Sculpture project to enhance Arboretum

Council will pay tribute to those who saved the city from being swallowed by dust by combining its planned Sculpture Symposium project with the Riddiford Arboretum.

The project has received $200,000 funding through Create NSW, and initial plans called for the installation a series of sculptures along Argent Street.

However, Deputy Mayor Marion Browne said plans to build a new library and cultural precinct in the city's central business district (CBD) prompted a rethink.

"The landscape for Argent Street has changed with the parklets no longer going ahead, and the community backing the plan for a new library and cultural precinct,” she said.

"Given these changes, it's only logical that we now re-evaluate how the Sculptures Symposium fits with those plans.

"We're very conscious of space and parking limitations along Argent Street, and with this new project planned, we had to consider whether the installation of sculptures along the street was necessarily the best fit."

Cr Browne said the Riddiford Arboretum provides an ideal alternative home for the project, which will now see artists engaged to interpret the significance of Australia's first green belt, and the ground-breaking work of Albert Morris, the Barrier Field Naturalists' Club and the Zinc Corporation to green our city.

"Given the drought that is gripping much of the country, I think the work undertaken by Albert Morris and other parties to green our city is more important and relevant than ever," she said.

"I shudder to imagine what conditions in our city would be like today if they had not established our regeneration area and afforded our town some protection from our harsh environment.

"It's important that we recognise and celebrate that work, and I believe combining the Sculpture Symposium with the Arboretum is a perfect way of doing that."

Cr Browne said the new works would complement the city's larger sculpture display housed in the Living Desert.

"We've already seen how effective sculptures are in an outback setting, and although this project won't be a replica of the Living Desert works, I think we'll be able to recreate that cultural experience on a smaller scale within the quiet confines of the arboretum.

"It will serve not only as an extra tourist attraction for our city, but as an educational tool for future generations of locals and tourists to understand our unique conditions here in the outback, and the steps we've had to take to overcome them.

"I look forward to the project taking shape, and the artists, community, Council, and the Arboretum Committee all working together over the coming months."

Tenders for the Sculpture Symposium have opened, with project completion expected in June 2019.