Responding
Location
Site G | Find it on Google Maps
Responding consists of a 39m mobile phone tower that gracefully arches over the rail trail.
In their usual display, phone towers sit at heights well above the landscape or our built environments. Here, the tower appears animated, falling close to the ground as if bowing to meet us.
In this way, the technological function of transmission – of receiving and responding to signals – becomes a personal interaction between the viewer, the artwork and the landscape.
With its slender taper and gentle curve, the tower appears more organic than industrial, like a stalk of field grass with its long, thin signal panels mimicking seed pods fraying at their tips.
About the artist
Robbie Rowlands
Robbie Rowlands is an artist based in Melbourne. Through his practice, he explores everyday environments and materials to create immersive sculptural and media-based outcomes.
With a focus on working specifically with each site and community, his outcomes develop unique awareness and connections to subjects that are often overlooked.
With a career spanning over 20 years, his practice has traversed local and international landscapes, with significant public outcomes.
Recent projects include ‘Slow Order’, Ballarat Goodshed Commission, 2022, ‘Finding the edge’, a site-responsive project with a decommissioned timber yard, Preston, 2020, ‘Riddiford Arboretum Sculpture commission’, Broken Hill, 2020, ‘Crossing the floor’, Broadmeadows Townhall public art commission, 2019 and ‘Light falls’, a reconfigured 20m stadium light pole, Townsville, 2019.
Learn more about Robbie Rowlands:
About the project
Art on the Great Victorian Rail Trail brings walkers and riders on a journey of artistic discovery through beautiful Taungurung Country.
In 2021 Murrindindi, Mitchell and Mansfield Shire Councils were successful in receiving $1.2 million through the Victorian Government’s Regional Tourism Investment Fund to create large-scale art installations along the Great Victorian Rail Trail.
Eight artists were engaged to create seven major art installations and 20 smaller works that have been placed along the length of the trail. You can discover them all here.