I think of public art as of one those essentially uncomfortable and unloved terms with which almost everyone has some dispute: what does it really mean (or what should it mean) to put the words public and art next to each other? Within the documents of government cultural policy over the last forty years or so, however, the term has evolved a distinctive usage. Although continually under challenge by artists and audiences as to what should be included by the term and why, public art has come to refer most often to government sponsored or funded artwork, created by or with professional artists and legally sited in publicly accessible venues - not necessarily out of doors but usually other than inside an art gallery.

This usage separates it from, but doesn't exclude, other categories of visual art, craft and design practice, such as 'public sculpture', commemorative or other 'outdoor' art, or even 'community' art; and includes work produced or commissioned with a wide variety of intentions, ranging from community development or placemaking; critical social or political 'intervention'; or simply extending the reputation and patronage of professional artists beyond the institutional settings of gallery or museum.

Australia Council Public Art Program
Bert Flugelman
Twin Spheres, 1977 (photographed 2003)
Stainless steel
Rundle Mall, Adelaide,
Photographer: R Fazakerley.
The Public Art Program funded the Adelaide City Council to commission four maquettes, including this Twin Spheres by Bert Flugelman, as proposals for artwork in the new Rundle Mall. The production of Twin Spheres was funded by a donation from the Hindmarsh Building Society.

That public art currently encompasses such a broad range of goals and practices does raise the question of how models of public art have changed over recent times. In Australia, for example, since the late 1960s, the history of government sponsored public art programs outlines a clear shift in cultural policy towards a 'cultural industries' approach: characterised by Deborah Stevenson as a move away from 'supply-side' funding programs focusing on creative production and development, towards an emphasis on audience development, consumption and 'demand'. ₁ In this environment, public art is increasingly advocated for on the grounds of its usefulness in resolving social and economic problems - with even the imagined autonomy of art (and the romantic, isolated artist) having a role as 'the engine for the generation of innovation' in the so-called new economy.₂   View more images

The Federal Government's 1973 Public Art Program, by contrast, aimed to financially support the production and purchase of work by Australian visual artists, linked with wider goals of fostering authoritative standards of artistic excellence and the expression of national identity.

In November 1967 the Australian Government established the Australian Council for the Arts (ACFTA) as the new administrative structure to coordinate its support for the arts, in the process creating a new focus for ongoing public debate concerning the proper relationship between government and the arts. The Public Art Program was a program of ACFTA's newly formed Visual Arts Board, created in 1973 as part of a major restructure of the organization following the election of the Labor Whitlam government. The Program replaced an earlier scheme, the Direct Acquisitions Grant, also intended to support 'production and purchase'. However, the strategy of funding the commissioning of artwork explicitly for public places aimed to broaden those goals by creating spaces for art where none had existed before. Through the 'museum without walls', the wider community would be brought into inadvertent, sustained contact with quality artwork, allowing for spectator enjoyment and education through the gradual assimilation of the forms, values and concerns of contemporary art. In this way, both the status of 'serious' art and the income of living, professional artists might be steadily improved.

What was meant by serious, significant or excellent art was (and remains) of course a moot point, but it is noteworthy that ACFTA's Public Art Program coincided with a new emphasis on professionalism and the professional training of 'art-for-art's-sake', studio artists in art schools around the country - in direct challenge to their longstanding role in the technical training of artisans and the production of art teachers.

Throughout its lifetime the Public Art Program directly funded visual artists (principally sculptors and painters) through design and consultation fees, and offered advice and funding to government departments, schools and universities, architectural firms, libraries and councils, in support of new artwork commissions (including murals, sculptural objects and environmental sculpture). ₃ The Program continued to operate until 1989 when it was in effect replaced by the Community Environment Art and Design (CEAD) program.

The demise of public art as an explicit program reflects a number of important shifts in art practice and political agendas. Initial models of public art operated in practice to define 'serious' (or 'high) art in relation to popular, mass cultural forms or even other categories of art (such as 'community' art) - while providing direct and indirect support for the new models of professional artist and craftsperson that emerged in association with the restructuring of art training institutions across Australia in the 1970s. At the same time however, art (and governments) were being called upon to address the new sorts of audiences and cultural experiences brought about by changes in technology and society, and, in the process, to gesture to wider questions of human-environment relations. The name public art was being given, for example, not only to discrete sculptural objects but to entire environments or events; artworks could be permanent, temporary or ephemeral; involve non-traditional media (such as light, moving images or sound) and non-traditional techniques such as interdisciplinary collaboration, performance or social intervention.

CEAD, which operated until 2001 across both the Visual Arts and Community Arts Boards, reflects some of this dissatisfaction with traditional art form categories as well as a broadening of the role for artists in the public realm. The program explicitly aimed to encourage new collaborations between local government staff, communities and art, craft and design professionals in projects to improve the quality of local environments. Driven by community development principles, CEAD nevertheless integrated some of the concerns of the older Public Art Program by seeking to increase artists' employment opportunities and to strengthen their professional status in interactions with communities and with other professions.

Importantly, CEAD can also be seen within the context of other Federal initiatives of the time that sought to devolve responsibility for arts infrastructure and programming to State and especially local government.

Between 1973 and 2001 the landscape of government funded art programs shifted considerably across Australia with increased activity at State and local government levels. From the early 1970s the South Australian State Government, followed by other Australian states, had developed its own bureaucratic framework for support of the arts, culminating in the formation of the Department for the Arts in 1980. Following an irregular Works of Art in Public Places program in South Australia, operating between 1977 and 1980 in conjunction with the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Art for Public Places Committee was officially formed in 1984 to oversee the development of a formal program. The subsequent Art for Public Places program began operation in 1986 (and is still operating in 2008 under the name Public Art and Design) with the brief of bringing high quality works of art to places of public access, and promoting the professional development and employment of South Australian artists. Art for Public Places was not a 'percent for art' scheme or commissioning program, nor was the program accompanied by a formal public art policy. Instead, the program offered an advisory service (to government as well as other public and private clients) and, through the provision of an artists' referral service and the publication of 'best practice' guidelines for public art commissioning, functioned as the principal advocate for public art in the State.

South Australia's Art for Public Places program followed at least one other State Government scheme (the Tasmanian 'percent for art' Art for Public Buildings Scheme, 1980) and has since been joined by a multiplicity of state and city-based policies and programs - notably, the percent for art policies of Western Australia (Per Cent for Art Scheme, 1989) and Queensland (Art Built-In, 1999-2007). The Northern Territory Government established its first public art policy in 2006, while the ACT announced a new percent for art policy and funding for major commissions in its 2007 Action Statement for Public Art (building upon an existing Public Art Program in operation since 1995).

At the city government level, the City of Sydney Council and the City of Melbourne both endorsed new public art policies in 1994, followed by Brisbane City Council in 1995. The City of Adelaide introduced its first public art policy in 2001, in the process committing to an annual budget for staffing and for the commissioning of public artworks. In the 21st century, public art programs and policies have been widely taken up as the responsibility of smaller municipalities smaller municipalities with the Alice Springs Town Council, to given only one example, announcing their inaugural policy in 2006.

It is frequently argued that public art is obsolete as a distinct genre of art practice given the variety of site specific, interventionist and collaborative practices that continue to challenge notions of authorship, site and public. Public art is inclusive of such a wide range of forms and practices, it is argued, that strict divisions of public from non-public art are impossible to maintain. Such an argument, however, needs to be contrasted with the increasing legitimacy of the term within cultural policy, at least to judge by the burgeoning development of policies by local governments in Australia (not to mention the seemingly ubiquitous presence of public art within urban renewal public-private partnerships, an area not previously discussed here).

It clearly still remains pertinent to ask the question, what (now) does it mean to put the word public next to art?

Ruth Fazakerley
September 2008

Ruth Fazakerley, whose recent PhD examined public art in South Australia, is a visual artist and academic researcher, and works as a part-time Membership Services Officer with Craftsouth.

South Australian Department for the Arts, Public Art and Design Program
A. Danko and J. Walton
Lie of the Land, 2004,
Kanmantoo stone, granitised sand, kangaroo grass (themeda triandra), black mallee box (eucalyptus porosal)
Situated at Sir Donald Bradman Drive, northern and southern verges, Adelaide
Photographer: R Fazakerley

Lie of the Land was the outcome of the Western Gateway project, a joint South Australian State Government and Adelaide City Council partnership. The project was managed by the State's Public Art and Design Program and funded with contributions from the State's Centenary of Federation celebrations.

Queensland Government, Art Built-In
Sebastian di Mauro
Drift, 2004
Cast aluminium
Situated at Government Office Building, 33 Charlotte Street, Brisbane,
Photographer: D Richards.

Four artworks were commissioned by the Department for Public Works for the interior and exterior of the Government Office Building at 33 Charlotte Street. Funded through the Art Built-In Policy, artworks included stand-alone sculptural objects (Sebastian Di Mauro, Hew Chee Fong and L M Noonan), wall mounted sandstone panels (John Elliot) and glass screens (Barbara Penrose).

Queensland Government, Art Built-In
Barbara Penrose
Rondo, 2001
Situated at Roma Street, Parklands
Photographer: D Richards

The Roma Street Parkland project was an initiative of the Queensland Government's Art Built-In policy, commissioning 16 artists for the 16 hectare site in the centre of Brisbane, the old Roma Street railyard.

Queensland Government, Art Built-In
Gwynn Hansen Pigott
Still Life, 1999
Ceramics
Situated at Neville Bonner Building, Brisbane
Photographer: R Fazakerley

Pre-dating the Art Built-In policy, the architecture of Queensland State Government's Neville Bonner Building incorporated the work of four artists: Yenda Carson, Barbara Heath, Ron Hurley, and Gwynn Hansen Pigott. Hansen Piggott's Still Life is accommodated in it own designed niche, viewable from the interior and exterior of the public foyer.

Adelaide City Council
Michelle Nikou
Coins, 2006
Concrete paving
Rundle Street East, Adelaide
Photographer: R Fazakerley

Adelaide City Council
Michelle Nikou
Coins, 2006 (detail)

Footnotes

1. D Stevenson, 2000, Art and Organisation, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia QLD.
2. G Yudice, 2006, 'Public and violence', in M Schmidt Campbell & R Martin (eds), 2006, Artistic Citizenship: a public voice for the arts, Routledge, New York, pp 151-162.
3. NB in 1975 ACFTA was formally constituted as a statutory authority and named the Australia Council.

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