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The curatorial objective of the visual arts component of the 1997 Melbourne Festival concentrated on presenting art outside of the gallery walls in an effort to extinguish boundaries and to recognise cross-cultural influences within a global context. In reality, the visual arts program could have been mistaken for a search for an urban Utopia. Utopia no longer awaits the footsteps of the explorer but can now be found through interjection and reinvention.
From the once desolate Herring Island, a small parcel of land in the middle of the Yarra providing uninterrupted views of the city, emerged sculptures that assisted in transcribing the site anew. Jill Peck's Steerage, produced on the tip of the island, made it appear as though it was about to set sail and conquer the city. Andy Goldsworthy also constructed two works on the island. One of these, Cairn, is part of a series of markers that he has positioned around the world to define his tracks in the manner of a nineteenth century journeyman. Herring Island, though, is artificially constructed and was being degraded until a recent rehabilitation project saw it restored and replanted with native flowers. Unfortunately Goldsworthy's sculptures evoke the image of the fireplace surrounds that were so popular in seventies houses - nature finding its way into the home only to look distinctly out of place with the slick new furniture.
Tolarno Galleries presented Tim Maguire's paintings of magnificent fractured details of seventeenth and eighteenth century still lifes and dense, abstract landscapes. Maguire has reinvigorated the almost lost art of nature painting on huge polyester canvases. Using spirits to dissolve the painted surfaces his works provide that wonderful confluence of reality