THE BOARDWALK-POINT COOK

'The Boardwalk' is a new Urban Land Corporation residential housing development near Skeleton Creek, off the Forsyth Road Hoppers Crossing turn off on the Princes Highway. Graham Bentley Landscape Architects won the contract to landscape the area including three entrance panels to the estate with mosaics by Libby McKinnon.This is Libby's third project with GBLA, the other two being the mosaic entrance panels to the Woodlands Industrial Estate at Morabbin for Melbourne Water in 1994 and the City of Hobsons Bay entrance icons for the City of Hobsons Bay in 1997.

Themes

Each of these mosaics depict aspects of local indigenous flora and fauna and aim to promote a positive environmental statement. The design for 'The Boardwalk' mosaic walls relates specifically to the local coastal environment around Pt. Cook Coastal Park, the old Cheetham Saltworks, now owned by Parks Victoria.

The front wall depicts local plant succulents, with a family of red capped plovers who inhabit the mudflats at low tide. The middle wall represents Lomandra or mat rush, an indigenous plant common to the area. The back wall design depicts water birds common to the area, namely white faced herons and sandpipers.

Dimensions

The design, fabrication and installation of the mosaic sections for the three walls, a square area of about 32 sq. metres took about 5 months. Each wall is 7 metres long and vary in height, from the lowest front wall being 90 cm at its highest point to the highest wall, the back wall being 2.75 metres high.

Training

An interesting aspect of all large mosaic artworks for public places is whom to employ to assist.

There is no accredited training in Australia in mosaic art and any number of people are interested - some are already artists working in other mediums, or tile layers used to installing metres and metres of tiles daily, to novices who have the right mix of practical skills and patience. This project employed all of the above for varying periods of time.

Initially, Libby was assisted by Yarraville artist Peter Nelson in mocking up the three walls full size in cardboard to work out scale and viewing angles. Artist Merryn Hansford (who last worked with Libby in 1998) worked in the studio full time during the mosaic fabrication stage of the three walls and worked most extensively on the very detailed front wall creating the metres and metres of the succulent, 'disphyma' or pig face.

Rob di Vigilio, Ange and Jade of Flentlock Tiling who have installed all of Libby's mosaics in public places in the last couple of years came to her studio in Pipemakers Park to assist in the speedy fabrication and installation of mosaics for the largest wall for the ULC launch of the housing estate in late 1999.

Tony Fryer came to assist with the fabrication of the middle wall which was completed in five weeks. He is an example of one of the mosaic novices with practical skills and patience. His main task was to cut metres and metres of ceramic wall tiles to a certain width and/or length and as he became more familiar with the process he gradually started assisting Merryn and Libby with the mosaic fabrication.