“Public Art is at its best when it oscillated between the familiar and the unexpected and creates a public space that is both accommodating and inspiring.”

Tim Morrell Australian Contemporary Art Curator Queensland Art Gallery

What is a Park?

A park is a gift to the people, a living environment that provides a place to play, relax and gather together socially. A park is a living environmental experience:  David Seamon a social geographer suggests that there is three overarching themes that are important to peoples’ well being: movement, rest and encounter. These seemingly everyday experiences are central to people’s wellbeing regardless of their social standing. A park provides the necessary elements and facilitates homeness which then filters into the community illustrating the importance of the lived experience creating a sense of place.

'The GREEN Room' Permanent public art commission , grass, soil, 'tuff' granite stone, lighting concrete Photo: Rod Buchholz

The term sense of place has been defined and used in different ways by different people. To some, it is a characteristic that some geographic places have and some do not, while to others it is a feeling or perception held by people (not by the place itself). It is often used in relation to those characteristics that make a place special or unique, as well as to those that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging. As Heidegger suggests it is simply about being IN the openness of a place that thoughts originate form. This park embraces and facilitates the viewer experience by providing an experience that allows for individual thought and reading to occur, this simple human requirement allows the audience/individual to make up their own ways and variations on how they will interact with place.

Heidegger’s work on ‘Place and Experience’ emphasizes that thought is not an intuitive position but originates simply from being in the openness of place. Movement within a space is a basic human requirement, humans require a sense of place to understand themselves Merleau-Ponty suggests that movement is learned when the body has understood it, essentially what Ponty is suggesting is that humans do not learn effectively until the body has experienced, hence to understand fully we need to experience a place through movement, we need to participate. This park enhances the individual viewing and participative experience (present and past) and with this opportunity presented to the audience (the users of the park) the experience of place, park and people will be indivisible from the work. This will result in a truly lived social experience; keeping in mind that place is not secondary to space.

In summary a sense of place is a social phenomenon that exists independently of any one individual’s perceptions or experiences, yet is dependent on human engagement for its existence.

See the full excerpt and methodology here: What is a Park?

All images by Rod Buchholz

The GREEN ROOM

Nicole Voevodin-Cash’s The Green Room belongs to a modern genre of art called Earth Art or Land Art. The most famous example is Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty that was created in 1970 as a 457-metre jetty on the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Smithson designed the jetty as an immense spiral made from local basalt rocks, mud, earth and salt crystals. Over the 40 years since completion the spiral jetty has submerged under high water levels and reappeared during drought conditions. The form, substance and location of Spiral Jetty take the measure of changing environmental conditions and reorientate the way we see the world with its pathway acting as a spiral amphitheatre. The Green Room extends the tradition of Spiral Jetty with the concept of a soft landscape amphitheatre created from local rock and earth.

Instead of a 360-degree spiralling pathway, The Green Room three descending mounded platforms where people can picnic and enjoy panoramic views towards the City Botanic Gardens and south west along the Brisbane River.

Excerpt from essay by Dr Sally Butler from Art on the Park Kangaroo Point Park commissioned artwork catalogue. 
Read the entire catalogue here:. Art on the Park

And read here all about the Green Room, Afforest and the opening events commission by Art+Place: Kangaroo Point Park Public Artworks 

AFFOREST

As art, trees are powerful representations of life and growth, and are to be viewed as symbolic of the development and growth of the state of Queensland.

Nicole Voevodin-Cash

A commemorative work of 150 years of Queensland State independence Afforest is a sculpture consisting of a forest of formal lines and avenues of trees: hoop pine, wollemi pine and cycad at the rear, kauri in the middle and bumpy ash in the front, the protector and shade provider of the forest. As the trees grow, they frame vistas and provide diverse spaces and moods with changing their shade patterns. The tree species were selected largely due to their past use as cabinet trees, with the exception of the recently rediscovered wollemi pine, which is believed to be an ancient predecessor of the modern pine. As art, trees are powerful representations of life and growth, and are to be viewed as symbolic of the development and growth of the state of Queensland. A sculptural arbour meanders its way through the two avenues of trees, crossing it like a DNA strand, further emphasising the trees as the life force of the site. Upon this arbour grows a purple flowering vine called Petrea (the queens wreath). Over time, the queens wreath will cover the arbour with masses of ‘royal’ purple flowers and green foliage, providing colour and shade over the paths below, and a visual link with the purple flowering jacaranda trees growing on the neighbouring site of St Mary’s Church.

Afforest is a space in which people can move through and under. Its form is like a giant tunnel of nature joining a series of spaces or rooms, creating intimate places for people to discover and re-discover each time they visit. Each entry path from west to east into Afforest is marked by a series of ‘shaped’ flame trees (grafted Brachychiton acerifoliusand bidwillii), grown, pleached and shaped specifically for the park. In this sense, Afforest becomes a different kind of contained space which exaggerates and heightens our relationship with nature, emphasising man’s manipulation and control over nature and our role within the natural environment.

The flame tree was selected for its quick growth, flowering capacity and its use by the Indigenous people to make fishing baskets from its striped bark. The contemporary weaving and shaping of these trees today is an acknowledgement of the tree’s past use, and references white settlers gardening practices of ‘grafting’ and ‘pleaching’ brought with them from their European homeland so long ago. Read the concept behind the work here

Above: 2010 trees at the beginning of the work to become a AFFOREST, 18 months in the nursery shaping and forming them.
Below: first row 2015 after 5 years growing in the ground this year we were hit by a cyclone that damaged  at least 22 grafts of the 14 avenue trees, which I reaired by alais many grafts failed and this area can be seen as the damage was irreparable.

Bottom two images: are of the trees in 2021, all going strong. The rest of the parks growth also growing well and the Petrea covering and giving much needed shade to a hot western sunned park. The bumpy ash, kurra pines and cycad have never looked back but unfortunately the wollemi pines did not survive.

Largest two images below: show the amazing grow and resilience using natural materials can provide, this is my legacy work…..and will stand long after I am gone.