Deakin Uni art gift designed to inspire

Sculptor Andrew Rogers has donated works valued at $3.7m to Deakin University hoping to inspire generations of students.

28/10/19 Artist Andrew Rogers (right) with Deakin University vice chancellor Iain Martin and “I Am”. Aaron Francis/The Australian

Andrew Rogers has left what amounts to an indelible mark in the world — the renowned Melbourn­e sculptor’s 51 Rhythms of Life stone structures are on all seven continents. Now his gift of works valued at $3.7m to Deakin University will do the same across its campuses and galleries, and inspire­ generations of students.

Rogers said his art fitted with Deakin’s commitment to encouraging students “to come to seek education in a wider sense”. “I think art is an extra dimension and relates to lots of academic disciplin­es,” Rogers said. “Future students will have the opportunity to interact with it and benefit from questioning what it’s about.”

Rogers is not an alumnus, but his connection to the university is strong. “There is a synergy between­ his work and Deakin which is forward facing, because Deakin is a newer university,” vice-chancellor Iain Martin said.

Rogers’s 88 works, together with large-format photographs of the Rhythms of Life land art, covering 32 years of his career, comprise the highest-value single donation the university has received­ to a collection that now numbers 2300 pieces.

The gift includes ­Resist­ance, a marble sculpture sym­bolising man’s struggle against oppression; the large bronze work Together, a man bent over, protecting two smaller figures; and a marble relief carving related to the Rhythms of Life project, which expresses the ebb and flow of life’s unpredictable progress.

Professor Martin said Deakin had been building a collection of Australian art for 20 years, with galleries at its Geelong, Burwood and Deakin Downtown campuses and other art on display around the university.

“This is a very major addition from one of Australia’s best-known contemporary artists and sculptors,” Professor Martin said.

Rogers has work in all major Australian galleries and at universities such as Sydney, Melbourne and UNSW.

He was impressed by Deakin’s commitment to art expressed by its previous and current vice-chancellors and through its galleries, and by its professionalism in recently staging a retrospective of his work. “I developed a confid­ence that they would be good caretakers, and they undertook to exhibit the art so people could ­interact with it,” Rogers said.

He said art added “a dimension to life, and most of the works that I have created are optimistic symbols about life and regeneration”.

“I hope that positive stimul­ation is a catalyst for questioning about opportunities and extra ­dimensions to life and what we should all be striving for in terms of positive outcomes,” he said.