The Cochrane Street Wall: a driveby-walkby gallery

{Victoria Roxburgh}

When a sculptor and a non-sculptor live together and the sculptor's studio is located at home, the problem of sculptural material is bound to arise sooner or later. I am a writer living with a sculptor named Velislav Georgiev and our problem with sculptural material began in the usual way. We started accumulating logs for wood carving that we stacked up along the side of the house. There were always a couple of bags of plaster behind the studio left over from moulding. There were some rolls of rusty wire in the back yard, which had been used and could be used again. There was an extra sink that had been found on the side of the road and would eventually find its way into the studio but which, in the meantime, lived on top of some lumber to the right of the back door. It goes without saying that we had a lot of metal.

There were occasional problems with careless children. Our second born ran into some rusted reinforcement fabric and needed stitches. There was an alarming moment one hot summer's day when our third born used some liquid, normally associated with creating a wonderful patina on bronze, as a cooling spray. But it was not until the sculptural material reached the front yard, where it colonised the veranda, that things came to a head. A neighbour complained to the council and the inspector visited. Although the council deemed the sculptural material acceptable, I told Velislav that it simply had to go.


Anne Miron & Velislav Georgiev, 124 Cochrane Street Brighton

Velislav came up with a better idea. He built a high brick wall at the front of the property, which gave us some privacy, and he included recesses for sculptural panels on the wall's face. The result is a driveby-walkby gallery that fronts the footpath and roadway, which has hosted five exhibitions that have variously involved Velislav, Annee Miron, Sarah Boehme, Jane Wells and Julie-Anne Hewson. The wall puts sculpture directly into the community and is the antithesis of a conventional gallery where reputation and money are the focus. The wall enables the formation of a natural and unmediated relationship between the passer-by and the art. It is part of the everyday world.

Our current exhibition Urban Sculpture Project features the work of Velislav and Annee Miron. Velislav's panels exhibit his continued interest in form and colour. Miron, whose work would be familiar to anyone who visited the CSAsculpture@stkildabotanic/gardens, has created panels that express her continued interest in memory and the human body.

The Cochrane Street Wall is like any self-respecting wall, it needs art - and lots of it. I manage the site and I'm looking to fill the calendar for 2001 with exciting new work. Ironically, the wall is very popular with our neighbours and we have a large number of driveby-walkby visitors. The wall itself is situated at 124 Cochrane Street in Brighton. It is on one of the major foot routes for local primary and secondary school children and lots of cars drive by as they feed into, and out of, the Nepean Highway.

For further information about exhibiting please give me a call on 9596-771 or email me at torrox@netlink.com.au.

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