AN artist has been commissioned to create a new sculpture to replace the Love Flower.
The Love Flower currently sits by the Cranbourne Road exit ramp of the Peninsula Link freeway. The site is the former home of Reflective Lullaby, the ginormous chrome gnome.
Natasha Johns-Messenger, an installation artist, has been handed a $300,000 commission for a “dynamic sculpture” project.
The new artwork, titled Compass 23, will feature 12-metre high powder coated and stainless steel geometric structures. It will be installed in October next year.
Johns-Messenger said that her work “responds to site – its scale, topography, light and spatial orientation, materiality and context, within an exploration of the concepts of phenomenology and perception.”
“Engaging perceptual shifts inside simple geometric framing, my artworks aim to question our expectations of space and three-dimensional form, utilising spatial and material conundrums to create a chasm between what we think we know and what we perceive, and to heighten awareness,” she said.
Johns-Messenger’s work is the seventh work commissioned as part of a partnership between Southern Way and McClelland Gallery. Southern Way donates funding for the sculptures, which are alternated between sites along Peninsula Link every two years. There will be 14 commissions up to 2037.