The perils of public art
Wayne Youle talks to Charlie Gates about his battle to create new public artworks in central Christchurch.
Wayne Youle is standing at the top of a step ladder at a busy Christchurch junction. The artist is wearing a hard hat and a high-vis vest and using a cordless power drill to complete a glass case about the size of an old-fashioned telephone box. He has tattooed arms, thickframed glasses and a full beard.
I introduce myself and he starts talking very fast as he finishes the job. He talks as he climbs down the step ladder. He talks as we cross the road. And he continues to talk as we sit on a bench in the sunshine.
He is full of energy and good humour, but seems frustrated. He sprinkles his sentences with welljudged profanities and occasionally leans forward to go off the record, talking in a low growl. He talks about the struggles of creating public art in the new city and how Christchurch’s art scene has changed since the earthquakes.
He is full of pithy statements like ‘‘The worst thing about public art is the public part’’, ‘‘Think of how many people just need a slap’’, and ‘‘Art doesn’t have to be all preachy. F... preachy.’’
Youle is probably best known for his 2011 public artwork, I Seem To Have Temporarily Lost My Sense of Humour. The large mural on Colombo St in Sydenham features a shadow board with everything from a guitar to a house stencilled in place. His solo show at the Christchurch Art Gallery, Look Mum No Hands, finished in September.
As Youle talks, contractors work on five new permanent public artworks he has created near the junction of Manchester and St Asaph Sts. Two vertical video artworks are installed back to back in a tall metal case, a backlit sign with the words ‘‘Piece of Mind’’ on one side and ‘‘Wish you Were Here’’ on the other, and a glass case with an elaborate wooden model inside called A New, New Beginning.
The project has taken about 18 months to complete and on the day of its official opening there is still work to do.
Contractors are busily working on last-minute glitches to make sure the artworks are hooked up to the power grid and will cope with the summer heat.
‘‘About 65 people have to be involved in this project and I am at the bottom of the totem pole on my hands and knees. It’s ironic – you are at the bottom of the totem pole but you are first on the block when it turns to s...,’’ he says.
‘‘’The lights don’t go on. Wayne, your work doesn’t work’. Not the guys who made the glass, or the lights, or the wood. It’s Wayne Youle.’’
‘‘That is the burden you bear. The whole public thing is a blessing and a curse. The worst thing about public art is the public part. I would absolutely do it again, but not on public land.’’
But he says it is easier to create new artworks in the city centre than it was before the earthquakes. He points to the oversized spray cans on Manchester St recently installed as a canvas for street artists, the new Antony Gormley statue in the Avon River and Martin Creed’s neon EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT on the Christchurch Art Gallery.
Things have changed since the Christchurch public rejected a proposed Henry Moore sculpture for the Port Hills in 1972, he says. ‘‘We could have had a f...ing Henry Moore in the hills, but we f...ed it up. Think of how many people just need a slap.’’
The artworks respond to the earthquake experience in different ways, Youle says. ‘‘There’s no way I wanted to make an earthquake work, but I’m bound by what I live in.’’
The video artwork, Drum Roll Please, is a constantly looping film of a never ending drum roll. ‘‘It’s intriguing and annoying as s...,’’ he says. ‘‘The drum roll... we all know from Lotto. Historically, some bad stuff happened at the end of a drum roll. It’s the anticipation of that rollercoaster of positive and negatives that are going to happen.
‘‘People who go to their house and finally see it demolished. The anticipation before a building comes down. Those sorts of things.’’
The other video artwork, The Gift that Keeps Giving, plays with similar ideas of anticipation. It features Youle’s mother unwrapping a series of layers on a parcel. But the package is never fully unwrapped. The video loops forever. ‘‘The reward is the anticipation, rather than the end game. It’s like pass the parcel.
‘‘It’s like the city. When I come in once a month I go: ‘Wow, that’s cool’. Each time a new area is taken down and cleared and something starts to happen that is a new layer.
‘‘I don’t live in the city, but that gift that keeps on giving is going to go on for a very long time.’’
The back-lit signs reading Wish You Were Here and Piece of Mind are designed to be subtle interventions. ‘‘It’s not ostentatious. ‘Wish You Were Here’, that’s all you need. You don’t have to be all preachy. It’s more than a sign, but not a statue. We don’t need a shrine.
I don’t want it to jump out at you and say I’m an artwork.’’
The Piece of Mind refers to the effort involved in rebuilding the city. ‘‘All these pieces of mind are needed to make a city. You need so many pieces of so many minds to make a city’’
The fifth artwork is a wooden framework in a large glass case on the corner of Manchester and Tuam Sts. ‘‘There’s an aesthetic similarity between a building being erected and a building being demolished. It is such a beautiful limbo when it is just a frame. I made it look like it was an architectural model, but it was a Dr Seuss architectural model.’’
At the end of an interview full of complaints about bureaucracy, Youle realises he has been wearing his hard hat the whole time. ‘‘I did this interview in a hard hat. I really have drunk the Kool-Aid.’’