VICTORIA COMMISSION- THE PIPESTACK CONSTRUCTION

One great achievement for 1999 was to receive a grant from Victoria Commissions for contemporary artist Kerrie Poliness to create a sculpture out of 147 remnant concrete pipes at Pipemakers Park to commemorate the industrial heritage of the site. The pipes, artefacts from the site, were supplied by Parks Victoria.

Pipemakers Park is named after the Hume Pipe Company which produced many of the water carrying pipes that have made Melbourne one of the most liveable cities in the world. The company invented a new process which revolutionised pipe production and this invention was the first technology to be exported internationally.

Kerrie Poliness designed an arrangement of different sized stacks of pipes to achieve several things at once: to create a direct historic relationship of the work to the site by laying the pipes in the manner that they would have been laid down to dry on the 'drying racks' next to the factory where they were produced, and to create an arrangement that would contain the unique resonance of an organic structure made with industrial materials.

The pipestacks complement other art interpretations of heritage in the park and add to the sense of the park as a cultural expression of local heritage. The sculpture is a very clear icon of the history of the lower Maribyrnong Valley.

Construction was carried out by Bruce Duff, who had worked at Humes when it was a going concern, and Stan.