How is it that most of Melbourne hasn’t heard about Sally Smart’s Shadow Trees Installation in the Docklands? This – more so even than my own children – makes me feel like I understand nothing. The installation is spectacular, inexhaustible to the eye and the mind, more inventive and original than most public art out there (I mean it), able to speak to any and each age. What more can anyone need? I’ve reconciled myself to books of the deepest power and originality disappearing without a trace, but a 12-metre-plus extraordinary public art installation that is illuminated at night and quite possibly visible from the near outer space?
© Sally Smart 2014
Not by way of a disclaimer: Sally is a friend. I wholeheartedly admire her and her art. I also wrote a poem etched into the bluestone paving between and around the Trees. You can read the poem HERE.
I watched Sally conjure this work and breathe it into existence – a Herculean labour and one of the greatest and most galvanising experiences of my creative life.
Where? At the junction of Bourke and Collins Streets, Victoria Harbour, last stop on Route 48 along Collins Street. Across a playground and a rectangular patch of grass from the Docklands’ new library, which, in itself, is a thing of beauty.