The bandstand in Market Square was originally dedicated to the company responsible for collecting the city’s dunny cans – who knew? Photo: Supplied.
The Illawarra possesses quite a bit of public art but a significant part of its creation is either hidden in plain sight or not to be found at all.
Personally, I like public art that is either beautiful, dignified or functional and if more than one is achieved then that’s pretty good.
For example, the bandstand in Market Square is a reconstruction of the original 1896 rotunda designed by architect Robert Boyd and built by contractors D McPhee and T Howland, but demolished in 1959.
But who today remembers that the company of A E Baker to whom it is dedicated served the community by holding the unpleasant contract for Illawarra’s dunny can collection for decades.
The rotunda’s original function was to provide a stage for recitals by the Wollongong Town Band. But the faithful and elegant reconstruction remains decorative even if only very rarely today functioning for its original purpose, although I’ve occasionally seen it used for wedding-vow ceremonies.
Similarly, Thirroul’s 1920 WWI monument – the first erected on the South Coast – once had a bubbler attached to its base. This was something likely appreciated by both passers-by and those who still did not possess running water connected to their houses. But the man who designed, modelled and constructed the statue of the soldier – the elusive Signor Casagrandi of Hurstville – is today mostly forgotten.
Another classic is the Arthur James Fountain on the corner of Crown and Kembla Streets which always causes a smile when some wag adds soap powder and thus produces one of the best bubble-blowers Wollongong has ever seen.
Arthur James was the licensee of the North Gong Pub from 1939 and made many donations of land and cash to the community. Fortunately, video footage survives of what some of the locals thought of it back in 1972.
In more recent years Austinmer’s Nick Brash and others had a hand in doing a belated decoration of this originally rather austere artwork.
But a far more serious and impressive public artwork was The Mercury Fountain designed by Bob Woodward. It was a key feature of the beautiful and disgracefully demolished Wollongong Rest Park.
Today this fountain can be found – not in working order – at the Botanic Garden at Keiraville. The destruction of the Rest Park including its distinctive stone walls was breathtaking, especially now that even the same skills of the stonemason Charles Prior seen in the surviving 1940s stone picnic shelters at Wollongong’s South and North Beaches are today heritage listed.
Just across the road from the demolished Rest Park in Burelli Street stands, at least in my view, the two finest surviving examples of Wollongong’s public art – one intentional and the other probably much less so.
Nike – Ken Unsworth’s 25 tonne sculpture commissioned to commemorate the steel industry – is a formidably potent demonstration of both strength and almost gravity-defying solidity.
What is too often forgotten, however, is that just as it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a community to design and build great public art.
It took a considerable number of individuals to make sure that Ken Unsworth’s inspired design was able to stand up.
I was unaware of this until the late, great Doug Prosser gifted me the blueprint that helped make sure a potentially ungainly art structure would still demonstrate massive strength without collapsing upon itself.
What Doug Prosser taught me is that, although an artist can come up with an impressive design, it often takes a host of skilled individuals to bring such an artwork to fruition.
On Doug’s behalf, I donated the blueprint to the Wollongong Art Gallery which already possessed the maquette for Unsworth’s design.
Fortunately, a plaque suitably attached to Nike does reveal at least a number of the many who made Unsworth’s art possible.
Immediately east of Unsworth’s mighty Nike, however, is my favourite piece of Illawarra’s public art.
It’s the western wall of the former retail premises of the Illawarra County Council, part of a building (like many of the structures surrounding MacCabe Park) that is now owned by Wollongong Council.
That western wall, interrupted by only the tiniest of windows, is a bit of a wonder but one to which I suspect few people ever give a second thought.
Like too much public art I don’t know the name of the building’s architect, the place from which the tiles were sourced or the tiler or tilers who worked so patiently to create something of which most Wollongongers probably take very little heed.
Without independent means it’s a tough gig trying to make a living as an artist, but it’s even tougher when your art is not only publicly unheralded but sometimes almost completely unknown.
Who, however, could miss Wollongong’s cabbage palm up a pole?
The artwork has come in for spectacular amounts of criticism – something that I can only assume the project designer hoped would erupt. Nonetheless, I suspect very few know the name of that project artist.
Sadly, even fewer will ever know the names of the workers who got the trees into such uncomfortable positions and those who today likely struggle to keep them alive.
