Sculptures of ANU revisited

 Some years ago we got hold of a brochure for a self guided tour of a series of sculptures around ANU.  We seem to have lost the brochure, but I was able to find one on line.  It was 65 pages long: some books are shorter than that!  The key item was a map showing all the works which I downloaded and mailed to my phone. It was surprisingly readable.

We focused on the North Western quadrant, with our route captured by eBird tracking our path.

It was a tad difficult, due in part to the small size of the image, working out exactly where to go.  The other part of the difficulty was the vintage of the map: new buildings appeared to have appeared, and old buildings vanished.  I suspect the Uni felt that having an expert on black holes as Vice-Chancellor gave the best chance of them getting a grip on the Capital Works budget.  On to the Art.

The first work we located was Una, a polished steel sphere with lots of holes punched in it.  When one looks through a hole points of light, and their reflections are seen.  I couldn't work out how to take a snap of the inside, so no photo!

The next two sites didn't appear to be there.  On looking at the brochure one of them (#43 by Anne Ferguson) was in fact there but a) didn't have a plaque that I could find and b) was screen printed on to glass and impossible to photograph. The other (#44 by Jan Brown should have been nearby but we couldn't find it, and were definitely in the right position).

We wandered across to Bruce Hall which has been completely rebuilt since I was last in that area (obviously well inside the event horizon),  A Flugelman (#45) was catching the sun.

Seen with the sun behind the nickname of "Egg-beaters" is obvious. 

#47 by Vincas Jomantas looked rather sad in a little corner.

The photo in the brochure is far livelier and the text refers to that.  

Obviously they have had to cut down on current expenditure (eg maintenance of the pool and paying ICON Water's bill) to cover refurbishing Bruce Hall.

We found the next one quite easily although the plaque was missing.  It's #46 by Marion Borgelt.

Another easy one: #39 by Mary Kayser.  Her title is "Chrysalis" which isn't too bad but I prefer "Peeled Prawn".

See the following image of the plaque.

ANU obviously couldn't afford time on the CERN Large Hadron Collider so did a little experiment to find out what happens when art collides with the need to spend the capital vote.  Art loses!

We were in the area in which #49 was installed. Here is the brochure entry.

Obviously a reiteration of the previous experiment, the following image shows the same result was achieved.  Hopefully, as with the Parr work, the art has found a new home rather than having a demountable parked on top of it!

#51 by Geoffrey Bartlett.  I like the work but the text in the brochure is definitely a contender in the post-modernist bullshyte championships.

What used to be the Union area is now clearly intended to remove whatever funds the student body has left after paying the residence fees at the refurbished Bruce Hall (and of course the basic Uni fees) from the students.  None of works listed in the area could be located.  

The following wasn't listed, but I am sure it would be if the artists had simply stenciled a couple of rats into the work,  Assuming that whoever is in charge of the sculpture program knew enough about public art  to recognise their significance.  

I intend to try to get a hard copy of the brochure and do other bits of the tour on later visirs.