Can’t get you out of my shed? Kylie is back in town but her statue is stuck in storage

Kylie Minogue returned to the stage in Melbourne on Thursday night, sparking fresh calls for a sculpture of the pop singer to go back on public view after nearly a decade in storage.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece said he wanted the Minogue statue back on display after it was evicted from its Docklands plinth in 2016 to make way for an 18-storey apartment development.

Kylie Minogue is to return to a Melbourne stage on Thursday night while her statue neared a decade spent in storage, but Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece wants it to return to public view.Credit: X user, Rexness and Justin McManus

“I, for one, would love to see her statue reinstated in Melbourne,” Reece said on Thursday before Minogue’s first Rod Laver Arena show in her new Tension world tour.  The show is one of three all but sold out at Rod Laver.

“First, I think she’s a brilliant performer and entertainer who has brought so much joy to so many Melburnians,” the lord mayor said. “And secondly because we have a real deficit of statues of great women of Melbourne.”

The Kylie Minogue statue being moved from its original Docklands home. Credit: Joe Armao

Reece said any decision about where to reinstate the Minogue statue would be subject to council policy, but he personally backed the idea.

“If we could get a statue of Kylie back up again, it will remind all the boys and girls of Melbourne that great Melburnians come in all shapes, sizes and genders,” he said.

In 2021, a survey of Melbourne’s 580 statues found only nine were of real women – as opposed to fictional or mythical characters – despite the state government and the City of Melbourne pushing for better female representation.

Peter Corlett, the man who sculpted Minogue in bronze in 2006, wants the statue to find a new public home too.

He said it had been “a bit of a disaster” since Development Victoria took control of the five statues – also including depictions of John Farnham, Dame Nellie Melba, Dame Edna Everage and Graham Kennedy – that were part of a Walk of Stars in Docklands’ NewQuay precinct. They were removed to make way for the MAB Corporation’s luxury Banksia development.

Nine years on, only the Melba statue is back on display, at the Coombe Yarra Valley estate in Coldstream, which was once her home. The others remain in storage.

Retired sculptor Peter Corlett.Credit: Justin McManus

“It hurt me, emotionally,” Corlett said.

“It broke my heart. Because when I do them, I put everything into them – I put my heart and soul into them, as artists do – and for them sort of to become a bit of a nuisance to everyone is really sad.”

When first approached about creating statues for Docklands’ Walk of Stars, Corlett said, he initially wanted to use the project to memorialise forgotten Australian entertainers, but the developers eventually picked more mainstream performers for him to sculpt.

Credit: Matt Golding

Reflecting on the saga on Thursday, the 81-year-old sculptor said: “I should never have done them in the first place.”

Development Victoria acting group head of precincts Imogen Lewis said the agency was continuing “to explore a range of options for the remaining statues”.

Minogue’s Tension world tour has more than 70 dates planned over five continents, including two nights at Madison Square Garden in New York.

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