Sean Lynch – Distant Things Appear Suddenly Near

My name is Sean Lynch, I'm an artist from Ireland. 

I've been working with the City of Melbourne on a public art project called 'Distant Things Appear Suddenly Near'. 

The artwork is a combination of different pieces of research that I've been working on with the curatorial team here for a period of time. 

One part of the artwork is a scale replica of the Corkman bar. 

This building existed very close to University Square for over 150 years, before being demolished illegally by rogue property developers in 2016.   

It now reappears as an apparition, or a ghost of sorts, built out of materials one would associate with the building site that you see here in the background.   

Beside the Corkman you can see large elm tree logs placed sporadically in different locations here in University Square. 

These ones grew here as elm trees planted in the 1880s and again were removed from the site some years ago.   

I like the idea that objects and memories of the city can come back to remind us of the places we live in and how we can inhabit, in a poetic and meaningful way, the places we know and appreciate today. 

I was very fortunate to get to know the late Adelaide based artist Hossein Valamanesh. 

Hossein and I had many conversations in the last years about a piece of public art he made for the city in the 1990s called 'Faultline'. 

The artwork, situated beside the river Yarra was removed from there and now reappears in a different context here in University Square. 

As you can see, a bronze boat, a figure with an oar and a submerged pier all appear here on the site, subtly referring to the Aboriginal landscape here as University Square being a tributary and a place of water that flowed directly into the Birrarung river. 

Beside the artwork, a very prominent building site can be seen where the Metro works continue to construct underground tunnels and train systems for the benefit of Melbourne's population. 

The artwork will exist for two years before this great scheme is completed.   

As part of that, there's a sense of mischief to that idea of progress in the city and the project team and I spent many days routing and scavenging through different storage depots around Melbourne city. 

As you can see some of the pieces we found are contemporary issue traffic cones, antique bollards and streetlights,  and they're all placed in a somewhat comical way on the periphery of the artwork. 

I've come from afar here to Melbourne to realise this artwork. As part of that process in 2019,   

I had a workshop which gave me opportunity to meet so many people around the city and understand their contribution to civic and urban life here today. 

We spent a lot of time looking at the various archives here in the city,  meeting people – sometimes by accident, sometimes with an appointment and beginning to understand that the strength of this city is about incidental conversations,  moments of encounter and how they all lead up to what we can imagine a kind of urban spirituality in how we can dwell authentically today. 

A key encounter at that time was a visit to Dja Dja Wurrung country and birthing trees there, who were in danger of being steamrolled over by a new road motorway system. 

It was a very poignant situation for me as an outsider to see and explained much about the complex spatialities  and social histories here in Melbourne that must now be heard, understood and magnified.   

Somehow that experience is reflected in the piece as one can travel from different directions,  different situations and different positions in life to encounter the artwork that you see here in University Square. 

I'd like to think that this is, may be a model or a way of thinking about public space and how art can contribute to it in a sincere and meaningful way. 

Public art of course is realised  in many ways and contexts, and not just by one person – an artist. 

I've been so fortunate to have a very strong project team that have guided the project – have been in so many ways co-conspirators. 

And I think a lot about Mark Nielsen and his team at Set Square who, taking the memory and ghost of the Corkman structure took it out of there and materialised it as this plywood structure that you see here.   

There are certain perceptions of public art – that it performs in a way to decorate the city, or appears somehow in a plaza or a particular location as a 'masterpiece'.   

I could never claim that the work here is anything like that. It's instead about encounters and conversations and accidents of understanding in many ways. 

If a different telephone call was made, if a different conversation was had, this piece might be different than what you see here. 

And I like that idea of it appearing as ... an unfinished jigsaw in some sense, or a partial understanding of here – Melbourne in the here and now, that of course someone else might make the piece in a different way, so it's an understanding or a mode of thinking that I hope could be transferred to many different locations and situations.   

And that's been a very important moment for my practice and my ways of making art to realise.