Get ready Perth for Boonji Spaceman, a seven-metre tall graffiti-covered astronaut

Two weeks before the Ore Obelisk was due to celebrate its 50th birthday, a team of workers armed with oxy torches and orders from the City of Perth marched into Stirling Gardens beside Council House and sliced and diced “the Kebab” (as it was affectionately known).

No cake and candles, no many happy returns. Just a trip to the city depot.

The Obelisk: Harmony of the minerals was created in 1971 by Paul Ritter – the City of Perth’s first planner and a towering civic figure who prevented an eight-lane freeway being built along Riverside Drive – to celebrate both the state’s millionth citizen and the mining industry that was transforming WA into an economic powerhouse.

Half a century later, the 15 ore samples skewered by an oil pipe (with a 16th added in 1997 to celebrate the diamond industry) were starting to crumble and pose a danger to those lingering in the beautiful gardens in Perth’s historic heart.

The Ore Obelisk was at the end of its life and clearly needed to be replaced or refurbished, concluded a structural engineer’s March 2021 report, appending a series of recommendations on how to restore the 15 metre-high sculpture.

Something clearly had to be done. However, instead of consulting the city’s Culture and Arts Advisory Group – as required by city policy – or putting it to councillors, the local government body made the call to chop up the Kebab, pack the fragments into crates and to put it into storage while the council (as stated in a media release at the time) “explores the feasibility of conservation”. It remains there almost four years later.

The Kebab is back in news because Perth’s arts community is up in arms over the imminent arrival of Boonji Spaceman, a seven-metre tall graffiti-covered astronaut by American Wall Street-trader-turned-artist Brendan Murphy, which for the next 12 months will be placed on the concrete base where the Ore Obelisk stood.

Even more galling to the arts lovers is that while the Boonji Spaceman has been gifted to the City of Perth and warmly embraced by former lord mayor Basil Zempilas, who sees a natural connection between Murphy’s astronaut and the famed City of Lights space flight, it is costing ratepayers $250,000 to transport and install and cover the artist’s travel and accommodation.

Chopping up the Ore Obelisk.Credit: City of Perth

The decision to fork out $250,000 to bring Murphy’s piece has also angered Perth artist Lorenna Grant, who was told that the city did not have money to repair her public art work Arch, which sat on the James and Lake Street roundabout, before it was removed in 2023.

The Obelisk and Grant’s Arch are not connected to the cost of bringing Boonji Spaceman, but it has triggered art lovers to get behind the “Save the Kebab” campaign, with many prominent figures demanding it be restored.

“The City has probably forgotten that the Kebab is made up of the state’s signature minerals. It is a cultural icon as much as an art work. Almost the state’s emblem,” thundered public art consultant Pip Sawyer on the movement’s Save the Kebab Instagram page.

“To remove it and replace it with a US artefact that has no relationship to our heritage and no sense of place is plain rude.”

Art curator Felicity Johnston says the city was high-handed in removing the Ore Obelisk without consulting anyone with expertise in the area.

“The city should have followed its own established procedures and undertaken engagement with experts and stakeholders,” she says.

“The Kebab is part of Western Australia’s cultural, economic and arts heritage. It should have been given the consideration it deserves.”

Damian Pericles, Felicity Johnson and David Goncalves.Credit: Mark Naglazas

Helen Curtis, an art consultant and one of the leaders of the Save the Kebab uprising, agrees the city did not have to act so quickly to remove the Kebab.

“The report said that the work could have been restored. But the city chopped it up and removed it without talking to people who have spent their working lives working in this space,” Curtis says.

“When you have a medical problem you consult a doctor. When you need legal advice, you go to a lawyer. When you want to understand the value of the Ore Obelisk you talk to people who know something about public art.”

Even though the March 2021 report stated the Ore Obelisk could have been restored in situ, the city says the decision to chop up and remove it was the correct one as “it was unsafe and posed a risk to public safety”.

It also claimed the Ore Obelisk’s condition was discussed by the city’s Culture and Arts Advisory Committee the previous year (that committee is now defunct).

And as the Kebab was not being deaccessioned, but removed for safety reasons and stored while it was investigated and reviewed “there was no requirement for a decision by council,” a city spokesperson says.

The decision to remove the Kebab has deeply concerned several City of Perth councillors, who will discuss the matter at Tuesday’s meeting.

“Council has a duty to be guardians and custodians of public art on behalf of the entire community - driven first and foremost through active engagement with local artists, so our city can celebrate its history and cultural legacy,” says councillor David Goncalves, who noted that his view may not represent the council’s official position as a whole.

Landscape architect Damian Pericles says The Ore Obelisk should be preserved in its place regardless of what people think of it as a work of art.

“The bigger question here is one of heritage and a sense of place and the memories that we all associate with the work. When these things are removed we lose our memories. There’s an erasure, and that’s that that fills me with sadness and sense of loss,” Pericles says.

While the Obelisk and the Northbridge Arch have been chopped up and hauled off, Curtis and others in the Save the Kebab movement believe it can be thoughtfully and replaced in situ.

The Ore Obelisk was due to celebrate its 50th birthday in 2021.Credit: State Library of Western Australia

“The story the Kebab tells will forever be important to Western Australia,” says Curtis.

“The Kebab commemorates a moment in which the state reached the million milestone and it profiles the mining industry, which has, like it or not, made us what we are.

“This was an incredible moment of optimism, when the young city was growing and tremendously energetic.”

‘Why not just plant an American flag there?’

The fight to save The Kebab coincides with the battle to prevent the Boonji Spaceman being put in its place.

No decision has been made about where Murphy’s piece, which is part of a greater project involving cryptocurrency-like non-fungible tokens – or NFTs – and firmly embedded within the world of commercial art, but Curtis and others are firm in their belief it should not be placed in front of a civic building.

“The City of Lights connection is simply a convenient way to frame the acquisition of something that has nothing to do with us as Western Australians,” Curtis says.

A mock-up of the Boonji Spaceman in the Council House gardens.Credit: City of Perth

“Boonji Spaceman is a mass-produced artwork with no link to Perth’s heritage. Locating this parachuted-in piece of 1960s space paraphernalia in Stirling Gardens — Perth’s oldest public gardens — makes no sense.”

“As I understand it, the Boonji Spaceman is being used to promote Brendan Murphy’s exhibition later this year at Gullotti Galleries in Cottesloe, which is not even in the CBD.”

Johnston says that a symbol of US power is not appropriate in front of Council House: “Why not just plant an American flag there?”

Johnston and Curtis also believe the Boonji Spaceman is part of a deeper, more troubling trend to treat art as activation, that is, to support spectacle — to encourage works and events that get media attention and people flocking into the CBD.

“Activating Perth is important. The economic and tourism benefits are obvious. But art goes deeper than that. It goes to the soul of a place, which is why works such as the Ore Obelisk and the Northbridge Arch need to be preserved and not shoved into storage where they will eventually be forgotten.”

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