The site describes the design and implementation of the Anzac Highway Sculptural Signage located on Anzac Hwy in Adelaide, South Australia. The public artwork was commissioned by the SA Branch of the RSL in 1986 and installed in late 1987. The commissioned artist was Roger Noakes, an artist who was living and working in Adelaide at the time. His studio was at the South Australian Workshop, an artist cooperative at 7 Rutland Place, Adelaide. This site also provides information on the background of two of the soldiers depicted in the Sculpture.

The Project

The South Australian Branch of the RSL (Returned Services League) had been wanting to locate a significant form of signage or memorial along Anzac Hwy since 1950. The pocket six lane Highway runs south west from the City of Adelaide through a number of suburbs and council areas (Unley, West Torrens) to the seaside or bayside suburb of Glenelg. A number of signage schemes had been proposed over that time from wrought steel archways to formal memorial style fountains in the median strip. From memory the funds and renewed enthusiasm came from a new initiative from the South Australian Dept. for the Arts (as it was then known) Art in Public Places Program and the SA Sesquicentenary (150 years) Celebrations fund.

A selected design competition was held - I can't remember the other two artists (one was a sculptor and one a graphic designer) - and my steel graphic based sculptural signage was chosen as the winning design. As this was one of the initial projects for the Art in Public Places Program, the Chairperson, artist Tony Bishop was acting as initial project coordinator. The able and respected Carolyn Rankin was the Dept. for the Arts officer who helped initiate the Public Arts program, was the programs initial coordinator. Ken Hoffman was the State Secretary of the SA Branch of the RSL at the start of the project in 1986 and was followed by Michael Mummery towards the end of the project in late 1987.

This was my first Public Art commission and I was keen to get it underway and implement it efficiently so I could move on to my studio work. The commission budget was $A30,000 for detailed design, engineering plans, materials, fabrication, installation and lighting with very little 'fat' for incidentals. I had trained under Bert Flugelman the Austrian born Australian Sculptor at the SA School of Art and was exposed to working in the public domain through involvement in some of his public art commissions and my own environmental art projects.

Day - side view of Morphet Rd panels

The design brief required that the artwork be located in the grassed median strip along the Highway with an expectation that the work would be placed in the first few sections of median strip outside the Keswick Army Barracks. Because the commission brief emphasized the design to 'signage the highway' (sic) it was apparent that it was not going to be a design that required close physical interaction for people to engage with. It was an artwork that would be viewed at 60kmph by folk in a moving conveyance. These issues informed the design to its final outcome - an effective design that could be quickly perceived to contain the visual and emotional attributes of the Anzac story - military, remembrance, sacrifice & trans tasman brotherhood (NZ).

Night - facing east - Morphet Road end	Day - facing east - Morphet Road end

The work required 4 graphic designs to be cut from four 2m x 3m x 25mm steel plates. The outer graphic panels were painted (ISO) Charcoal B64. Their negative spaces, were silhouetted against a vertical diagonal panel painted (ISO) International Orange.The concept was to illuminate figures and symbols of sacrifice - defined by the visual contrast from the cold gray, hard steel (a metaphor for the unforgiving nature of war) against a vermillion orange background - symbolic of the eternal flame and sacrifice.

NC technology was new to SA at this time and I used a firm called Computer Cut who were associated with Bristers and Co the firm who fabricated the work. An early version of AutoCad was used to vectorise the cutting path - the project was seen by these firms as a reasonably innovative as they hadn't had the opportunity to test their technology on something so free form as vectorising and cutting a figurative object. I do remember the vectorising took about 75 hours and cost around $5,000 about 16% of the budget. Its now in 2005 something I could do in about 2 hours or less at home on my G5 iMac.

The design caused some challenges on a practical level. The sculptural signage would be a traffic hazard if erected at the normal median strip level. It would have been a case of sue, sue sue, if vehicles had crashed into the work. John Beswick, a very talented Landscape Architect who worked for the SA Highways Department resolved this issue with a raised embankment design using a 'New Jersey' style custom cast concrete barriers. This enhanced the over all effect of the design raising it above the traffic on a gently sloping elliptical barrier that would successfully deflect any traffic coming into contact with the artwork. This was an added bonus to the project as I had wanted to landscape around the work but did not have the funds in the commission budget to do so.The Highways Dept. covered all the costs for this which I think was about $35,000. The Electricity Trust of SA (ETSA) were approached by the RSL and they agreed to cover the costs of providing power for lighting to the site. This was an expensive task as well as holes for electrical conduit were drilled under the Highway at both sites.

As the Highway has an end and beginning I designed the artwork to have an eastern location opposite Keswick Army Barracks and a western location near the Brighton Road intersection. Several Councilors from Glenelg Council objected to the design on aesthetic considerations. One who contacted me, an architect I think, didn't like the colours or materials and proposed something along the lines of fallen marble columns and angels - that maybe fine for some in parkland style memorials however I thought not for median strips on busy highways. This objection caused about a 12 month delay to the project - there were presentations and wrangling's but still no agreement.

Night - facing west - Keswick Barracks end	Day - facing west - Keswick Barracks

Thanks to inter-council rivalry and the persistence of the RSL, West Torrens Council suggested we move the western location into their area on the Highway near the Morphet Road intersection. During that 12 month period there had been some changes to personnel on Unley Council and they then disagreed about taking out several stunted Ash trees where the artwork at their end of the Highway was going to go. This was eventually resolved and the project approved to be installed at both locations.