Responding

Cut and reconfigured mobile phone tower
The Great Victorian Rail Trail, Taungurung country, Mansfield, 2023

Commissioned by State Government’s Regional Tourism Investment Fund as a joint project between Mitchell, Murrindindi and Mansfield Shire Councils

Visit the GVRT website here

Responding
Taungurung country, Mansfield, Victoria
2023

ROBBIE ROWLANDS

‘Responding’ is a permanent public artwork by Robbie Rowlands for the Great Victorian Rail Trail Art Installations Project. The $1.2M project, funded by the State Government’s Regional Tourism Investment Fund, is a joint project between Mitchell, Murrindindi and Mansfield Shire Councils which aims to increase trail usage by attracting visitors to the region and providing local economic benefit. It features seven large artworks and a series of smaller works along the length of the 134 km rail trail.

‘Responding’ consists of a 39m mobile phone tower that gracefully arches over the rail trail. In their usual display, phone towers sit at heights well above the landscape or our built environments. Here, the tower appears animated, falling close to the ground as if bowing to meet us. In this way, the technological function of transmission – of receiving and responding to signals – becomes a personal interaction between the viewer, the artwork and the landscape. With its slender taper and gentle curve, the tower appears more organic than industrial, like a stalk of field grass with its long, thin signal panels mimicking seed pods fraying at their tips.

“The inspiration for this work was, in part, drawn from my long-running interest in sculpturally recomposing our built environment. The rail trail set a perfect staging for an unexpected encounter. In my doubtful moments, the foreignness of this form set in this landscape concerned me. Once installed these doubts subsided. As you follow the trail, cutting through open fields and bushland, the experience of the steely sweep of the pole crossing over the path draws a relationship to the outstretched arms of historic gums and the field grasses. At the age of 9, I travelled this same route by steam with my father and brother to commemorate its closing. There is a subtle echoing of this industrial past in the material and the tempo of cuts (sleepers, sonic sound of steel on steel). The emphasis for me was on the graceful sweep of the form finding a gentle balance in this landscape.” 

Robbie Rowlands
April, 2023

Project management - Global Art Projects

Artist project management - David Hagger

Engineering – Tensys Engineering

Fabrication support – Mile Golem, Jason Waterhouse - Sculpture Company

Film and Photography – Nigel Karikari - Thirdrow Films, Clive Dickerson

Assistants – Yianni Rowlands, Tjala Rowlands, Mira Rowlands

Crane and installation – Mansfield Cranes

Foundations – Desmond Concreting Mansfield

Images & Film: Thirdrow films

The work can be located west of the gates between Olivers Road and Pikes Rd, Taungurung country, Mansfield