LAA#122: Optimism


There has been a decided lack of positive news from the media of late, and the
economic outlook can only be said to be grim. While business owners concentrate on
short-term problems they run the risk of neglecting to keep watch on the horizon.
Funnily enough when a boom is on one has no time to lift their head from the drawing
board (yes, I still use one), and when times are less certain the fear of the herd tends
to cause all of us to take a very blinkered or “bunker” mentality. But think of all the
opportunities we can miss if we don’t keep our eyes open. This Perspective discusses
the benefits of observing and engaging with popular culture and new media – by
being reactive but also proactive and, optimistically, “having a go.”

Designers trade in visual images. When we see an object or space for the first time
our experience is coloured by the last sequence of images we have been exposed to.
What we produce is a function of what we have seen and how we have reinterpreted
the composition and perspective. There is a constant need to refresh and expose
ourselves to new objects, spaces and images. I spent a weekend in Brisbane this
January, chiefly to see the exhibition at GOMA, titled Contemporary Australia:
Optimism. There were a few side trips to commercial galleries and, on a tip, I also
saw New – recent acquisitions at the University of Queensland Art Museum.
(Just quickly, my friend in Brisbane’s West End is looking forward to the opening of
the new bicycle/footbridge over the river to the west of GOMA – optimistically, it
will cut ten minutes from her cycle commute to Kelvin Grove QUT Campus. Now
that is infrastructure!)

There was a lot of conjecture about the title and timing of the GOMA show, which
opened in November last year. The lead time for these exhibitions means the title
would have been locked in well before any hint of the severity of the financial crisis
was apparent. So the gallery was left with an interesting marketing problem. They
certainly tackled it head on in the catalogue. From the gallery director Tony
Ellwood’s foreword: “As a theme, the notion of optimism seemed to reflect a
burgeoning movement within the national art scene, one that is earmarked by a
renewed confidence in the potential for art and artists to be active participants in
contemporary society….[the exhibition] explores the optimism inherent in the artist’s
drive to create.” And in curator Julie Ewington’s essay: “Optimism is modernity’s
philosophy for living. It offers a way forward, even when life is profoundly difficult
… Action sustains optimism, while optimism makes every kind of acting in (and on)
the world possible.”

The University of Queensland has been very active buyers recently. They bought
what was for me the standout digital work at last year’s Melbourne Art Fair:
Anastasia Klose’s Film for my Nanna set to Don MacLean’s “Castles in the Air.” It is
a response to a question from the artist’s grandmother about when she would find a
husband. Shot in and around Flinders Street Station and Federation Square it shows
the artist (optimistically) dressed in a white wedding dress, with a cardboard sign
around her neck: “Nanna I am still alone.” There are some brilliant reactions from
passersby, from punks to suited types captured on video shot by the artist’s mother.
I tend to be a glass-half-full person, as it helps when you lose a tender, or your
competition entry goes nowhere. It will be very interesting to see what is entered in
Architecture Media’s Unlandscaped 2009 competition, with the winner to be
announced during the AILA conference in Melbourne in May, and published in this
issue. The competition is looking for “thought-provoking responses to contemporary
issues. The prize promotes ideas and debate about landscape architecture by
rewarding and challenging new work.” Here is golden chance to be optimistic, and
resurrect our grand plans that somehow ended up un-constructed. I am optimistic that
current conditions will flush out some challenging works.

This issue of Landscape Architecture Australia focuses on landscapes for food
production. There is broad scope for an optimistic outlook on that front, but less so in
Canberra, where I struggle to develop a list of more than two or three food trees that
will survive, let alone thrive, in an un-maintained and unwatered urban environment –
but think of the potential in Queensland and the Northern Territory! Just maybe our
local authorities will accede to the wishes of the growing guerrilla-garden movement,
and countenance at least some level of productive road verges to flourish. It will be a
stretch for Canberra, as I have never understood the local maintenance authority’s
practice of spraying all the blackberries around the lake at this time of year – and
placing signage warning against eating the sprayed fruit. If the blackberry is so
intolerable, why hasn’t it been grubbed out by the roots and removed? While the
berries are occupying space they may as well be enjoyed!

I had the luck many years ago to meet the late Nigel Wace, one time head of the
Australian National University’s department of Biogeography and Geomorphology.
One of his areas of study was weed distribution through car tyre mud and trouser turnups,
but the fascinating area for me was his work on the distribution of seedling
apples along country roadsides. As I write, there are some burgeoning crops on the
coast road from Canberra to Batemans Bay.

I understand that apple trees were also key to train driving on country rail lines.
Apocryphally, apple cores were thrown out of the cabin at key points where a driver
was to apply brakes – at least that is the story behind two seedling apples at the
former causeway railway bridge beside the headwaters of Lake Burley Griffin (which
is now the site of the Canberra Hospice). Now there is some heritage food production!

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