Bulletin

Issue: March/April 2007

40th Anniversary

The art of turning forty

La Trobe University has launched a new Sculpture Park on its main Melbourne campus as part of this year’s 40th Anniversary Celebrations.

It is also touring major works in regional Victoria from its contemporary and 20th Century art collection as part of the Anniversary.

The Sculpture Park provides a permanent public display of works collected since the University’s inception. It features 17 major sculptures by leading artists including Leonard French, Inge King, Robert Klippel, Jock Clutterbuck, Herman Hohaus and Bart Sanciolo and is the first fully integrated sculpture park of its kind in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

The touring art exhibition brings together important works from the University collection that have not been seen publicly for many years. They will be shown in communities throughout Victoria where La Trobe has a presence. The exhibition opened in Mildura in March and from there travels to Bundoora, Bendigo and Shepparton. It includes works by Charles Blackman, John Coburn, Petrina Hicks, Frank Hodgkinson and Roger Kemp.

Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roger Parish, said that with strong support from the University as part of its educational and cultural mission, art has been an important part of the University since its inception - and artworks were incorporated in the original Master Plan.

‘One of the first buildings, the University library included in its design Allen David’s magnificent glass screen, the artist’s only large-scale glass sculpture in Australia,’ he said.

While thousands of students see this work as they enter and leave the library, the forecourt of the more recently built Health Sciences Complex now features the University’s latest sculptural acquisition - the controversial upside down Charles Joseph La Trobe, Landmark by Charles Robb.

At its opening - by Robert Lindsay, Director of the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park - La Trobe Chancellor, Sylvia Walton, said the statue’s ‘unique take’ on Victoria’s first Lieutenant Governor and this University’s namesake could be regarded as fitting in with our own perceptions of doing things: the University had begun collecting artworks before it was even built - by far-sighted people operating from planning headquarters in St Kilda Rd in the mid 1960s.

Sculptor Charles Robb - who donated the work to La Trobe - said he was pleased it had found a home at a university. ‘Universities are places for testing new ideas, where we sometimes turn things on their head so we can gain a new perspective.’

He said monuments were about remembering: so it was fitting that his controversial likeness of C J La Trobe was unveiled on the very day the University remembered its opening 40 years ago, on 8 March 1967.

Already a quirky part of Melbourne’s public art history, Robb’s Landmark now looks down on Science Drive - reminding La Trobe students there’s more than one way of looking at things. While standing on his head on a University campus may not have been an epitaph La Trobe would have sought for himself, Charles Robb says he meant it as a compliment.

‘I wanted to set up a dialogue around this notion of the Antipodean, and the more I read about La Trobe the more I realised he was very much the enlightened gentleman (and) became fascinated with his vision.’

While the confronting work seeks to invert the concept of civic monuments - ‘I’m not sure civic memorials have any real function any more, I don’t know if we even believe in heroes in the same way,’ says Robb - the University sees it as a good fit.

Landmark’s new home here is an obvious choice,’ says the Sculpture Park catalogue. ‘The University is named after La Trobe. The work is challenging, complex, contemporary, and encourages dialogue: all qualities synonymous with a university.

‘La Trobe seeks to teach its students in all disciplines to discover, question and continue an active and productive dialogue, not only while they are here, but long after they have gone.’