Solar Mallee Trees

The things you discover walking...

Image: Solar Mallee Trees, 2005. Artist: Anthony Materne.

So there I was, visiting the Adelaide Festival Centre (see my entry AdelaideFestival Centre) for the first time in years. As I wandered across the complex I came across Anthony Materne’s Solar Mallee Trees on the plaza between the Festival Theatre and the Dunstan Playhouse.

To my surprise, a plaque near the installation bore the date 2005, indicating the year the work was created and installed on the plaza. I was surprised, I suppose because it just showed how rarely I paid a visit to my home town’s principle arts centre.

Image: Solar Mallee Trees on the Festival Theatre plaza

Created in steel, aluminium, and fibreglass, and incorporating sound and lighting elements, Solar Mallee Trees is an “…interpretive sculpture developed to creatively exhibit solar power technology through its form, movement-activated messages, lighting display at night, and digital power generation display. The form is a contemporary interpretation of the indigenous Adelaide plains mallee tree.”

There is a lot of public art around Adelaide, and as I discover it for myself, I will present the best of it here.

Notes:

Name: Solar Mallee Trees, 2005

Artist: Anthony Materne

Location: Adelaide Festival Centre Plaza

View: All year round

Entry: Free

Adelaide Festival Centre

Image courtesy of Wikipedia…

Yesterday, I decided to practice what I preach by becoming a tourist in my own town, so utilising public transport, I headed into the city just after midday and alighted in front of the Adelaide Festival Centre, located alongside the River Torrens.

The Adelaide Festival Centre was built in three stages between April 1970 and 1980. The main building, the Festival Theatre, was completed in 1973, and is known for the excellent quality of its acoustics. 

I can’t remember the last time I visited the Centre, but it has been years. During the day there is not a lot to see or do – unless you are attending a matinee session of a major theatre production, or some other public event. However, I wandered into the main building and after checking out some of the art work: the Fred Williams series, River Murray Scenes, and John Dowie busts of Sir Robert Helpmann and John Bishop, I stopped to examine the current Festival Theatre Foyer exhibition The Art in Performing Arts.

The exhibition highlights the work of some of South Australia’s best known arts luminaries including ballet dancer/choreographer Sir Robert Helpmann, theatre/arts critic Peter Goers, actor/director Keith Michell and numerous other local thespians and artists.

There are multiple theatres within the Adelaide Festival Centre which provide seating for a total of 5000 people. Apart from the Festival Theatre, the complex also houses the Dunstan Playhouse (named after Don Dunstan a former State Premier), the Space Theatre and an outdoor amphitheatre.

Before I left I filled up my tote bag with various program guides and brochures including those of the State Theatre Company and the State Opera as well as the program for the upcoming Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Later I stopped by the information center in Rundle Mall and picked up more brochures. These have been produced by the Adelaide City Council, and outline numerous cultural and historic walks around the city and North Adelaide.

I am becoming increasingly excited by the prospect of become a tourist in my own town, and I am committed to going out at least once a week to discover some of Adelaide’s attractions, and look forward to writing about my adventures via the Compleat Traveller.

Friday Photo: Batman Woz Here

Click on image to view full size.

On August 8, 2010 I caught a bus from New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street to Woodstock.

Yes, that Woodstock.

I travelled there to see Pete Seeger (see Pete Seeger –Living Legend), arguably one of the greatest living folk artists alive who was performing at the Bearsville Theater.

The two mile walk to the theater along Tinker Street led me past two story weatherboard homes, small bed and breakfast accommodations, cafés, abandoned houses, and through the outskirts of Woodstock past rolling farmland and several apple orchards (a roadside monument at the corner of De Vall Road and Tinker Street states: On the ridge 400 feet south, originated about 1800 the Jonathan Apple, an important commercial variety, long known locally as the “Rickey”, or “Philip Rick”apple from the discoverer.”).

It was while I was walking along the roadside verge that I discover an abandoned Batman mask lying in the grass. It seemed such an incongruous sight, lying there in this quiet rural hamlet, far from Gotham City.

Had some child been walking or riding their bicycle along Tinker Street and lost or thrown the mask away? Had it fallen from a moving vehicle, or been carried by the wind from a nearby front yard, and been deposited here? I will never know. And for all I know, it lies there still, being slowly broken down by the combined forces of heat, snow, wind and rain.