Narratives of Public Art: Yellow Peril,Vaultand a Large Yellow Object

Abstract

In 1980 a large yellow steel sculpture by the Australian sculptor Ron Robertson-Swann was installed in the City Square in Melbourne, Australia. Commissioned by the Melbourne City Council, the sculpture attracted enormous media scrutiny and its tenure in the Square was a regular agenda item on City Council meetings from the time that a maquette of the proposed work was first displayed. Over the next 20 years the sculpture, later named Vault, was twice dismantled and reassembled at other sites. In this article I approach the sculpture through an object-oriented method, one that attributes agency to the human and nonhuman actors in these events. In so doing I seek to locate what Bruno Latour mi..