Four decades on, the controversial Vault has won hearts

MAX DELANY

Artistic director and CEO of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art

Ron Robertson-Swann’s Vault has a rich and wonderful but chequered backstory. It started life as a newly commissioned sculpture for the City Square in 1980: a confident, formally complex marker of place, open and embracing of audience. Robertson-Swann was a highly regarded contemporary artist who had trained under and alongside leading international figures including Anthony Caro and the studio of Henry Moore, and his proposal was representative of art at the time and late-modernist sculpture of the 1970s.

Vault started life as a newly commissioned sculpture for the City Square in 1980.Credit: Patrick Rodriguez

I remember the debates when it was unveiled; initially there was great fanfare but it very quickly devolved into a much-publicised controversy, attracting huge public and media debate. It became a staple on the front pages of Melbourne’s newspapers for six months or so. It’s rare that art actually makes the front pages, and it kept cartoonists employed for months.

Max Delany, artistic director/ and CEO of ACCA.Credit: Chris Hopkins

There were various demonstrations for and against Vault, including a public rally in August 1980 to "Save Our Sculpture". It became a political issue too, and was very much the fall guy for opposing factions on Melbourne City Council. The Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) imposed a green ban, and refused to relocate the work, and said if it was moved they would stop work on the Queen Victoria Market site. At the time the BLF was involved in green bans to save cultural heritage – exemplified by Jack Mundey in Sydney, who died recently – that was the tenor of the times. They were acting in defence of the artist, who was getting short shrift and treated in a desultory way.

Vault is like a weathervane for the way people express views about the shape of the city, our values as a community and our vision for the future. The sculpture, along with the artist, was treated shabbily at the time; it was in situ for less than a year in the City Square. Summarily, one night it was dismantled and relocated to what was a derelict part of the city then, Batman Park on the Yarra, where it sat forlornly for years. It was only with the development of Crown Casino that it suddenly found itself at the centre of the action again.

As well as being symbolic of different ideologies of art and culture, it’s been widely influential and the subject of numerous homages. The architects Ashton Raggatt McDougall designed a scale model of Vault in the interior of RMIT’s Storey Hall. Several tram stops in the CBD, designed by the City of Melbourne design team, reference it in the yellow origami-style bases. Angela Brennan wrote a fabulous poem about it, and it has featured more recently in a film by Eugenia Lim. There’s a great book about it by Geoffrey Wallis, called Peril in the Square.

For me, that is one of the great things about Vault, it shows the ways that communities form around certain works of art. It has had changing fortunes and speaks of our transition from a conservative, less tolerant city to a vibrant metropolis that welcomes diverse cultures. It also suggests that works of art are not fixed in their meaning or significance.

"Vault was something radically different, bright yellow and abstract."Credit: Rodger Cummins

Vault has finally been embraced by the public after many decades. In a way it is the elder cousin of the Melbourne Gateway – colloquially known as the cheese-stick – which was designed by Denton Corker Marshall (DCM). Of course, they were the architects responsible for the commission in the first place, having designed the City Square. In its initial location in the City Square, Vault was bookended by the Melbourne Town Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral, in dialogue with two very classical buildings, which is something DCM has done again with Melbourne Museum and the Royal Exhibition Building.

At the time in Melbourne, sculpture in the public realm was largely characterised by Victorian bronzes; Vault was something radically different, bright yellow and abstract, with its dynamic, tilted steel planes. The nickname Yellow Peril demonstrates a conflation of xenophobia and anti-modernist sentiment, which were both pronounced at the time. In the art world, too, it was criticised in some quarters as being cool, dominant and impersonal, without regard for the community – a charge often levelled at modernist sculpture.

A much larger sculpture than we’d ever experienced, it was designed so members of the community could walk through, within and around it. It was always supposed to be commanding of space and a marker of place, but it never quite landed properly. I remember it as this otherworldly beacon against the grey backdrop of the city at the time, which was a much different place in the 1970s and '80s to what it is now.

The Age on February 28, 1979, shows the three sculpture designs submitted for the Melbourne City Square project: Clive Murray-White’s Port; David Wilson’s Gates; and Ron Robertson-Swann’s Vault.Credit: The Age

Vault found its ideal, current location in 2002, when it was moved as ACCA opened in its new building. It sits happily alongside the Victorian College of the Arts and Chunky Move, as well as Wood Marsh’s iconic architecture, which references the sculptural traditions that Robertson-Swann was promoting with Vault. It belongs to the City of Melbourne, which looks after its care and maintenance. It’s become a popular backdrop for wedding photography, because of its gold or yellow colour, which represents good luck and prosperity in many cultures.

Vault has found a dignified home at ACCA and sits very happily at the heart of the Melbourne arts precinct.

TONY ELLWOOD

Director of the NGV

Australian sculptor Ron Robertson-Swann is well known for his minimal, yet rhythmically beautiful, abstract sculptures. The NGV’s association with him goes back to 1968, when he was a participating artist in the groundbreaking exhibition The Field. At almost 80 and still playing an active role in the Australian art world, he has been responsible for some of our notable public sculptures – none more so than Vault, his controversial commission by the City of Melbourne for the City Square.

Tony Ellwood, director of the NGV.Credit: Eugene Hyland

Few Australian works of art have generated as much debate as that which surrounded the unveiling of Robertson-Swann’s monumental, steel, sculptural assemblage Vault. Its story has become part of Melbourne’s modern-day cultural history. Before the distinctive yellow paint even had time to dry, Vault was being commented on and quickly became a polarising subject of public opinion.

A campaign was mounted to oppose the sculpture in this location. It was dubbed various derogatory titles such as The Thing, Steel Henge and Yellow Peril. Making pleas for support of the sculpture were Patrick McCaughey, then professor of fine art at Monash University, along with then director of the NGV Eric Rowlison and architects DCM.

Even the Queen was drawn into the debate. In Melbourne for the official opening of the square in 1980, and no doubt aware of the controversy, she was reported to have said that perhaps it could have been painted "a more agreeable colour".

It is so often a sign of great public art that it creates controversy when unveiled. In the case of Melbourne’s City Square it would have no doubt been more palatable to have commissioned a "nice" fountain, as some advocated at the time. However, it is through the creative contribution of artists, architects and designers that our public spaces and built environments are enriched. Public acceptance and appreciation comes with time.

As my predecessor Eric Rowlison noted in relation to the debate around Vault, "It inevitably takes 20 years for public acceptance to catch up with the vision of artists." Despite its inglorious early history, and while still known to many as the Yellow Peril – perhaps now more affectionately – Vault has earned its place as a much-loved part of Melbourne’s vibrant public art offering.