City of Sydney to prioritise women statues in push to diversify public artwork

A Sydney councillor is leading a push to bring gender equality to the city’s stock of public statues – labelling the current state of affairs a “sausage fest”.

Statue equality is set to come to the Sydney CBD.

A Sydney councillor is leading a push to bring gender equality to the city’s stock of public statues – labelling the current state of affairs a “sausage fest”.

The City of Sydney has endorsed plans to prioritise significant women when commissioning new statues as part of a policy aimed at levelling the gender playing field in public art.

The push to diversify sculpted artworks also include investigating new ways of honouring First Nations people and people from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Labor councillor Linda Scott, who is leading the campaign, said there had been a historic disparity between the number of women and men depicted in public statues in Sydney’s CBD.

Ms Scott there were just six public statues of women in the City of Sydney, including one of Australia’s first saint Mary MacKillop and two of Queen Victoria.

Councillor Linda Scott.

A council register of statues shows there are at least 28 statues of men ranging from Shakespeare to Captain Cook.

“When it comes to statues, unfortunately the city is a bit of a sausage fest,” Ms Scott said. “There are an enormous number of statues of men and we think there might be five to eight times more statues of birds in the City of Sydney than there are of women.

Ms Scott said there are more statues of animals than women in the CBD – including this statue titled ‘Il Porcellino‘.

“There is a statue of a pig on Macquarie St and a dog outside the Queen Victoria Building – the same number of major statues of queens and therefore women.

“It’s a complicated conversation (but) not all that complicated to suggest that our diverse and vibrant community aspires to something other than only having pale male and stale.”

NSW sculptor Tanya Bartlett supported the move, saying women have been historically “under-represented” in the commissioning of public art works.

Sydney based historian Warren Fahey also supported the push to have more women depicted in statues – naming Jessie Lorimer – a firebrand speaker who opposed conscription in WWI – as a possible candidate.

Cultural historian Warren Fahey.

“In history, gender imbalance has applied right across every field of society but there are so many stories in Sydney of women who were agitators for a better society and were not given recognition,” he said.

“I’m fairly against wokeness as far as recreating history goes but there has been a gender imbalance I would like to see corrected.” 

Cr Scott’s proposal was supported by councillors at a recent council meeting and includes working with the council’s public art advisory panel, stakeholders and the community to enable the delivery of at least three new statues depicting women.

The policy is in line with a global movement towards ‘statue equality’ led by advocacy group ‘Monument of Ones Own’.

A photo of the Queen Victoria statue outside the QVB.

Ms Scott said Sydney was one of only two capital city councils in Australia not to participate in the movement.

“The people we chose to commemorate with statues in our public spaces make a public statement about who and what we value, who we quite literally put on a pedestal,” she said.

“Representation matters – you cannot be what you cannot see.”

Other monuments in Sydney’s CBD depicting women include sculptures of Belinda Clark and athletes Betty Cuthbert and Marlene Mathews in the Sydney Cricket Ground precinct.

The Sydney statue of Captain Arthur Phillip.

The Captain Cook statue in Hyde Park.

Ms Scott said potential candidates for a new female statue could include Juanita Nielsen – a Kings Cross social activist and newspaper publisher who went missing in 1975.

Ms Scott said the new policy would not lead to the tearing down of current monuments to men.

Sydney based sculptor Clive Calder supported the campaign towards statue equality but warned the rush to commission new public artworks may result in substandard works.

“In Sydney we have a vacuum of portrait sculptors and there have already been a lot of really shocking sculpture works that have gotten through,” he said.

“There is feeling that bronze sculptures are a bit old fashioned and a lot of the best artists have now moved in other fields such as painting,”