Public Artwork on a Tilt

By Catherine Hunt, Koori Mail, 23 October 2024

Public art is increasingly being seen and sought in cityscapes. As our living spaces evolve, councils are embracing public art as an opportunity to strengthen community identity and create civic legacies, giving local people a continuing connection to the community.

Art in the urban environment is something that seemingly happens around us; artworks appear as if by magic. But it’s not magic. From concept to completion, public art projects require coordination and management on many levels, from complying with regulations to sourcing appropriate materials to community engagement. It requires, by necessity, a collaborative approach. It’s a lot for artists, who tend to operate independently, to take on.

First Nations artist Shay Tobin has worked on public art projects for many years and knows the challenges all too well. “With these large-scale projects, which carry on for many years, through many hands, what happens to the artist’s original concept – when it gets filtered through the industrial designers, the engineering, the budget and other restrictions – it can end up as something that is far from the original intention,” Shay told the Koori Mail.

If it makes it to completion at all. Many projects struggle, are held up and ultimately fail because of the complexity and scale of the endeavour.

Award-winning industrial design enterprise Tilt Industrial Design is working to bridge the gap. Working nationally, Tilt’s multidisciplinary team of specialised designers and engineers work in collaboration with artists and clients to support public art projects to completion. At the heart of Tilt’s process is a genuine curiosity to learn and develop a deep understanding of the artist’s concept and practice.

The team from Tilt worked closely with First Nations artists Shay Tobin and Djon Mundine OAM, along with other artisans, to develop a unique series of artwork installations on trees at the newly opened ‘Gabrugal Yana’ bushwalk in Western Sydney Parklands. Shay says that guidance and suport from Tilt helped to realise the project in very practical ways.

He said they asked important, precise questions and bridged knowledge gaps in terms of materials and design approaches, pushing the project through difficult moments. Drilling down into the detail of the project, Tilt team members helped refine the many ideas and concepts that were starting to grow out of control, Shay says, “the scale was just too big”.

“I was feeling a bit lost on the project at that stage. The ideas, and the distance between visualising it and realising it, seemed so big. Tilt was able to sit with me and ask direct and concise questions about my sketches, bringing me back to the concept.” Shay said. Tilt also opened up new options as far as materials. Shay was particularly excited to have the opportunity to work with the ancient material, bronze, a material that is not readily accessible.

“Usually bronze is reserved for figures from ‘high society’, so I thought it was such an interesting opportunity to be able to use that material for an Indigenous artwork,” Shay said. With support from Tilt, Shay was freed up to focus on the creative process, and to think about the underlying implications of the work he was doing.

“One of the difficult truths of being a Dharug artist in Western Sydney is seeing the natural environment completely annihilated in front of your eyes and then being asked to be part of it,” he said. Tilt’s artist-first approach gave Shay the space and the freedom to reflect on what it means, as an Indigenous person, to create art in the public space, on land and Country that has been stolen, and what the wider expectations for that are.

“As a Dharug person, you’re supposed to be a custodian of the land. How do you interact with the massive machine that is unlistening and unstoppable? That’s been a big thing to deal with. We didn’t agree with the development. It’s abhorrent that it’s happening. But with that, you need to remember the artmaking process, and the reasons you want to make the art.”

For Shay, making public art “educates about the land, Country, and it tells about the contemporary story of Indigenous culture as well as referring to what was here, which is traditional culture.
“As a Dharug person, it’s hard to watch and hard to be part of, but also necessary to be part of,” he said.

“Coming to understand that is big.”

> Continue reading about the Gabrugal Yana case study