Hyde Park Public Art Project

2007

Materials:

Stainless steel, steel, oil based pigment and rivets.

Concept:

The Denman Creek Committee has been regenerating the Denman Creek for many years beginning with cleaning the creek out, bank stabilisation and tree planting. The Hyde Park public art project was designed to links with an earlier project the ‘Denman Creek Interpretative Signage Walk’. The project involved concrete stencilling names and birth dates of community members onto a seven hundred meter pathway that links the town centre to Hyde Park.

A series of twenty-four etched stainless steel plates are featured in the design of the amenities block at the southern end of the walk on the bank of Denman Creek servicing visitors to Hyde Park. The twenty-four stainless steel plates are etched with children’s drawings and the signatures of one thousand local people. The plates integrate the images and signatures with the local landscape that is reflected on the shiny surface of the plates. Connecting people and place by merging their images and names with the gum trees and the distant hills. The public also enters this work as their image is reflected on the shiny metallic surface of the artwork.

Denman youth helped collected the signatures, made drawings and talked with people; re discovering history through the personal anecdotes they collected. The project links youth with elders in the community and promotes an awareness of the environment and creates a sense of place through story telling.

The project aims to achieve longterm outcomes, namely beautification of the public wetlands and an awareness of heritage and environment, respect for the site, pride in ones community, a unique identity for the place, a tourist icon, a place of interest and to establish links with the regions history by engaging old and young in telling stories about the rivers and creeks.

Project partners:

  • Denman Creek Committee
  • Muswellbrook Shire Council

Exhibitions:

  • Public Art and Alternative Tactics in Post-Acquisitive Society, Part One: Rural, Hellen Rose Schaumberger Labratorium, Surry Hills Australia. Dec 2008.
  • Public Art Project, Denman Creek Hyde Park, Denman NSW, Australia. On permanent public display, launched Dec 2007.

Thanks:

Funded by The Hunter Regional Landcare Network & The Hunter Central Rivers Catchment Management Authority, Muswellbrook Shire Council, with generous support from Bernie Passlow, Greg Deakin-Bell and James Thomas.