Perth’s current land development and housing boom is generating an enormous demand for public sculptures and artists and people who appreciate art are the winners.  A project that’s recently been unveiled is Judith Forrest’s Snapshots from Lupin Hill on the redeveloped site of the former Hollywood High School.  I attended the opening ceremony and was able to speak with the artist and others associated with the realisation of the four works comprising this series.

When we think about art we mainly visualize those white gallery spaces with clever lighting where even the fuse box or a fire hydrant on the walls can seem to be charged with meaning.  Judith Forrest is well known and respected for her paintings and sculptures exhibited in gallery settings.  And while I was joking about the fuse box and fire hydrant, come to think about it, she does have a knack for investing seemingly ordinary things with additional significance.  I’m thinking about her takes on sewing machines, vacuum cleaners, electric irons and such, and the multi roles of women.  But Judith also turns out a steady flow of public artworks, competing for these commissions against our artistic elite, and often winning through with her quirky and ‘down to earth’ views of humanity.  Her eight sculptures for the Fremantle Port Authority’s ferry terminal are good examples of this, and there are many others.

An important key to Judith Forrest’s success is her meticulous research and skilful use of what I would term traditional and sensuous materials.  In the Hollywood project, her four sculptures reflect past and present uses of the site since white settlement: as a council tip, grazing and agricultural land, a high school (bordering the Hollywood Repatriation Hospital) and now a residential precinct.  Starting as sketches, these intricate representations were then modeled in clay, and ultimately in bronze, using the ‘lost wax process’, which can be traced to the ancient dynasties of China.  The grandeur of bronze has been traditionally reserved for representations of royalty and people who have achieved honour or power, but in the Hollywood works it depicts ordinary people and events in a scale which sits comfortably within the landscape.  Polished concrete plinths complement the bronze material and add a contemporary touch.  Research to develop the themes for the sculptures was assisted by the Nedlands Cultural and Community Society.

If you enter the redeveloped site from the Karrakatta end of Smyth Road you’ll encounter The Rehearsal.  Hollywood High School was famous for its arts program, and this sculpture recalls the school’s production of The Wizard of Oz (eventual Hollywood, California actress Greta Scacchi was a graduate from the school’s performing arts program).  There’s also a great barbecue facility near this work, which is on a hill overlooking a new amphitheatre and a grassed area with full-sized Aussie Rules football goal posts (take your footy and the kids, and some food for the barbecue).  Nineteen huge spotted gum trees were transplanted from their original locations in the former school’s grounds to skirt the ridge overlooking this area.  It’s a piece of landscaping that feels totally in tune with its place, and Judith Forrest’s sculpture blends in perfectly as well.

You’ll sight the other three sculptures easily from this location. The March of Time features a parade of people and animals associated with the site.  The Portrait reflects on traditional school photographs of students and the diversity of their achievements (you can put yourself in the picture by looking through the nearby camera to catch the photographer’s view).  Housework is a work of the present, showing workers contructing buildings and new owners decorating their houses (check the lady in the lampshade hat).

Judith Forrest has acknowledged the important skills of Dan Gentle of Perth Castings in producing these sculptures.  He’s a quiet achiever who usually works on projects ranging from grand scale things for the mining industry to vacuum forming metal shapes for plastic strawberry containers in supermarkets.  It all goes to show that artists no longer work alone with a hammer and chisel or brush, but within a grand community of people and technologies and skills, including the development and building industries.  Didn’t somebody say, ‘We are all artists,’ or something like that?  Could that also include accountants and tax collectors?