Monuments of Future Acts

This public art commission was developed with the Victorian Multicultural Commission, Trades Hall and RMIT University. The project was to commission an art in public space project for the Lygon Street area, where Trades Hall, RMIT University and the Lygon Street Cultural Precinct meet. The area currently does not have a prominent piece of public art located in the area and was an opportunity to provide artists with the challenge of investigating the surrounding communities of the precinct. Several stages were reached in developing this project, the call for submissions of resulted in the submission of eleven projects, 5 of which were shortlisted and then two projects were further called back to provide further information. In the end Tom Nickholson's project Monuments for future acts was selected as the final work. As the work was due to commence, State elections have interrupted the process of completion, as a change in government has impacted upon the funding of the final process of the project. This project researched how local artists are able to contribute to the interpretation of the local environment. As a research many artists were able to interpret the local precinct through the opportunity to submit their concepts for the commissioning process. As the project was not completed it also revealed the political nature of public art projects funded by government bodies and how these organizations can be vulnerable, as they can be subject to changes in the politics.