Places are fragmentary and inward-turning histories, past that others are not allowed to read, accumulated time that can be unfolded but like stories held in reserve, remaining in an enigmatic state, symbolizations encysted in the pain or pleasure of the body. "I feel good here." De Certeau

One of the great pleasures of being an immigrant is the negotiation and investigation of a new terrain, a new landscape, to understand and to make home. At the beginning, we enter a place like a tourist, not quite sure of the exotic, wondering what will and/or can become familiar and ordinary. The character of our chosen city reveals itself slowly, over the course of living daily life. Its subtleties, its elements, planned and spontaneous, reveal its disposition; the newcomer begins to sense a political, aesthetic, and ecological framework.

Rodney Glick and Marco Marcon, The Face of The Community, 2006. Two digital prints onto vinyl, steel support panels. Dimensions of each print: 4m x 3m

Unlike the American cities that were formerly my terrain, the suburbs of Perth have an initial impression of a considered aesthetic space. Perhaps not grand but in comparison to North American encounters, one senses that someone has made an effort. Aesthetics appear to be embedded within the everyday: schools, roads, shopping, garbage. Not only is there a perceptible sense of public design, but there is a seeming wealth of public art.

Within the inner suburbs, the novice day-tripper encounters many elements of designed landscape: memorials, public art, gardens, benches, street bits. At first the encounters are overwhelming: what to make of this manicured paradise? Like elements of touristic signage, a wealth of fictionalised kangaroos reinforces a sightseer's expectations. It takes time to differentiate what is mere cosmetic advertisement from the thinking aesthetic; it takes time to see the prospective underneath the veneer towards a multifaceted urban/suburban place. Moseying around the place, we find many fine pieces of art that situate themselves in the public realm. They are for the most part unforeseen, found by chance as we negotiate new corners and streets. These pieces achieve what good art, public and private, does; it pulls us, draws us near and beckons us to visually and sometimes physically caress it.

Like all good immigrants of modest means, we decamped to the outer suburbs soon after arriving. Encounters with elements of public art became an almost daily occurrence. Bollards, street lamps, tree grates, rubbish bins, kerbs embellished with tiles, banners, street furniture, entry signs, gateway sculptures. Is there a difference between public design and public art? Are we making good places or are we branding new spaces? In streets devoid of people, the "community" was evident only in the many tiles/medallions/bricks manufactured with drawings/names/words of children. Was it telling that some of these elements were later encountered at the local tip, alongside the recyclable detritus of everyday suburbia? I could buy that child's art medallion of a wombat (do we have wombats in WA?) for 50 cents, the pleasant cast iron eucalyptus leaf embedded tree grate for $2.50.

Stuart Green (artist), Rob Muir (sound artist), Dave Primmer (mixed media), Victoria Park Train Station Speakers, 2008. Stainless steel, rusted corten, audio equipment. Victoria Park Train Station, Perth. Photograph: Acorn

Within the recent suburb it is difficult to rationalize the incongruity of the skilful construction and fabrication of public art with the extreme decimation of the surrounding local landscape. Terrains obliterated, markers deleted, ecologies erased. Public artists, whether by brief, disposition or ease, seemingly feel obligated to tell a narrative of a place, a spatial story. Too often these elements become apologies of a lost place. Creating a "sense of place" too frequently leads to superficial readings and interpretations of intricate ecologies. To my mind, to make a memorial, to make an everlasting beautiful object from a sentient, complex living biotic system is apologetic and perverse.

Stuart Green (artist), Rob Muir (sound artist), Dave Primmer (mixed media), Victoria Park Train Station Speakers, 2008 (detail)

I am writing of this place and its public art just as I am consuming it: within relative ignorance - ignorance of the process, the history, the artists, the politics. While no longer new terrain, I still take Perth's public art on face value, for the most part not knowing the story and the intended meaning behind it. Unless you are in the business, public art is about the personal, the potential of the everyday encounter with a spontaneous cultural offering, the delight in connecting with the unexpected. Often Perth reveals itself more deeply through its back-sides, in its alleyways and lanes. Alongside rubbish bins and cigarette butts are found paintings and objects, glimpses of the thinking artist. We shift; we look upward and are rewarded for refocusing our gaze. Curiosity, delight, pleasure -a public art but the encounters are private, they invoke internal pleasures.

The freeway is a communal landscape, a shared place for private and public activity (sitting alone in a car surrounded by others sitting alone in their cars) Trainstationspotting is an unavoidable activity made interesting because of the calibre of the architecture of the stations. Our home bound journey makes clear when the design standard for these stations subside. For residents of the northern extension, a recurring discussion of neighbour and visitor alike is: did they run out of money or did they change political regimes? Why is Hepburn station so ugly? The new Greenwood station looks like a jail ... We do see the continual repairs and maintenance to the more sculpturally daring stations. We understand that it takes money to do this. But we also recognise why to do so is good and what is added to our day to see good public design. We appreciate it.

The new southern train line expands the canvas of public design, adding public art to the palette. It is within this egalitarian canvas that a recent art piece has caught my attention. From a distance a face rises above the terrain, beckoning the driver to look. The face, that of a young boy, is odd, unsettling. Like Janus, the face is different on the journey home, revealing a smiling woman benevolently peering at us. For months, every encounter with these images aroused a visceral reaction in me; they annoyed me and ticked me off. Slowly the sensation gave way to curiosity.....why does this thing exasperate me? Eventually this highly personal irritation was revealed: that kid looks like a milk carton kid, it reminds me of Johnny Gosch. Unless you grew up in America in the 80's, this means nothing to you. Johnny was an abducted newspaper boy, the first missing kid to have his face featured on milk cartons. We were bombarded with the faces of these lost children. For me, Glick/Marcon's boy was one of those kids. These faces pissed me off, they aggravated me, they goaded me. They did something else too, they made me think -to ponder the everyday terrain through this foreign/familiar face in the landscape. The work of art belonged to the road, to the train, to me. It had what I believe public art should and can do - it made me react. Yes, images on milk cartons are highly personal reactions. But Glick/Marcon's images were transformative. Beyond the images themselves, the scale of the work is right. The images are accessible to the quick and the slow, passenger and driver. They understand the scale of this transportation landscape. They intrigue us. Even without the reading of a lost child, one does wonder, "Who is that kid? That lady?" Now, I look for them. They have become the familiar, a new semaphore on the erased landscape that is helping to tell a new story. Like the double-faced head of Janus, the Roman god of gates and doors, they seem to represent beginnings and endings

Public art is an egalitarian art but not a superficial one. Its potential is to embellish the happenstance of everyday life with optimism and reflection, to generously and critically transform ideas and contradictions into meaningful places.

Catharina Sack
Discipline Chair
Landscape Architecture Program,
Faculty of Architecture,
Landscape and Visual Arts the University of WA
September 2008