Mythform

An artwork by Paul Carter in collaboration with Lab architecture studio

In 1999 the Federation Square Public Art Program, in consultation with Lab architecture studio, commissioned highly regarded interdisciplinary scholar, artist and writer Paul Carter to generate a work for the main plaza. Nearamnew was the result. The history of the creation of this work forms the first exhibition in the NGV Response Gallery.

Mythform: The Making of Nearamnew focuses on the collaboration between Federation Square architects: Lab architecture studio and Bates Smart, and artist Paul Carter. This collaboration resulted in a public artwork titled Nearamnew. Utilising a variety of different coloured stones, Nearamnew acknowledges the past cultural histories of the site through a work with literal and metaphorical layers of meaning. The title of the work was generated by combining different words to create a name that indicates a shared history.

Paul Carter is currently professorial research fellow at The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. His most recent book is Repressed Spaces: the Poetics of Agoraphobia (Reaktion Books, London, 2002). Other books includeThe Road to Botany Bay (1987) and The Lie of the Land (1996). He is currently working on an LED-based artwork and ground design for North Terrace, Adelaide, called Tracks. With artist Ruark Lewis, he created for the Sydney 2000 Olympics Relay, a polychrome text-based artwork, located at Fig Grove adjacent to the main stadium.

Lab architecture studio was founded in 1994 in London by architects Peter Davidson and Donald L Bates. Lab architecture studio’s commitment to the practice of innovative and challenging architecture is founded upon the maintenance and operation of a studio that explores, challenges, provokes and tests the assumptions and possibilities of all architectural projects.

The Federation Square Public Arts Program was initiated in 1998 to provide a collaborative and experimental environment in which Australian artists from a range of disciplinary backgrounds could research and produce original works relating to Federation Square.