Gold Coast council may have blown it with $2m motorway sign

The decision to install a $2.1 million light “sculpture” on the Pacific Motorway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast has left many questioning whether it was a shining example of wise public investment.

IT WAS the Gold Coast City Council’s light-bulb moment – a dazzling plan to put the Coast’s name literally up in lights.

But the decision to install a $2.1 million light “sculpture” on the Pacific Motorway at Yatala, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, has left many questioning whether it was a shining example of wise public investment.

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The sculpture, created out of 97 light poles by two New York architects, was erected amid much fanfare ahead of last year’s Commonwealth Games in a Gateway Public Art Commission project jointly funded by the council and State Government.

Billed as the Gold Coast’s answer to America’s iconic Hollywood and “Welcome to Las Vegas” signs, the 11m high, 100m long stylised light pole structure was meant not only to be a bold entry statement for Games visitors, but also – or so people thought – spell out the name of the host city, “Gold Coast”, when lit up at night.

That it did… sort of.

View of the Gold Coast sign from the Pacific Motorway. Picture: Josh Woning/AAP

It’s location in the middle of the motorway, side on to passing traffic, means the sign is unreadable as motorists zoom past at 110km/h.

A smaller (and much easily decipherable) “GC” entry statement on southern Gold Coast, produced by the same New York-based architects at an additional cost of about $1 million, has not generated the same controversy.

Gold Coast Deputy Mayor and area councillor Donna Gates, who is leading a push to have the northern installation uninstalled, says about the only place it is visible from is the BP service station at Yatala.

“I always wanted there to be a ‘Welcome to the Gold Coast’ sign, but I simply have no understanding why you would install one without an expectation that somebody might want to actually be able to read it,” she says.

“Very rarely a week goes by when I don’t get some sort of negative comment about the structure or what the funds could otherwise have been used for.”

Gates was one of only two councillors who voted against the installation in June 2017, when design submissions from four local artists were overlooked in favour of the so-called “HI-LIGHTS” structure by New York-based architects Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano.

Most motorists’ ‘view’ of the sign from the Pacific Motorway

Tolla, whose company LOT-EK specialises in “upcycling” industrial objects such as shipping containers (and in the case of HI-LIGHTS, light poles) into architectural designs and installations for the likes of New York’s Museum of Modern Arts and Guggenheim Museum, was furious last week when the council’s transport and infrastructure committee resolved to remove the much-ridiculed sign and reposition the lights in public parks.

Branding the decision “crazy” and “completely wrong”, she said it was “like asking Picasso to change his work”.

“This is a real insult,” she fumed.

“The installation is completely site-specific – from the words ‘Gold Coast’ to the setting and movement of the letters, the sculpture follows and adapts to the highway constraints and regulations.”

The council committee was told it would cost $255,000 to remove the light poles, but veteran councillor Dawn Crichlow predicts the bill will go as high as $1 million.

“Disappointing, and very expensive,” was how Tolla described the decision, which will be voted on today at this year’s first full council meeting.

“To move the piece is complex since the work has foundations.

“Think of it as trees, with their roots below the ground, and with all the electrical connections below.

“There is no victory in demolition or dismantling, just a lot of money to destroy or break, rather than build.”

Queensland College of Art professor Jay Younger, who was lead curator for the Gateway Public Art Commission and one of six art and urban design experts on an independent selection panel, says she is “disappointed and embarrassed for the way these artists (Tolla and Lignano) have been treated”.

“I have read what Ada Tolla has said in the media and it is entirely true – the City of Gold Coast knew exactly that the artwork, based on lettering, was never meant to be readable driving on the M1,” she says.

“The starting point for their concept was spelling the words ‘Gold Coast’ but it was always crystal clear to the City of Gold Coast that this was not about a literal welcome sign.

“If it was literal, it would not be art, it would be a sign. And a sign maker would have been employed to make it, not an artist.”

Gates, who has been petitioned by residents to remove the light poles, says the money would have been better spent fixing chronic traffic congestion on the northern Gold Coast.

She says she would have much preferred one of the shortlisted local artists to have been awarded the project, rather than an overseas artist “with a limited understanding of the location or the outcome”.

“Let’s be clear – it was not the artists that chose this site, it was the City of Gold Coast,” Younger responds.

“I think the artists produced an amazing artwork within the constraints of this brief.”

Gold Coast Deputy Mayor and local councillor Donna Gates

The arts lecturer says it’s a case of “public art bashing … which is the same all over the world”.

“Typically, a new public artwork is initially disliked until it settles into the public psyche where those that experience it come to see it as important in its place,” she says.

“One of the curatorial papers I prepared for the artwork commission brief was precisely about this kind of instance where public art is expected to please everyone, which is obviously not possible in a democratic society where citizens have different opinions.”.

Under moral rights laws, Younger says, the council would need the artists’ approval to modify the lights, and believes it should be left as is.

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate, who has returned from an overseas holiday to chair today’s potentially explosive council meeting, agrees.

“Ratepayers will not want to see any more money spent on this project. That includes storage and removal costs,” he says.

“My strong view is that we leave the lights where they are, accepting that the decision was made before the 2018 Commonwealth Games. If art is subjective, let this be a permanent reminder of the M1 gateway entry project.”