what does permanent mean?
for as long as i can remember the ring rd has had these concrete slabs on it painted pink and yellow. so perhaps as long as the ringroad has been open. they are a work of art of course. I have always wanted to mosaic them white, but haven't had the guts.
But about a year ago an aerosol artist got at three of them on the calder freeway and i love them each time I drive past. Its coming up to a year now, so I am thinking they could now be classed as permanent. I have been wanting to photograph them, and trying to capture them from a moving car hasn't worked and is also a little dangerous. So yesterday I set out to do it properly.
I had my little dog with me and needed to take her with me, as i didn't want to leave her in the car for an hour or more in case I got stuck. I had noted from the highway that they were near the overpass road that goes across to Keilor Rd Niddrie. So I navigated around the side roads and looked for a park. It is a maze and I got up in there but the traffic is racing even on these side rds, it is coming off and going on the freeway in the same frenzy as the race down the calder. si i was whipping round corners to find myself inthe worng spot, then having to go into culdasacs to do u turns where i noticed other cars were doing the same. out into the sie rod frenzy an then into a houselined street again to find parking. I had noticed some kids dawdlinghome when I was trying to find the parking spot and as I got out of the car with Lucy and rounded the corner, I was alarmed to find the young boy eyeing something on the road. He went near the edge and a car beeped at him as it shot past. Were they waiting to be picked up on this road?
No, they were dawdling. They were doing what most children do onthe way home. It was a brother and a sister and he was looking and exploring and taking a peek at the crushed litter on the road and creating a commentry about it. She with her hands up near her front shoulders gripping her backpack straps was going along with it and joining in with the amble. I was relieved. They were just doing what we did as kids on our way home. We explored everything, made forays into other peoples houses, ducked into places which weren't occupied, explored every nook and cranny, including inside the giant billboard sign on David Street. Now i had to find a nook or cranny into this piece of land beside the highway.
First I had to cross the road which was alarming. There was a blind corner and looking left and right had to be done with such speed, then suddenly another car would come bursting around. It was safer to carry the dog across. The other side was not made for pedestrians but a thin trotting track had been worn beside the road. I went left along the wall first. It was a large wooden wall sprayed with different colours of green. The posts were ten centimentre wide steel droppers, and the fence thick treated pine, not climbable. We skirted along the edge. Just before the overpass across the freeway was a chain link fence about nine feet high. It went across and onto the overpass,so to get inside you would either have to climb onto the overpass and hang off the bridge climbing back on the other side or duck underneath the small gap that had been made by lifting the fence from the bottom. There was a well-worn scuttle hole worn into the dirt, with the chin link curving upwards above it, but less than a foot. I could slither in but I would need to get completely flat and slither and shuffle in the dirt to get through. I thought perhaps I would try the other end of the big wooden wall first. I took some photos of the slabs of concrete by putting my hand through the chin link fence with the camera cord securely hooked through my arm. I felt suspect to the cars dashing past particularly when I was examining the gap in the chainlink fence and comtemplating its possibilities.
As we skirted column like along the trotted track a thin slither betweent he tall wooden green fence and the dashing traffice, I wondered about the fencing off of these peoces of land along the freeway. There were no trepassing warnings but it was fairly impenetrable land. At one stage I lifted Lucy and carried her as I felt our piece of land was too thin a margin between wall and road. We reached the other end and found with relief that they only thing that barred our way was a sign, suggesting that bikes and tractors do not go onto the freeway. Even Lucy was unsure about this land. Perhaps the rumbling of the freeway could be felt through the soil. We skirted close along the inside of the high wall, under the cover of trees and I looked for cameras as Dad had told me recently of watching a program about Melbourne's roads, that it was all surveyed and incidents could be responded to quickly because there were people watching the camera footage. There are three slabs of concrete with the famous dark yellow paint ( which was an effort to resemble gold) and pink. Neks had written his logo in a couple of colours on the three of them but on the side that faced the cars. He had thought about his audience. On the other sides of the slabs, were simply tags, of him or his mates. (I am assuming it was a lad).
Neks was the graf, but then there were tags on the side. Neks and then Neoks. Later I realised that these were both written in the same hand-writing, but other tags on the back of the slabs were also in a related style but saying; Neks, Noerks, and Wheaf and Touche.
In talking about Melbourne's Pblic art, the good, the bad and the delightful, Melbournes Herald Sun (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/melbourne/talking-about-melbournes-public-art-the-good-the-bad-and-the-delightful/story-fnpbvxki-1226873860560, April 4, 2014) describes the fields of Gold ;
The Field of Gold statues along the Calder Freeway may serve a double purpose. Intended partly as a reminder of the historic gold routes heading west out of Melbourne their resemblance to tombstones makes them a subtle road safety message for the sensitive driver.
Rachel Buchanan, in 'The Road', similarly describes them as ' terrible defeated public art like those listing pale pink slabs of concrete like tombstones for a gigantic, wasted Barbie. Help me! Help me! Help …'
(http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/the-road/)
Indeed when you speak to people about these sculptures, they are not sure quite where they've seen them but people often remark on their appearance as tombstones. Only recently did I find out that they were to do with the goldfields when a local historian spoke about them with some reference to a debacle about the colour. They were meant of be gold but the paint didn't work out.
The field of gold (Tomestones) or fragments of gold were made by Burne Hocking Weimear Architects (https://www.flickr.com/groups/513922@N22/discuss/72157629091943958/) Note to self :look up Article from: Architecture Australia | March 1, 2003. (thanks to williewonker for this lead)
The 68 panels were installed on angles because it would be difficult to get them all straight, (hence the tombstone effect). According to the flickr site, the project was driven by references, gold for the godfields, pink for the sunset and the repetition of elements related to the manufacture of objects in melbourne's west. 'The panels are robustly made concrete slabs, repeated-but-varying as other elements in the environment of the freeway: signboards, kerbs, off- and on-ramps, bridges, light standards, and houses.' Paul Walker, Pink and gold a field of fragments, Architecture Australia;May/Jun2003, Vol. 92 Issue 3, p31,
Situated along the Calder Freeway in Melbourne’s west, it consists of a sequence of concrete panels 150 mm thick, in two sizes (1 x 2 metres, 2.5 x 4 metres), 68 of them in total, focused mostly around interchanges with the Tullamarine Freeway and the Western Ring Road. Each panel is painted pink on one side, and gold on the other. The vertical edges are slightly cambered, disguising the fact that making so many things perfectly and permanently vertical was impossible.
Paul Walker, http://architectureau.com/articles/freeway/
In Walkers article, the accompanying photogrpahs show the brighter colours of the fresh paint. Walker says that , 'Pictures of it look fantastic' but also acknowledges that in reality ; by drivers rushing past. He attests to the beauty that the pictures demonstrate twice, and affirms that the sculpture won't have the same affect on the motorists ,'the beauty will not normally be apprehended' ,' It seems like he has not seen the sculptures in real life.
Walker ends his story with; 'The quality of the designer’s achievement is that such variations of what can fleetingly be seen in a stretch of freeway have been so simply activated to make a field of experience.'
His has insight, because that's what they inevitably are to the drivers. People say, yes yes, I know what you mean but I couldn't tell you where they are. They are like ghosts that appear to the side of your vision at times, reminding you that they are there. But it is too late to capture them for a longer glimpse. They have gone again. There is also no way to walk to them for a closer inspection, they are on wastes of land, islands that sit in a sea of killer traffic.
Why hadn't they been repainted? A year is a long time to leave graffiti up in a world obsessed with cleaning it off. it seemed to me that the green fence had got far more attention and was ironically also painted in spray.
Neks were cyborrean battle dogs from Starwars. (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nek The ruff/neks are a male pep squad for the Oklahoma university footbal team, a group which beganin 1910 and were named in 1915 after a woman cursed them, 'roughnecks'.
Neks also seemed to be a real name, there seemed to be a few people called Neks.
It had taken me many years to elicit the meaning of the concrete slabs but the graphic overlay was more obvious. Millions of passersby, an 24/7 for an entire year at least. As with any tagging, the object was to get your name seen and this one was a triumph.
I had my photos and it was time to cross a rush of traffic and return to the real world.
epilogue:
I'm pretty sure that vic roads sees all and my visit to the artworks was no exception.
feathers must have rustled as a week later ( after standing for a year as the work of Neks et al.) they were painted over with yellow.
As my father always noted, its more difficult to repaint over a light colour than a dark one.
Clearly remaining visible beneath the yellow coat of paint were the traces of the taggers.
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