Glebe Hill Village Public Art Program – Cultural Capital

Glebe Hill Village Public Art Program

“We are delighted to have installed artworks at Glebe Hill Village from the incredible home-grown talent that Tasmania has to offer. Establishing lasting benefits for the local community has been our top priority and engaging with local artists to deliver a vibrant experience is part of our vision in creating a community-orientated shopping centre,”

Scott Spanton, CEO of Tipalea Partners

Cultural Capital was engaged by Tipalea Partners to develop a unique curatorial approach and author a public art plan for the new Glebe Hill Village Shopping Centre, recently opened in Hobart’s rapidly growing Eastern suburbs.

We identified the car park canopies as the primary opportunity for the integration of art. This enabled a surprising and immersive art experience with high visibility and scale that dramatically enlivened the centre, creating powerful identity for Glebe Hill Village. The art also extended inside the shopping centre, with a commission featured on the wallpaper of the parents’ room.

Cultural Capital commissioned Australian artists, with a view to bring place-based stories and imagery to this significant public art project.

Cultural Capital implemented and managed the Registration of Interest (ROI) process for artist selection, resulting in four artists chosen based on their skill, creativity, and expertise. The commissioned artists were Tricky Walsh, Allan Mansell, Lara Merrett and Tom O’Hern.

The project was a successful collaboration between Tipalea Partners, Cultural Capital and Kings Outdoor Living in Tasmania. Producing the enormous, printed canopies, understood to be the largest in the southern hemisphere, required intense collaboration between Cultural Capital’s design and project management team, the printers and makers of the canopies. The result is a unique and significant addition to the cultural landscape of Hobart.

Photography by Barefoot Photographer.

Lara Merrett, The ever-changing nature of things

The expansive digital collage The ever changing nature of things is about connecting to the sublime in the everyday. Bringing a dynamic canopy of colour above that invites the public to pause and look up. The work references the forms and colours of the natural world and embodies the joyful experience of it in an everyday urban space.

The work is about bringing colour into everyday life. Mimicking both the movement of light and organic forms found in nature, the work suggests the possibilities of becoming or changing.

Nothing stays the same in the natural world.

Tricky Walsh, The Firmament

I imagine this canopy as a sky composed of what we see and what exists beyond our atmosphere.

The smell of woodfire on the air, the clarity of a darkening sky which offers a moment’s rest and a peek at the first stars. Here and there, the last of the sun peers through the clouds and above the haze of distant mountains. The day is done, this is the gateway into dreams. The colours of nebulae through a telescope. The shifting impossible spectrum of space, made from basic chemistry.

The title suggests a kind of constructed architecture-as-sky. The idea of The Firmament was adopted throughout classical and medieval times and was often portrayed as a dome which encompassed the earth. It was used extensively in architectures of the time to create this other-worldly space which one could inhabit with their imagination. Often found in churches and other important public buildings it provided a connection point from the known earth to the unknown heavens. It symbolised the search for knowledge and a desire to comprehend the universe.

Allan Mansell, Gathering

Considering local terrain, land contours, seasonal foods, colours, and passages of time, Allan Mansell’s work reflects the history of gathering and foraging for sustenance and wellbeing from traditional to contemporary practice of sourcing food, medicines, grooming, sharing, and general life and wellbeing.

Gathering presents a visual narrative reflecting seasonal change and traditional hunting, gathering, and foraging. The visual narrative is designed to lead the viewer through a landscape that mirrors local terrain from theClarence Plains rivulet, Glebe Hill nature reserve, Ralphs Bay, and the Derwent River.Documented as ‘a most excellent place for a settlement, with its good creek, fertile park-like valley, rich soil and thick juicy grass’, (Bass and Flinders, 1798) it has been an important region for the original Aboriginal clan, the Moomairemener, early settlers, continuing today with local, young and newly settled families. The Moomairemener valued the land, waters and foreshore as rich fertile grounds for their hunting and gathering their diet and lifestyle in rhythm with local vegetation, animals, seafoods, and birdlife.Those settling in the area quickly recognised this landscape was a rich place for land crops and water harvesting. Clarence Plains became a vibrant settled community. Allan Mansell celebrates the Rokeby – Howrah – Clarence Plains region as a rich and highly valued place for communal gathering. He demonstrates that family, community, and wellness is a continued practice where contemporary gathering and caregiving now takes place at our local community centres.

Tom O'Hearn, Zillions

Tom O’Hern combines painting, murals, and animation to make up his arsenal of creative practice. His work offers a playful, contemporary, and youthful vibe and has become prolific around Hobart for his quirky style. Zillions presents a cosmic sky studded with stars, planets, moons and meteors in the parents’ room of Glebe Hill Village.

Hobart, TAS

Tipalea Partners

Glebe Hill Village Shopping Centre

Allan Mansell, Lara Merrett, Tom O'Hearn, Tricky Walsh

2022

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