Do Go On - Do Go On Presents: Arty Facts - Vault

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

There are many abstract pieces of steel public art but there are few that have physically gone on a sightseeing tour of their own city. Ron Robertson-Swann's 'Vault' has been part of Melbourne since 1980 and continues to cause conversation. Jess Perkins tells Vault's story in this episode of Arty Facts.Watch the video of this podcast: https://youtu.be/8b0JL91VUY0 'Do Go On Presents: Arty Facts' is a joint production from Stupid Old Studios and the Do Go On podcast.Do Go On are Dave Warneke, Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart.Stupid Old Studios is an independent production house based in Melbourne Australia who specialise in making fine, handcrafted nonsense.Twitter: http://twitter.com/stupidoldInstagram: http://instagram.com/stupidoldFacebook: http://facebook.com/stupidoldstudiosThis production was made possible with support from the Community Broadcasting Foundation. Find out more at http://cbf.org.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. You're listening to Artifacts, a show that dives into the fascinating history of famous artworks and painters.

Broadcast on C-31, Stupid Old Studios YouTube channel, and the Community Radio Network. When you think about controversial art pieces, you probably think about nudity or political statements, or a bull and a little girl. You probably don't think about bright yellow geometric sculptures, But that is exactly what became Melbourne's most controversial art piece. This is Vault.

Hi, welcome to Artifax. My name is Jess Perkins, and I'm here with Dave Warnocky and Matt Stewart as we sit inside a big, beautiful, yellow piece of art called Vault. Oh, I was wondering why you invited us here. Yeah. I've heard of outsider art. It feels like we're inside of art now. It's like we're sitting under a colourful overpass.

Yeah, okay. Oh, that's beautiful. I imagine the artist would love that kind of feedback. It's like a very nice bus shelter. Yeah. No, no, no. It's got a very interesting history, this particular piece of art. And I'd love to tell you a little bit about it, if you'll indulge me.

I'd love to hear about it. Well, first of all, let's describe what it is that we're sitting underneath. Obviously, very large-scale sculpture. It's about five-ish metres tall, made from welded steel, painted this beautiful, bright, warm yellow, which you see around Melbourne quite a bit now, and that is not a coincidence. It's kind of because of this particular piece of art, which I'll talk a little bit about later. She's called Volt Yellow. Yeah.

It's geometric abstraction, if you had to categorise it. I'm guessing that's probably what you would have said. I hope the surgery went well. abstraction. So yeah, a type of art that uses geometric shape and form to generate abstract compositions. So essentially it's not trying to be anything or look like anything, it's just its own, you know, it's its own thing. You do you. Exactly. Thank you, yes. It's you do you art. Yeah. I think it's the best way to talk about it. So it currently sits here outside the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art or Acker and South Bank, but it hasn't always lived here.

In fact, it's been the subject of a lot of criticism and controversy over the last 40-ish years. So a little bit of backstory. So Vault is a piece by award-winning sculptor Ron Robertson Swann. He was born in Sydney in 1941. Ron Swann. That's why you took the Robertson. Ron Robertson Swann. You've got to get a bit of distance between the Ron and the Swan.

And it's double N Swan, so it's very different to Rom. Yeah. You know? It's completely different. Name is Ron Swan. Ron Swann. Ron Swans. Ron Rob Swan. Ron Rob Swan. Ron Rob Swan.

We'll get bogged down in that. He was born in 1941 in Sydney and he studied under Lyndon Dadswell, the National Art School, before moving to the UK in the early 60s to study under Anthony Caro and Philip King at St Martin's School of Art, a very prestigious art school. This is a very cool description of him. He's been described by Australian sculpture, historian and critic, very specific art critic. Just sculptures for me. I imagine there's dozens of this. Yeah.

Same's Graham Sturgeon, but how's this description that Graham said of Ron Rob Swan? Says, The most consistent of the classic formalists that is the one

most concerned to produce a sculpture which, while obviously of its era, transcends consideration of style in search of a timeless sense of rightness. Now I understood like every third word,

but it sounds good. A timeless sense of rightness. Yeah. It's like, yes, It's of its era, but it's also timeless. Love that. That's how you want to be described as a person and an artist, I think. Yes.

I think of you in those sort of term. Do you? Is it because... Is it because I just said it's a really great way to be described and you're being kind? You think I'm of my era? That's just something that's been ringing around and made for a bit now. But if I'm of my era, am I also timeless? Yeah.

Wow. But finally, Sturgeon's put it into words. And to learn a little bit more about Volt, I'm here with Dr. Amy Spears at RMIT School of Art. Can you tell me a bit about whether or not the controversy of Volt had an impact on Ron Robertson Swans' career moving forward? He said he felt a bit hurt about the public response and was kind of a bit shocked by it. He was hoping that the sculpture would be sort of embraced by the public and I think he specifically designed it for people to be able to walk through it and sort of, you know, it was supposed to accommodate people and, you know,

be enjoyed by people and so he was surprised by the reaction. He's been interviewed more recently and he said ultimately it didn't actually hurt his career and it made him famous the controversy. He's like even taxi drivers know me. Now this wasn't a sculpture that Ron just whipped up in the studio or the backyard on a win. It had a very very clear purpose for its design. So back in 1976 an architectural competition was launched by Melbourne City Council to design a permanent Melbourne City Square.

which we kind of know of on Swanston Street between Melbourne Town Hall and St Paul's Cathedral where the Birkenwill statue was, is no longer, but it was for a very long time. And the competition was won by Denton Corker Marshall Architects. Wow. Corker. I'd describe this as a buddy Corker. It's an absolute Corker. I'd call it a Denton.

I'd call it a Marshall. So DCM were the architects. And if that, if DCM rings a bell at all, it might be able to all. Oh yeah, there's snacks from your lunchbox. A rice bubble treats love them. They weren't good, were they? And the LCMs and it didn't stand for anything, didn't it? That's right. So have we discussed that so many times?

Whereas DCM stands for those three words you said before. Denton. One of them being corker. Markle, correct. So yeah, if DCM rings a bell at all to anybody, it might be because they've also been behind buildings and structures like the Melbourne Museum, the exhibition centre, Melbourne Gateway, big yellow chip along near the free one.

This feels like. the cousin of the chip. Absolutely it does, yeah. They also did like the war memorial in Canberra, a bunch of other really noteworthy and yeah a lot of big big buildings not just in size but I mean like significance. Yeah. So the brief for the Melbourne City Square was very complex and DCM's meant to be brief mate. You're not really fitting the brief here making it a complex. It would have been a bit of fun. That would be fun around to have around the office. Yeah I think you'd be a great architect if any architectures are watching and you need someone to just brighten up

the office a little bit or architects yeah but either I could yeah have me around great for banter yeah just a few sort of architect puns yeah you can employ me to stand by the water cooler yeah and just have a few little zips a few zaps a few bhappes I reckon that'd be a pretty dehydrated office yeah avoiding that section He's into, you know, don't even bother. Bring your own water, to be honest. Simply not worth it. So in Melbourne City Square, the brief was very complex.

And DCM's design included a giant video screen, restaurants, shops, outdoor cafes, a glazed canopy, a sunken amphitheater. Okay, it sounds like they just let a five-year-old describe what they want. A ball pit. A graffiti wall. Yeah, a big slide. A reflecting pool.

Ronald McDonald, high-fiving me. Motorbike. My dog. I'll piggyback on my dad. Okay, all right. All right. Well, we can do the first thing. You can have the carousel,

you can have the big screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. I'll take it. I'm not even done. It had more. There was a water wall as well, and then a big open area of the square too.

It had enough space for all of that and just a big open area. So it's quite an ambitious project and Melbourne City Council wanted a statement art piece made specifically for Melbourne City Square. So DCM, who as we know were designing City Square, which was sort of a competition to win that bid, they put on their own competition.

Oh, sub-com. Yeah, to find an art piece that would complement the square's design. Now, if you know Melbourne or you visit Melbourne, you'd notice that the city has a lot of blue stone buildings. It's got a general kind of blue-gray vibe to it. And Ron Robertson-Swan wanted to create a piece, to offset some of the greyness and the straight lines that exist in the city.

And he won the bid to create the piece for the city square. Right. So they needed something fun in the square other than the video screen, the water wall, the glass carousel. The ball pit. They needed something that would really make it stand out. It was going to be a grey video wall. Only black and white. Sorry, we can't do colour.

So his design met the challenge of being a grand interlocked sculpture. I guess that's specifically what they were looking. And as you can see, it's pretty grand and it's quite interlocked. Hence we are not getting rain down right now. We're getting a lot of shelter. I for one love interlocked sculptures. I can't help but... I can't help it think though, Jess.

We are not in the Melbourne City Square. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's going to come up pretty soon. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I know. I want to watch the 80s videos. It also met the requirement of being bold, visually simple, and a strong screen.

and a strong focal point which would offset the formal character of the square. So when they're saying like we need something complimentary, really they need something completely different, but in a complimentary kind of way. All these art terms you use. I know art. I know art. But while the then unnamed piece, didn't have a name for a while, did meet these objectives, it was a little too abstract for public taste. Before it was even built, it began to attract criticism from some media and council factions.

Council factions on the grounds that its modern form was thought to not complement the location, which is pretty ironic given it was chosen because it complimented the location. I'd love to know if Melbourne's ever liked anything at first, like any building or piece of art. I would love to know if there's ever been something that we've actually... That we've backed. That we've gone. That's it.

A bit of funding into that? Great. Yeah, it sounds like a great idea. Yeah, money well spent. Love that. Can't wait to see it. I think the public just found it very radical. at the time and the public were unused to sort of abstraction and that sort of

modernist sculpture although that sort of sculpture was quite representative of the kind of trendy public art at the time. I don't know whether public art should appeal to the public. I think it's really context specific. I think it's nice that sometimes artworks challenge people and this work certainly did. It also had a cost of about $70,000 which was seen to be pretty exorbit, a bit excessive. Oh, that sounds cheap to me. 70 grand.

70 grand. That's pretty good. I could knock this up for 70 grand. You could or you couldn't? Couldn't. Right, how much? How much? Oh, this, I wouldn't do this for less than 10 mil.

10 mil, you reckon? I wouldn't know where to fricking start. Firstly, I'd have to go to art school. My movie made a cardboard if it was up to me. Oh, that's quite a lot of cardboard. Would it still be this thick? Yeah, yeah, yeah, really thick cardboard. Yeah, okay.

A bit of, how a bit of, Happy Air Mashay. Hey, now I learnt this the hard way, but that does not work outdoors. It doesn't. Once I punched a hole in a wall at home and outside wall, while my family was away, and I paper maschaid the wall back up. And yeah, that did not. That did not last. I have follow-up questions.

Why? Did you punch a wall? It was a joke. It was a bit of faux anger. Sure. And I took it too far. Okay. Now who's life? Yeah.

No one. No one's life. But anyway, the point is the paper maschae does not do the job at doors. So you're going to have to go back to the drawing board. Maybe you can come to uni with me. Okay, let's do it. Maybe yeah, we can just go to Steel University. I feel like you don't actually, you don't need to because it's actually already been built.

Yeah, yeah. So if we get the 10 mill, I'll just go, here's 70 grand for you, Ron Swan. Yep, thanks so much. Good. Good job. Good job. We'll take it from here. But 70 grand, what, four decades ago?

Yeah, this is in late 70s when it was first. That's got to be a lot more now. It's a lot of money. And I think maybe the Melbourne City Council felt a bit of hesitation or concern once the public and media started to seem unsupportive of it. They were sort of like, no, maybe we shouldn't go ahead of this. Oh, they started distancing themselves. That's when they started saying, oh, we wanted something complimentary, not different.

Yeah, but like different, but not that different. But Patrick McCacky, an incredible name, one of the most eminent and admired art historians in Australia with an incredibly long and impressive resume. He gave his full support to the work. He applauded it for design excellence. He loved it so much he mecacked his dachs. That's that word? Great sir.

It's DCM backwards. Macacted tax. That's actually what it stands for. That's what stands for. We're trying to talk about art. I know. experts here okay we know things and we're respectful people but I imagine that when macaque puts his dacky behind a project the whole public goes well if he likes it

exactly right macaque is like the same age as Ron Robertson Swan but and you know they were both established already in the art world they're in their 30s late 30s by this time but yeah McCackey already had a reputation for like being very good and knowing what he's talking about so the Melbourne City Council were like okay you No, if he thinks it's alright. And surely with art and stuff, you've got to trust the experts to some degree. Right. Yeah, you would think so.

Because, I mean, like, if you didn't tell me, I wouldn't know whether this was good or not. No. I have no idea. What do you think about it? I think, look, I think it's stupid and I think that's awesome. I think it's fantastic. But, you know, I couldn't write an essay about the geometricicity of it or anything like that. So, yeah, they trusted McCacky's opinion, and they went

ahead with, you know, letting Ron Robertson-Swan make this piece of art. Max Delaney, who's the artistic director and CEO of Acker, wrote a really great piece about Volt a couple of years ago and he touches a lot on the impact of Volt and also, you know, what Melbourne was like then. He says, initially there was great fanfare, but it very quickly developed into a much publicized controversy, attracting huge public and media debate. It became a staple on the front page of Melbourne's newspapers for six months or so. People are just angry about a piece of art that has not been unveiled yet.

It's so funny. It's pretty wild. I mean it must have been a slow news year. Yeah, it must have. Six months, front page. What's going on? What was happening? Oh, we're a pretty cultured city.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. These days it's still art on the front page every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's the art section, it's the largest section on the paper. Breakfast Radio, duos, you know, pig dog and the runt man. I'll still take callback on it. What do you reckon? What are you reckon about?

Vault. To be honest, I like the geometrosity of it. Well said, pig dog. Which one have used pig dog? I guess me. Who am I, run boy? Run boy, you know? That adds up.

Yeah, it checks out. Can I have a name? Yeah, you can do the news. You're a journalist. It's true, I'm a journalist. What do you want? I'll give you a name. Um,

Um, then big boy in, uh, Cheryl on the news stairs. Scarf, Scarf woman. Guess what she wore to work on her first day on the job.

Well, you like to have a bit of fun around this office. Head hair. Head hair. Head hair. I'm going to move on. Thanks, Cheryl.

It didn't really help that, like I mentioned before, the sculpture was unnamed for about two years, which lent itself to people giving it nicknames. I mean, Robertson Swan himself, he referred to it as the thing.

The steel workers who were hired to actually construct it and weld it altogether. They called it steelhenge. Oh, that's funny good. And most famously, some newspapers called it yellow peril, and many still know it by now. But the yellow peril is a racist term. Originally, it applied to Chinese

and other Asian immigration to Europe and Australia in the late 19th century. So it's a confusing correlation. But Max Delaney writes, the nickname Yellow Peril demonstrates a conflation of xenophobia and anti-modernist sentiment, which were both pronounced at the time. In the art world, too, it was criticised in some quarters

as being cool, dominant and impersonal without regard for the community, a charge often levelled at modernist sculpture. So it seems like the art community were like, modernist, no. That's funny that they use cool in a derogatory way. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. It's pretty cool.

Oh, thanks. No, in a bad way. Oh. You don't want your art to be cool. You want your art to be... Uncool? Luke warm. Oh, okay.

That's the dream. Yeah. I reckon I'd call it Doritos. Oh, okay. Or yeah. Yeah. Nachos? Yeah.

Me chint chants. Okay. Chips and dip, in brackets, sands dip. Yeah. Something like that. Just chips. So it's just chips. Corn chips.

C-C's. C-C's. Is that what it stands for? So Queen Elizabeth II opened Melbourne City Square in May of 1980. That's pretty cool. And like all new things, the square attracted a lot of criticism. This is just Melbourne City Square. People hated it still. It seemed bare. The video screen was too noisy.

They didn't like the starkness. It had like a glazed steel canopy over it. They're like, I don't like it. It just hated it. And of course it wasn't just the City Square. just the city square that people were upset by. Vault, as it was finally named by now, was met with mixed feelings, but mostly negative.

Even the Queen was brought into the issue. Oh, she was not in food. She was asked by reporters. I'm not pleased by the Volt. No, I'll tell you what she said, and you can do your spot-on Queen impression. When asked by reporters, she was reported to have said that perhaps it could have been painted a more agreeable colour.

Perhaps it could have been painted a more agreeable colour. more agreeable colour, maybe move. Well, the Queen Elizabeth II, obviously famous for her dull colours. Yeah. Never wears a bright out. He hates bright colours. Gee, I reckon she's definitely worn Volt yellow before. I wouldn't put it past her wearing a wild yellow.

So Max Delaney again writes, there were various demonstrations for and against Vault, including a public rally in August of 1980 to save our sculpture. So a lot of people got behind it. Right. I think the fact that the media, like newspapers in particular were really shitting on. on it kind of made some people rally around it a little bit. Yeah, that's totally my instinct. Yeah, it very much became a political issue as well.

It was the fall guy for opposing factions of the Melbourne City Council. Some part of the Melbourne City Council were really for it, others very much against it. Max also says a much larger sculpture than we'd ever experienced. It was designed so members of the community could walk through with and around it. It was always supposed to be a commanding of space and a marker of place, but it never quite landed properly. I don't know if Ron Robertson-Swan imagined that we would be sitting inside it. Yeah, recording inside it. Yeah.

How many times have people like sheltered under the statue of David? Or the Mona Lisa? It's got a pretty good bulbs. Yeah. That's a one-person bulge. This is a multi-person bulge. Yeah. You can have a party under here.

It would be fine. Yeah, and I mean, it being that bright colour as well, like you said, it's supposed to be a marker of place. So it was an easy place to, you know, a good landmark. the big yellow structure, I'll meet you there, or you'd see it and know where you were. So it makes sense. Yeah, after a big dine out in the city. Oh, hey! Bolt. I mean, you'd probably vomit from seeing the colour.

Yeah. But anyway. A little bit off-putting, but whatever. So unfortunately, those who opposed the sculpture eventually won the battle, and less than a year after it was unveiled, it was dismantled, and moved to a much quieter and emptier part of the city to Batman Park on the Yarra. That sucks. I hate it. Don't let these fucking losers win. How do they suck?

They're just going to be like, yeah. Who's spending time to campaign against this sculpture? Yeah. Oh, look at the worst. And especially because a lot of, like, some of the people that are opposing it so strongly are working for the Melbourne City Council. It's like, do you not have other things you could be working on?

Yeah, and surely, and moving it, that's going to cost even more money. Yeah, it seems like a bit of effort, but they just, yeah, they were against it. But don't worry, don't worry. Everything turns out. I really hope it survives. We're on 10 of hooks here.

It was pretty frustrating the move for Ron Robertson-Swan because Volt was intended to be responsive to its location, largely through colour. So moving the sculpture to a new different location significantly distorted the artist's original intention. It's like, well, I've made it specifically for that city square and now it's just in a park that nobody really spends any time in. It doesn't get a lot of foot traffic, it's just kind of shoved away.

Yeah, because like it's an installation and it was designed to be installed somewhere. Exactly right, yeah. So it stayed in Batman Park until 2002 when it was moved to its current position where we are now as ACA opened its new building here in South Bank. There's a man named Geoffrey Wallace who's written a book called Peril in the Square and he writes, and when late in 2002. Sorry, I really look, I've just read bits but I love this. Yeah, it feels like you've got a real sense of the character.

Late in 2002, Volt was moved again to its new home in Southbank after two decades as a homeless shelter, favoured target for graffitists and even a training aid for visiting footballers who appreciated the unpredictable bounce. Lord Mayor John Soe welcomed it as an old and respected friend. A lot of people have made arguments about Volt that it took 20 years for the public to catch up onto that style. And I do wonder if these days it would have attracted to it. these days it would have attracted the same kind of controversy. If anything, it would have been controversial because it was like a white man making modernist sculpture

and not something more radical. So, I mean, it's hard to say why the public were really surprised by it, but it sounds like they just weren't used to big yellow sculptures. This happens a bit where enough time goes by that people start appreciating things. Yeah. So Max Delaney, I mean, maybe a little biased

because he is the director of ACCA, but he says this is the ideal location for this. says it sits happily alongside the Victorian College of the Arts and Dance Company Chunky Move, amazing name for a dance company, as well as Woodmarsh's iconic architecture, which references the sculptural traditions that Robertson Swan was promoting with Volt. It belongs to the city of Melbourne, which looks after its care and maintenance. It's become a popular backdrop for wedding photography

because of its gold or yellow colour, which represents good luck and prosperity in many different cultures, which is kind of cool. And in a nice sort of, I don't know, it feels like a little bit of justice. After all that fuss, in the late 90s, over half of the Melbourne City Square was sold for the development of the Western Hotel. And in the period between 97 and 2000, the remaining area of the square was totally redeveloped with a much simpler plan and granite gravel was introduced.

It was just sort of, it was nothing. Like, do you remember, it was like a Brinetti's. Yeah, like a little stream. Yeah. Of a water feature and that was it. Is there a chance it goes back to where it was meant to be? I mean if we knocked down a whole bunch of buildings. Yeah, you're listening?

Maybe. And now there's like the big metro tunnel. Well, that's it, yeah. And so it was this big substantial reduction of its area and then nearby, just up the road, Federation Square opened in 2002. So now the civic importance of Sydney Square wasn't really, it was really diminished. It was like, well, why we've got Fed Square? Yeah. Yeah.

Why would a city of four million people need a second square? We don't need that many outdoor spaces. Yeah. All right. What we need, we're selling it off. Yeah, we need big hotels. Yeah. We need big hotels.

And yeah, now, like you say, it was closed in 2017 after it was announced that City Square would be acquired and demolished to allow the construction of a new railway station. But apparently, when it's finished, they're kind of going to rebuild it to how it was, but I'm talking like 1997, just the small square. just the small square. Oh, okay, but this could go back. I reckon this should go back. It looks sick there. That is like a real brown, grey area. Yeah.

It would pop. Do you reckon? Yeah, I think so. So perhaps it's a good thing that Volt was moved and found a more permanent home in South Bank. It's at least, it's been here for quite some time now. Eric Rowlandson, who was then the director of NGV, noted in relation to the debate around Volt, similar to what you were saying, Matt, but he said, it inevitably takes 20 years for public acceptance to catch up with the vision of artists. So now people are like, oh yeah, Volt's great.

What are you talking about? I never hated it. I was always pro-Volt. I love it. My favourite piece of art. I know where it is. I always got it. I always got it.

Love the yellow. It pops. Love it. I used to visit Batman Park all the time. Oh, yeah. And there was another great piece written by Charles and Kate Noddrum and they write. Time and familiarity seem to soothe the ruffled feathers of many who had initially disliked the work. This has continued and today 40 years down the track,

Vault has emerged not just as one of Melbourne's icons, but arguably as the best known public sculpture in Australia. Wow. So there you go. Even more than Michelangelo's David. That's one of ours, isn't it? Yeah, the copy they've got on the gold costume, man. Yeah.

And yeah, that's the story of Ron Robertson's Wolt. I love Ronnie Swanee. It really rolls off the tongue. Yeah, he's the best. And I'm a fan, I think. Yeah, I like it. I think you're right. I think it would be great to see it back in like a more central populated area,

but you know, at least it's respected here. My favourite thing about Ronnie Swanee is he didn't even build it. I love, I want to be the kind of artist who goes, yeah, yeah, it's sort of yellow. You're an idea's man. We go, angles. Yeah. And they go, you put something together. Yeah.

If that's art, then I want in. So... How do we get somebody else to do this? Oh. Do you think of this is up? Yeah, this isn't a art. Sorry to disappoint you. Dugan presents artifacts has been made with the support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation

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