Gateway Public Art Commission (GPAC)

Abstract

In 2016 Younger was competitively awarded the role of Lead Curator for Creative Move for the +$2 million Gateways Public Art Commission (GPAC) commissioned for the Commonwealth Games. It was predetermined that an iconic artwork was to be located on the M1 and after commencement was extended to a southern site to bookend the city. Younger knew from her previous research in the field that large budget high profile public artworks are most often controversial and attract negative media attention.

Younger produced an illustrated 60 page curatorial rationale that comprised two papers and the Briefing Document. The first focused on the Gold Coast context—but was curatorial not corporate. The other focused on the popular controversies and failings of regionally specific landmark, gateway and world event public art with 8 exemplars discussed. From over 70 applications, Younger shortlisted 20 artist teams from which 5—all invited by Younger—James Angus, LOT-EK, Callum Morton, Scott Redford, and Judy Watson were selected for concept design and the NYC based LOT-EK was commissioned. https://wearegc.com.au/gateways-public-art-commission/the-panel/

In keeping with LOT-EK’s overarching strategies of up-cycling, Hi-LIGHTS is devised from the radically adaptive reuse of the familiar highway vernacular of the light pole. Rethinking the light poles as dots that form letters and words, the artwork conceptual starting point is the Gold Coast’s name in lights, however the artwork is abstracted and illegible from the driving point of view. This—but it could have been anything—as predicted in the curatorial papers, generated considerable media controversy including suggestions for its removal and or relocation.