The Great Australian Chimera by Martin Rowney

The Great Australian Chimera by Martin Rowney is on display at the Canberra Museum and Gallery.

The Great Australian Chimera is a reflection on the cultural aspiration of the Great Australian Dream: ownership of a detached house on a quarter-acre block. The sculptures displayed provide a contemporary political narrative of home ownership, which has become more of an illusion than a dream for many young Australians.

The sculptures take their inspiration from architectural styles of the 1960s to the 1980s and use existing architectural drawings from the period. These styles shaped the dreams of recent generations of Australian home owners and the drawings (home design plans) would have made some of those dreams a reality.

The Great Australian Chimera (2017) is made from timber (beech and jarrah wood), architectural drawings (1968-83), and copper and brass pipe.

Martin Rowney (1969-) is a Canberra-based sculptor who graduated from the Australian National University School of Art in 2016 and is the recipient of the Canberra Museum and Gallery 2017 Showcase Exhibition Award. Martin Rowney’s works use objects with past lives, ‘exploring the idea that we each have an individual history, that we contribute to a collective historical narrative, and that we all leave our own distinctive cultural imprint on the landscape.’ Parts of the cultural imprint is embedded in the objects we use.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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