaces but, nevertheless, any collaboration with artists will test the commitment of commercial operators. Vandalism and maintenance problems have to be factored into the cost.

Donna Marcus, whose work can be found in public spaces from Dubai to Melbourne, says she has learned not to be too precious about the way the public, in the words of one of her collaborators, can "love to death" her artwork.

One part of Marcus's practice involves recycling household objects, such as aluminium kitchen sieves, refashioning them into beautifully balanced objects for contemplation and admiration. Her temporary "space junk" installation, assembled from such objects, is floating above Federation Square as part of the "art in strange places" program. In Brisbane Square, the 15 large balls constructed from 7000 specially fabricated vegetable steamers have been a charismatic delight since 2006 for children, who find their jutting surfaces too good to resist a tentative clamber.

Last year, a disgruntled Brisbaneite drove his car across the square and through the plate-glass window of council offices, collecting one of Marcus's balls along the way. The engineer who collaborated on the work's construction phoned her to ask, delicately, if she were terribly upset, but Marcus remembers he could not resist mentioning how proud he was that the welding had withstood the car's assault. The ball, dented but, "strong as a bollard", had probably prevented more damage being done to the building's foyer.

This all happened about the time of the devastating Victorian bushfires: "It seemed petty to worry that it had to be remade," Marcus says.

Marcus, who teaches art at Griffith University, is in some ways an unlikely public artist. She also works very small, with little constructions. She says she had a recurring dream, as she prepared for her first public exposure, that she was falling off a cliff and, when the work was finally unveiled, prepared herself to head back to her home in the mountains to hide.

"But there was no bad response, which was a relief, although people jumped all over them," she says.

Marcus says she, like many people, used to be dismayed at the size of the budgets for public art, "but then you start realising what it takes to construct things in the public realm".

Late last year, for example, Mackay Regional Council in north Queensland installed $1.5 million worth of public art, five works commissioned from Fiona Foley, as part of the foreshore Bluewater Trail project. Foley has a strong track record in such installations, including at the Brisbane Magistrates Court, where she revealed she had occluded the real meaning behind the work (the memorialisation of Aborigines massacred in Queensland) to get the project passed by the state government's Justice and Attorney-General Department.

Because her work deals with the often shameful and forgotten histories of indigenous people, Foley told a recent gathering at the University of Queensland Art Museum that it was necessary to keep from the commissioning group the meaning of her work or it would be rejected.

The curator for the Magistrates Court project, Jay Younger, has written about how the Queensland government's policy providing a whopping 2 per cent of budget to the public art component of new buildings has laid the foundations for a rigorous and generous approach to commissioning. That policy has since been formalised as Art + Place, and the amount allocated on projects reduced to less than 1 per cent, but this still provides budgets of many millions of dollars for public art. In the process, Younger says, bureaucrats have been educated against the "fears and values" that restrict decision-making. She credits Foley's "hidden message" approach as "successfully opening the debate within the public arena regarding the silencing of controversial ideas in artistic practice".

There was some concern in Mackay about such a large commission going to one artist. Foley couched the opposition in terms of racist attitudes. She suggested vandals were scratching the paint from one of the sculptures - an arch of blocks reminiscent of sugar cubes, in reference to the blackbirding of Islander people in the north Queensland cane fields - because locals wanted that part of their history to remain hidden.

Foley is adamant and vocal about the way her art, which challenges Australian ignorance of history, comes up against opposition. The Mackay mayor, Col Meng, has proudly announced the work of the "renowned public artist" is "layered with meaning" and will be cherished by the people of Mackay. Nevertheless Mackay, like all modern cities, has a serious problem with vandalism, which makes maintenance of public artworks difficult. The solar panel that cast blue light on a large Foley sculpture installed by Urban Art Projects as part of the Bluewater Trail commission was smashed soon after installation and is still waiting for repairs.