Lakeside
By Jade Oakley and Stephanie Mew
Lakeside is a collaboration between Jade Oakley and Stephanie Mew. The artwork began with one of Steph’s beautiful woodcut prints. Jade has transformed the print into a series of sculptural screens to be integrated with the landscaping in the new Mallacoota Streetscape. The project has been funded by a grant from East Gippsland Community Foundation and a Tiny Towns Grant. The artwork also involved art workshops with students from Mallacoota P-12 College where the students made artworks inspired by the natural environment of Mallacoota.
As we were installing Lakeside a woman paused to ask, affronted; ‘What’s that for?” I replied, “It’s a sculpture” and she harumphed and walked on, disgruntled. But she had a point. What is that for? Or, put differently, what is the role of artwork in public places?
Public Art can tell the story of a place. Artwork in public places can speak about the essence of what makes a place special. Mallacoota is a different place to all of us, but whether it is a holiday playground or a home, whether we have grown up here or moved here recently, we can all identify with this as a special place by a lake, surrounded by bushland, next to the sea. Spend some time with the Lakeside sculpture and you will find birds, boats and bushland elements. This represents the lake, the bush and the sea.
Soon Yvonne, Max and the Friends of Mallacoota will plant native species around the sculptural screens so that the artwork is integrated with the landscaping. The foliage and flowers of native plants will weave themselves into the artwork, helping to tell the story of this special place. The corten screens will develop a varied, rusted patina. Spiders will weave webs in some of the openings in the screens and birds will alight on top. The artwork will become a part of this place; screening the Rotunda and gathering space from the road, creating an entry statement and telling the story of Mallacoota, a little town by a lake, in the bush, next to the sea.
