After the Courtship, is the love lost?....The engagement of art and architecture in Queensland's Art Built-in

Abstract

Queensland public art, and specifically the public art produced under Art Built-in, has been seen to be 'dumbed down' with a preference for art in the public domain that is not critically-engaged. The government client-commissioner within the supposedly democratic art-by-committee process often expects the artwork to represent government values and to be content-free and risk-free with the intention of avoiding controversy. With the demise of Art Built-In in 2006, Arts Queensland has put in place a new strategy - 'art + place'. In terms of criticality in public art practice-has Queensland public art improved? In this paper, case study projects commissioned by the Department of Justice and Attorney General will be reviewed to provide a critical analysis of the development in Queensland's government-commissioned public art