The brief for this project came from an external consultant's report on developing on a history trail for the area. The consultants had suggested over 25 different historical markers for the popular suburb, and from the beginning the council wanted an 'Interpretive Sculptural Elements Trail'.
The council had two key agendas with the artwork. The first was to use a marked trail to show the public that there are a string of public, river front spaces throughout Battery Point and to reveal the complex layers that make up the area. It is now a gentrified suburb, but was once highly industrialised and a slum, and much of it was scheduled for demolition until community groups fought for its retention in the latter half of the 20th century. The second was to reposition public art in Hobart by creating something completely unique and different to what had been done before.
This project was not short on challenges, being stretched across a 2km area, and the fact that we proposed 9 unique sculptures didn't help! The latter was undoubtedly the biggest challenge in that each of the sculptures was custom in a number of ways. The shapes were custom and the combinations of materials were custom. Combining so many different materials and trades presented a problem as it wasn't clear who takes responsibility when something goes wrong… In a standard building process, there is a builder with a lot of insurance who manages all of this, but in our case, we were managing and coordinating all of the subcontractors without that buffer.
Longevity was probably the next significant issue – rust, material movement with Hobart's fierce temperatures, defence against vandalism (or ability to clean if it occurred), structural stability if people decided to climb/jump on, etc.
Yet another significant challenge was to receive approvals from each of the different authorities on land and on water. Daniel Zika was project manager for much of the development period and was the one who fought many of these battles. The trail sits within 2 different planning schemes and on the land of private and public landowners. 313 (the floating sculpture) had to be approved by the authority looking after waterways. Many of the wayfinding elements had to be approved through the national telecommunications provider who own the poles to which the wayfinding panels were affixed.
