Bollard City

Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West
Upstairs gallery: entrance installation Safe Passage, 14 black crowd control bollards.
Downstairs gallery: Polystyrene, glue, sand, cement, oxides, aluminium, 30 sculptures, variable dimensions, 2018.
Photos by Matthew Stanton.

Bollard City examines the visual language of bollards and barriers, inviting viewers to reflect upon concepts of public safety, personal freedom and trust in the community. The exhibition explores how bollards have become the new icons of our time.

To enter and exit the gallery space one has to navigate through zigzagging passageway installation of 14 crowd control bollards.

Once released into a vast gallery space a large installation consisting of 30 concrete sculptures is revealed to you. These are replicas of anti-terror barriers originally installed at London Bridge, Martin Place in Sydney, Christmas Market in Berlin, Bourke Street in Melbourne and other places. Some are life-sized and others are enlarged.

Order or disorder, safety or danger, freedom or control, threat or fear, before or after, real or surreal, light or heavy, true or false, us or them – these are some of the questions posed.

An iteration of this installation The Divide won Incinerator Art Award: Art for Social Change 2018.

Listen

Eddie Ayres, Nina Sanadze’s Bollard City, The Hub on Arts interview, Radio National 621AM, March 21, 2018:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-art-show/the-hub-on-art-weds-21st-march/9566560

Richelle Hunt, Interview with Nina Sanadze, ABC Afternoon Radio Melbourne 774AM, March 14, 2018:

Sima Tsyskin, A Bollard As the New Icon of Our Time, SBS Russian Radio interview, March 16, 2018:

https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/russian/en/audiotrack/bollard-new-icon-our-time