What’s the true cost of the council’s Southbank public art commissions?

The short answer is nowhere near the $22 million price tag reported by The Age last month; however, the City of Melbourne has left much to be desired in terms of how it has communicated its public art project for Southbank to date.

On September 17, The Age blew many away when it reported that “An artist got $2m to make a kangaroo sculpture by 2021. Now the bill is $22m and it’s due in 2027.”

This headline was reasonable cause for alarm. How could the signature public artwork commissioned by the City of Melbourne in 2018 as part of a series of artworks for the reimagined Dodds St have blown out by $20 million alone?

The truth is: it hasn’t, and not by a long shot.

And, based on the rest of its article, The Age must have known this headline was misleading, but regrettably ran with it anyway.

Further along in its piece, The Age outlines that Southbank was getting much more for the reported $22 million sum, however the headline and introduction to its story suggested something entirely different.

“A $2 million public artwork commissioned by the City of Melbourne six years ago has snowballed into a massive sculpture installation worth $22 million and is still at least three years from completion,” the opening line to The Age article reads.

Southbank News understands that the total cost of the project, comprising a total of four separate artworks (including the “kangaroo sculpture”) by one artist all to be located along the recently completed Dodds St linear park, is around $15.5 million.

A City of Melbourne spokesperson confirmed to Southbank News that the suggestion of an increase to $22 million was incorrect. So, how could The Age get it so wrong?

As first reported by Southbank News back in March 2018, the commission began with one element of the overall artwork at a cost of $2 million – this price, as acknowledged further down in The Age’s article, remains consistent.

“Southbank has been revealed as the lucky recipient of a series of four major public art commissions, with the first to come at a cost of $2 million,” Southbank News reported in 2018.

Outside of that piece of information, the City of Melbourne has never publicly disclosed what the total cost of the public art initiative would be, and this is largely due to its confidential and evolving nature.

The council remains in a confidential contract with the artist, understood to be New Zealand Maori artist Michael Parekowhai. For the sake of not compromising the artist’s creative approach, discretion is not uncommon for such commissions.

While preserving the artistic integrity of what a council spokesperson described as one of the “biggest public art undertakings” in the city’s history is important, so too is the way in which the council chooses to report on its capital works expenditure.

As Southbank News now understands, the $2 million price tag is much more nuanced than how the council originally led the community to believe the funds would be spent when first aired at a council meeting on February 27, 2018.

“It is intended that the $2 million be allocated to the major public artwork commission on Southbank,” the council report from 2018 stated, adding that this would be “inclusive of artist fees, fabrication and installation.”

This major artwork is what The Age reported to be “an eight-metre-high bronze sculpture consisting of a ‘soft-toy-appearing kangaroo’ wrapped in fairy lights sitting on a primary school chair,” titled Yesterday.

But according to a council source, the original $2 million covered the concept plans not only for Yesterday, but the other three artworks, as well as some landscaping and a downpayment on Yesterday itself – believed to have been at least half of the $2 million.

In fact, the total cost for Yesterday alone is understood to be more than $2 million, but despite numerous media reports suggesting otherwise since 2018, the council has never sought to correct the record.

This inaction is perhaps in part what has inevitably left the council exposed to The Age’s inaccuracies, and subsequent news reports showing a fake AI-generated image depicting Yesterday that has whipped up an online furore.

But irrespective of the council’s communication of this initiative, the inference by The Age of a blown-out project always costed at $2 million is simply wrong, and ultimately should be corrected.

How it arrived at the figure of $22 million is also puzzling, with a council source suggesting that it could have only landed there based on making a series of incorrect assumptions about the information contained in the 2022 documents it obtained.

One such assumption, is that the $5.4 million Dodds St Landscape, completed earlier this year and largely funded by the state government as part of the Melbourne City Revitalisation Fund during the pandemic, forms part of the public art budget.

Locals celebrate the opening of the transformed Dodds St earlier this year. Photo: Hanna Komissarova.

While these landscaping works are being treated as a component of the artwork, it’s always been accounted for as a separate line in the council’s budget. As many Southbankers will also know, renewal of Dodds St was originally mooted as part of the Southbank Boulevard upgrades, and has been a feature of the council’s capital works program for many years.

But while the $15.5 million we understand to be the more accurate figure might also sound hefty amid a cost-of-living crisis, it’s not yet clear exactly how much of this is being footed by ratepayers.

Since the commission began with one element of the overall artwork, a council spokesperson said that it had commissioned the remaining elements, including the landscape itself, “sharing the costs with public and private contributors”.

One contributor is the University of Melbourne, which according to a separate article by The Age on September 20, brokered a “secret $2.8 million deal” to fund one of the artworks in exchange for the council’s support for its new Fishermans Bend campus.

According to a council source, other funds have been drawn from external funding, both institutional and philanthropic: “that is all consistent with the approach that council took from the outset.”

Southbank News understands that in addition to the University of Melbourne’s contribution to one of the artworks, titled Knowledge, one of the remaining two pieces in addition to Yesterday has been funded through philanthropy.

Based on rough unconfirmed estimates, this could mean at least half of the $15.5 million is being funded by ratepayers over the project’s lifespan since 2018 through to its now mooted completion in 2027.

As for the delays, a council spokesperson said the project had been “interrupted by the pandemic, and would now be completed in 2027”, despite having originally slated an unveiling during the current council term.

Southbank News understands that despite the mammoth Yesterday project now complete and sitting in storage, the “creative decision” was taken to reveal all the completed artworks together at the same time.

According to an SGS Economics report, every $1 million of commissioned public artwork will generate $4.2 million of additional tourist spending in the first year – while creating new jobs.

“Public art drives visitation to Melbourne and strengthens our cultural fabric – and that’s good for business and our economy,” a City of Melbourne spokesperson said.

“The Southbank public art commission is one of the biggest public art undertakings – and we will deliver it in the heart of Melbourne’s growing Arts Precinct by the end of 2027.” 

“We recently opened the new-look linear park to the local community – providing residents, workers, students and visitors a great new place to come together.”

A council source said they remained optimistic that the city was getting something that was going to be “quite special”, adding that “underneath all of that is still a project that is within budget, a project that is being produced and commissioned properly from the production and creation end.” •