Jane Rankin-Reid
The State Government has announced it will be funding the Devonport Lyons Club’s $180,000 commission for the “Spirit of the Sea”, a bronze of Neptune to be installed on the Bluff to greet incoming visitors. http://www.media.tas.gov.au/release.php?id=23985
As noted in the 2005 Sunday Tasmanian columns (below), the Devonport Lyons Club has no interest in canvassing proposals from a wider and arguably more critically qualified selection of Tasmanian sculptors. Nor is there any appropriate scrutiny of the real costs of this bronze cast or of the artist’s claims to such a high price for his work.
In pledging to fund the Lyon Club’s unfortunate selection, the State Government is also waving its Percentage for Art commission price ceiling (approximately $80,000 maximum) for publicly funded sculptures, not to mention its standards of excellence and fairness in the selection of appropriate artistic commissions. Hearing Labor member for Braddon Brenton Best tell Tasmanians we’re lucky to have an “artist of international repute in our community” merely demonstrates the depths of ignorant patronage the State Government is prepared to stoop to in appeasing regional interests at the expense of excellence and integrity in the arts in Tasmania.
Perspective Sunday Tasmanian 11.9.05 Jane Rankin-Reid
Elitists, southerners, or just plain rent a crowd-stirrers are just some of the compliments greeting those questioning the merits of the Devonport Lions Club’s plans to raise $150,000 for the purchase of Texan born sculptor Aden McLeod’s 5.5 meter high full body bronze Neptune portrait. The city council, not to mention the community itself, is utterly divided by the controversy mounting over the Club’s high-handed pledge not to invite alternative artistic proposals for the site. Lion’s president George Russell’s admonishment to the sculpture’s opponents to “put up or shut up” worries senior arts experts who fear local artists are being bullied into silence by the Club’s aggressive disinterest in supporting genuine professional standards.
Professor Noel Frankham, Head of the University of Tasmania’s School of Art is particularly alarmed. “It’s a great pity that a Tasmanian city appears not to realize that this state is blessed with some of the country’s best sculptors – – and ironic that the community advocating that we buy Tasmanian primary agricultural produce, isn’t applying similar ethics and principles to our home grown art.”
How did Devonport’s power brokers become so fixated on this hard sell artist whose greatest claim to fame is that he’s “the fastest sculptor in the world”? Even for one so fatuous, Neptune’s purchase price is far above fair market value for work by an artist of McLeod’s limited critical reputation. His sculptures aren’t collected by state art galleries, nor have they been profiled, much less championed by reputable art critics to date.
For an organization of the Lions’ integrity, vested with the trust and good faith of the Devonport community to spend its annual donations on properly valued goods and services, serious professional questions must be asked about the true market price of McLeod’s version of Neptune. To my knowledge McLeod does not actually have an auction house sales record in Australia or elsewhere to support his work’s price structure in today’s art market. Casting the sculpture is estimated to have cost somewhat less than $50,000. Can we therefore safely assume that the additional $100,000 on the price tag is basically the cost of McLeod’s aesthetic showmanship. Has a recognized independent contemporary art appraiser been commissioned to assess the object? The community of Devonport deserves answers to these crucial cost and valuation questions before supporting the purchase.
Until then, calling artists and arts experts brave enough to publicly ask why the Devonport Lions Club hasn’t invited a wider range of proposals to support, “disgruntled” for not being offered the work themselves, is nothing but a publicity campaign of questionable taste, aimed primarily at discrediting professional artists in the community’s eyes. For the moment, it’s working, but it’s dangerously counter-productive to stifle expert debate in a city like Devonport. Attracting tourists to witness how discouraged Tasmania’s contemporary arts community can be made to feel in 21st century Devonport is a marketing angle no one should be allowed to get away with. Is it time the Lions Club apologized to Tasmanian artists?
Perspective Sunday Tasmanian 14. 8.05 by Jane Rankin-Reid
Great gods of the ancient world aren’t exactly thick on the ground in this state. Convinced that the historical oversight leaves Tasmania somehow lacking culturally, the Devonport Lions Club plan to raise funds for what is quite possibly the ugliest public sculpture ever to be bolted onto our island’s shoreline. Locally based artist Aden McLeod’s massive testosterone-enhanced bronze image of Poseidon, god of the sea is to emerge from a Bluff rock pool to greet incoming tourists. Pass the sick bags please! This rising monstrosity of conventional molten ersatz artistic schlock will be “a tourist icon” for Devonport, as if the region is so short on compelling scenic vistas and natural beauty, it needs expensive bad artworks to compensate!
The project is driven by the Texan born McLeod, who’s only other claim to “artistic” fame is as the self described “fastest sculptor in the world”. Take that Michealangelo! How dare they call you a genius when your masterpieces took so many decades to make!
The idea came from McLeod’s five-minute clay model of Devonport mayor Peter Hollister at a community event several years ago. Talk about currying favor! Indeed, McLeod has left a trail of other swiftly made bad bronze celebrity likenesses littering the foreshores of the northern hemisphere. But being a composite showman who’s bold enough to bung on a clay model of the Queen mum in London’s Trafalgar Square doesn’t necessarily lend McLeod’s work an imprimatur of critical appreciation, much less public acceptance or artistic credibility. After all pretty much anything can happen on a public footpath with the right civic permits. And although location is everything when it comes to photo opportunities, McLeod’s clay Queen still failed to be short listed for the prestigious fourth plinth sculptural commission at the foot of Nelson’s column. Check out the artist’s website biography at www.mcleodsculpture.com for more of his dubious artistic accomplishments.
Has the world gone mad? McLeod’s self-aggrandizing hype is so transparent. Yes he wants profit from living in Tasmania, but at whose expense? The North West coast has long been a major breeding ground of some of this island’s most talented independent contemporary artists and the region has a long history of supporting a high standard of adventurous creative projects.
In an interview, Lions Chairman George Russell said opponents to McLeod’s scheme should “put up or shut up”. He sounds like an open-minded fair sort of chap, although whether he’ll consider a wider range of ideas remains to be seen. The Lions Club has not yet invited other artists’ proposals as an alternative, nor revealed its critical criteria for selecting McLeod’s unwelcome Poseidon ahead of other potentially more compelling ideas. Indeed their needless Neptune’s artistic appeal seems limited currently to a committee of one, leaving many wondering whether Devonport really needs this useless idol at all. So we urge all warm-hearted well meaning albeit slightly misguided Lions to broaden their horizons and invite properly credentialed critically recognized artists to lend Devonport that extra bit of cultural roar.
