Westgate House In The Sky

This artwork is dedicated to the stunning sculpture on the Westgate freeway called House In The Sky. When I drive towards this sculpture, it’s a sign I’m nearly home. It takes me about the same amount of time, whether I turn left towards the Millers Road exit, or turn right towards the Kororoit Creek Road exit, but either way, I’m nearly home (knowing in advance of impending traffic issues helps too).

I enjoyed researching the sculpture. In a way, my artwork reflects one of the reasons why the sculpture was created – to change people’s perceptions of Melbourne’s western suburbs.

The team behind the House In The Sky is BAU, an architecture, urban design, urban planning, and landscape architecture organisation founded in 1992 in Melbourne Australia. House in The Sky, a Brearley Middleton Project, was the initiative of five western metropolitan councils, sponsored by the Department of Infrastructure and guided by VicRoads. It was the first of five roadside projects aimed at changing perceptions of Melbourne’s western suburbs.

BAU explain that the budget of $95,000 didn’t allow a freeway size sculpture. However, BAU thought that it might just allow for an enormous 2D drawing that might just, with the use of the rules of perspective, look like a 3D object.

House in the sky was the result, and it is installed 50m above the Geelong Freeway and Western Ring Road interchange. According to BAU, at the time, the site was located on the fringe of the metropolis, consisting of suburban fabric containing low-cost housing and some retail services, but dominated by industrial estates. However, the area had aspirations of becoming the place to fulfill the Australian suburban dream – a home of one’s own on a quarter acre block.

If architecture is only the projects produced by those who have attended architecture programs at university, then these suburbs may well be considered architecture-free zones. However, if architecture is the built fabric that a society chooses to inhabit, then these suburbs are full of architecture – an architecture as complex and as nuanced as any in the history books, on any syllabus, of any architectural program, in any city, in any country. We believe in the latter and
consequently believe architects need to fully engage with suburbia.

Robert Venturi’s, Peter Corrigan’s, and Maggie Edmond’s interest in the complexity and contradiction and the ugliness and ordinariness of the suburbs; the sublime suburban images of Howard Arkley; and the intriguing ideas of Duchamp (found object and time as a content of art); all conspired to inspire BAE.

The project is a suspended two-dimensional perspective drawing of the Australian suburban dream home. The drawing explores the rich and complex iconography of that suburban dream. After consulting a specialist in popular culture and its iconography (Dr. Derham Groves form the University of Melbourne) BAE constructed an icon-filled perspective drawing of the suburban dream house: curved driveway, exotic deciduous planting, curved path to prominent front porch supported by large columns, minime letterbox, picket fence, arched windows, gathered drapes in the windows, security screen to front door, pitched tiled roof, chimney, and of course a prominent TV aerial.

My artwork celebrates the west. People’s homes, buildings, workplaces, landscapes, and places of leisure evoke sentimentality and nostalgia. To me, the House In The Sky, is a reminder to celebrate coming home and appreciating community.

https://www.bau.com.au/about-us/practice-profile/