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Ideas about navigation and the much-loved clock on top of silos by the Yarra have inspired a new sculpture in Melbourne’s south-east. Installed on Peninsula Link this week, Natasha Johns-Messenger’s work Compass 2023 will mark a certain point in your journey; she hopes it might also get you thinking about the big issues in life.
Compass 23 by Natasha Johns-Messenger has just been installed at the Cranbourne Road exit.Credit: Peter Glenane
Winner of the 2023 McClelland Sculpture Commission, Johns-Messenger received $300,000 to create the 14-metre-high work, also inspired by the idea of a compass, with a series of semicircles at the top symbolising north, south, east and west; the smallest points due north.
Established in 2013, the commission is a public/private initiative between Peninsula Link company Southern Way – which donates funds for the work – and McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery.
“Besides the stars and the big celestial pictures that are an underlying current of my work, I started to think about how navigation in the digital age is individual and compartmentalised. We all think we know which way is which, when ironically the digital age can disconnect us, not just from each other, but from the bigger forces underlying the world,” Johns-Messenger says.
The landmark Nylex clock, commemorated in Paul Kelly’s song Leaps and Bounds, used to tell us the time and the temperature, the artist says, before we had that information on our phones. “I thought [my work] could act as a very subtle connector, that’s why I’ve kept ‘compass’ in the title, [commuters] might wonder which is north, south, east or west. On another level, it’s just an abstract artwork. The semicircles oscillate in different directions so it’s a bit of a visual conundrum as well.”
Artist Natasha Johns-Messenger stands next to her work Compass 2023 as it begins to be installed on Peninsula Link.Credit: Peter Glenane
The piece reveals itself over time depending on the elements and different times of day and night, she says. “I like the challenge of the moving space, the approach, the rear view.”
Made from powder-coated steel, Compass 2023 lights up when it gets dark, but not the entire piece: only the semicircles at the top, which will appear to float. Not that Johns-Messenger can be entirely sure – ironically it’s not until the piece is installed that it can truly reveal itself, even to its creator. “You can test it in the studio but you can’t drive past at speed,” she says with a laugh. “There has to be a leap of faith, it’s a risk as well. You put yourself out there.”
Located on the Cranbourne Road exit on the Peninsula Link freeway, Compass 2023 replaces the much-loved Reflective Lullaby – also known as the Chrome Gnome – by New Zealand-based Gregor Kregar, which has moved to its permanent home at McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery in Langwarrin. Applications for the next commission are now open and close on December 6.
“My biggest push in my work is the space between thought and perception. When you don’t know what is real in front of you, there’s a slight awareness shift,” she says.
Johns-Messenger likes to “gently push people to the bigger picture”. “Art acts like a metaphor, I feel like it’s my way of asking those questions, or prompting the questions in visual form.”
A fan of Hotel by Callum Morton on EastLink, the Melbourne-based artist says freeway artworks “pepper the journey when you’re heading to the beach or wherever, they break the monotony of the roads, they might touch you differently”.
Further south-east at Pt Leo Estate, a new work by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has been installed this week.
“Pumpkin” by Yayoi Kusama can now be seen at Pt. Leo Estate Sculpture Park.Credit: Chris McConville
The three-metre-wide red polka-dotted pumpkin, simply called Pumpkin, is made from bronze, mosaic and stainless steel, with cut-outs creating patterns that play with light and shadow.
“The pumpkins shine even more crimson in the sunlight. I am truly happy to be able to communicate with my beloved Australian people through this work,” Kusama said.
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