Canberra's public art's private funding points to misplaced priorities

He was an important man, alright, best known for co-authoring the Australian constitution, and for pioneering the Hare-Clark electoral voting system used in the ACT.

And Perth sculptor April Pine has certainly done him justice, in weathered steel, a swinging coat and a pensive gaze. It's striking, and unusual. Like all good public art, it demands a second look.

My beef isn't with the subject matter, particularly - although it would have been amazing to have, say, a woman, or an Indigenous person, represented in such a prominent spot.

It's more that the sculpture was commissioned by Canberra Airport Group, in close consultation with both the National Capital Authority and ArtsACT. But despite this process, and its placement in a prominent public location, this is a privately commissioned artwork.

The Canberra Airport Group, helmed by Terry Snow, has a strong commitment to public art, as do, for example, the families behind the Hindmarsh development company and the Molonglo Group. In other words, it seems to have fallen to Canberra's art-loving developers to fill our city with art.

Yet just a decade ago, Canberra's landscape was filling up before our eyes with publicly funded artworks commissioned under the ACT's controversial percentage-for-art scheme instigated by then-chief minister Jon Stanhope.

Under the scheme, which lasted just two years (2007-2009), one per cent of the territory's capital works program each year was devoted to public art. Stanhope oversaw the commissioning of more than 40 works that are now dotted around the city.

Piles of sticks, goats made of chains, windmills on the parkways, a whimsical silver cushion reclining on its very own granite plinth in the centre of town - they are loved, hated, puzzled over. They blend and rust into the landscape, forming the memories and associations that make the city ours. At the very least, they get us talking.

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Another one that watches over us, the Belconnen Owl - the eight-metre-high fibreglass sculpture by Melbourne artist Bruce Armstrong - was one of the last to go in after the scheme was scrapped due to excessive human outrage.

That was in 2011, right before Stanhope left office, a man defeated as far as public art was concerned.

Since then, the ACT government has commissioned barely a handful of artworks, with no apparent plans for the future.

Where the was once commitment to a civic concept embraced in great cities all around the world, there is only a lukewarm acknowledgment, and a strong aversion to outrage. It's a shame.