Steel sculpture on concrete footing, 2003
Cnr Franklin & Queen St. Melbourne
Originally an illustrator of children’s books, Lisa Young has been a
practising artist since the early 1990s. She completed a Master of Fine
Arts at RMIT, where her research led her to explore repeated forms and
the rhythms they create. These concerns are apparent in Island Wave, her
first major public sculpture in Melbourne.
Island Wave is a large work that comprises a repeated motif and is sited
on the Franklin and Queen Streets roundabout. Young’s motif is a French
curve, to which she was drawn for its sensuality and its past use as a
mechanical drawing aid for the technical works executed by engineers
and architects. The repetition of this motif along the curve of the
roundabout creates a sense of movement, particularly for the motorist
travelling alongside it. It is scaled to give the sensation of both moving in
rhythm to and being engulfed by a wave. Unlike a solid monolithic
sculpture, there is a ‘lightness’ about Island Wave, which is achieved by
its thinness, its open form and the sense of movement it evokes. Island
Wave engages both the motorist and pedestrian, and its prominent
location near Queen Victoria Market ensures that it has a local and
international audience.
This elegant sculpture was created as the inaugural work for the council’s
Melbourne Collection Commissions, a fund for significant and permanent
site-specific works by contemporary artists. It was fabricated by Gilbro
Engineering and installed by Famous Constructions. Controversially, the
sculpture replaced Tom Bill’s With and With Each Other, which despite
having only a three-month permit had remained on the roundabout since
the 1998 Construction in Process Sculpture Festival. Island Wave was
launched by Lord Mayor John So and Councillor Kimberly Kitching in
October 2003