Public Art
Public art has a significant role in the redevelopment of Midland.
The MRA is committed to a public art program that enriches the redevelopment and captures Midland’s pride in past achievements, aspirations for the future and colourful local character.
The unique heritage and features of the Railway Workshops are inspiring some wonderful works.
The Midland area has a rich cultural history, both Aboriginal and European, providing a wealth of influences that can be reflected through public art.
The MRA has produced a guide to the artworks that can be downloaded from our Publications page, under the General Publications heading.
The guide includes a brief introduction to the MRA's public art program and includes a map of the redevelopment area showing the locations of the artworks.
Click here for a link to the Public Art Brochure and Site Map
Installations
Verge sculptures, Yelverton Drive, Clayton Street and city centre
December 2002 saw the unveiling of the first major permanent public artwork commissioned by the MRA.
Safety Bay sculptor Kath Wheatley’s series of figures, in twos and threes, imply the strong family connections within the Workshops. The figures are made of recycled material from the Workshops combined with new steel, and are sandblasted and galvanised. The artist has balanced the hard metal components with small, whimsical decoration and human poses and expressions, resulting in artwork that is endearing and personable.
The figures are installed on the verges of Yelverton Drive, linking the Amherst Road roundabout to the Lloyd Street intersection, and the city centre.
Fountain, Australian Opera Studio, cnr Great Eastern Highway and Cale Street
The striking artwork in front of the Australian Opera Studio in Great Eastern Highway was officially inaugurated in November 2003. The futuristic fountain is a colourful collection of plant sculptures in cast aluminium and bronze by WA artist Steve Tepper, and symbolises the connection between water and earth. Titled ‘Spit, trickle, spurt, squirt and flow’, it invites the viewer to come closer to see what it is, and to delight in the discovery.
The Workers’ Wall, Yelverton Drive
The Workers’ Wall is a large art installation featuring about 3300 bricks with the names and trades of former Workshops workers. It is located at the entry to the site, near the Interpretive Centre, as a permanent tribute to those men and women and preserves the site’s links to the Western Australian community. In scale and design, the wall is in keeping with the size and significance of the nearby heritage buildings.
Heritage architect Philip McAllister designed the wall and the sculptural insets are by artist Mark Grey-Smith, who used some of the actual historical photographs, products and machinery from the Workshops in the designs. In his words “The work captures, in a symbolic way, the action and energy of the working environment.”
An index of the bricks that make up the Workers' Wall can be downloaded from below. The list shows the name on the brick and the actual location in the wall.
Woodbridge Lakes and Coal Dam Park
Man and Emu Footprints, by Nyoongar artist Lance Chadd, represent the cultural connections between Aboriginal people, land, animals and the environment.
Lance has designed two simple but powerful images of feet: human (Nyoongar djena), representing Aboriginal traditional lands (Nyoongar boodjara); and emu (waitj djena), Forty-five imprints of each design have been cast in bronze and inlaid into the pavements around Woodbridge Lakes. The feet alternate and are spaced apart as though on a hunting or walking track.
A brass plate disc with brightly coloured epoxy paint, also designed by Lance, is in a central position along the ‘track’. The large circle represents one year (bonar), and the six small circles represent the six seasons recognised by Nyoongar people.
Three artworks on the theme of nesting, by sculptor and jeweller Anne Neil, enliven Coal Dam Park.
The Arbour, a laser-cut steel sculpture, casts shadows on the ground by day and lights up like a lantern at night. It is intended to be a very feminine piece, with its origins in rich embroidery design and pattern making
At the entrance to Woodbridge Lakes from Yelverton Drive, seven cast bronze shovels sit in an ornamental vegetable patch. The shovel icon was chosen because the positive action of digging and planting implies nurturing and future growth.
Small fittings and joining fixtures from toy trains have been enlarged, cast in bronze, and transformed into ‘animals’ to be climbed, sat and ridden. This playful artwork is reminiscent of the uninhibited imagination of childhood, where abstract shapes metamorphose into what the child wants to see and believe.
Juniper sculpture, Juniper Gardens
Robert Juniper is recognised as an artist of poetic and spontaneous vision. He has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout Australia and his work is represented in all major Australian public collections. His towering five metre high copper and bronze sculpture ‘Tree Forms’ is the centrepiece of a new park in Midland named after him.
Robert collaborated with fellow artist Ron Gomboc on the sculpture, which was fabricated in the Gomboc Foundry in the Swan Valley.
Bollards, Clayton Street and city centre
Andrew Leslie makes relief installations that create visual effects through the changing relationship of different coloured surfaces, He collaborated with landscape architects Tract (now Urbis) to design wooden bollards to protect trees along the Clayton Street verge. The result is a series of identical, painted wooden bollards that appear to change as the viewer moves past them.
Galvanised steel sculpture by Kath Wheatley (The Crescent)
Trickle, Flow and Fall – cast aluminium and bronze sculpture by Steve Tepper (Keane Street)
Man and Emu Footprints, by Lance Chadd
Bollards, by Andrew Leslie
The Arbour, laser-cut steel sculpture by Anne Neil
Tree Forms, copper and bronze sculpture by Robert Juniper
