In the Studio with Karl Meyer
From his Edwardstown studio Karl Meyer crafts some of Adelaide’s most recognisable public artworks — including a playful take on an Australian icon bound for the departures lounge.
Tucked away in the side streets of Edwardstown, Exhibition Studios is home to of all kinds of projects, objects, and sounds. Materials are stacked from floor to ceiling, and the early stages of an upcoming sculpture — its wire structure forms the outline of a dog — sits patiently among heavy machinery. There’s noise everywhere, from the equipment, the people, and a speaker.
It’s in this studio that renowned South Australian artist Karl Meyer creates many of the public artworks that define modern Adelaide. Of his recent work, Connections, the giant hands that welcome visitors to Centennial Park, is perhaps the most recognisable.
Away from the noise Meyer finesses his latest creation in a quiet office, where every surface is filled with miniature models of past and present sculptures. The latest is Hoo-Roo, a newly completed piece that will soon hop into place at Adelaide Airport’s International Departures gate, as one of the last things people see before they leave the country.
“For me, it was really around trying to articulate Australia,” he says.
Meyer with his kangaroos. Photo: Jack Fenby
The kangaroos are hollow, and made of polymer and synthetic resin before being clear-coated and painted. They’re exaggerated in size and colour; the adult kangaroo is bright pink and laying down, lazy and subdued, and the other is a pouncy, youthful joey, coloured a vibrant yellow.
They appear blown up and softened around the edges, inflated almost like balloon animals, and it’s no surprise that Meyer takes inspiration from Erwin Wurm’s Fat Car, a mainstay of the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania.
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“The kangaroo is such an iconic, such an unusual animal,” Meyer says. “We can’t see it in context to our own experience, because we’re just so used to it — it’s ubiquitous in Australia — but it’s an icon that identifies us, and so the idea is to just accentuate it.
“It’s toy-like; it feels almost floaty.”
Protruding from the back of each kangaroo is another ubiquitous sight: a rolling suitcase handle. While on first glance the piece creates a light-hearted and fun impression, these handles tilt at a more serious subtext.
“The bigger part is around a narrative that dealt with the idea that we take our icons, and then we just abstract them, and commodify them,” Meyer explains.
“The handle is also an icon, which is, again, the further commodification in the portability of things, and how we come and we consume nature and we want to engage — we know the photo op!
“We know exactly how to engage with them [the kangaroos], and handle them”.
Meyer wants to make work that asks questions and provokes ideas, but it’s also important to stay playful.
“I think you can do work that can actually be very challenging, but if you don’t start with a conversation, and a question, and engagement, then it’s just a pushy statement.
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“The airport is a place of high energy, high movement, and people engage with that notion of portability and movement… we’re all going somewhere to do and see things.”
Throughout his career, Meyer’s curiosity and creativity has been driven by physical form — how it conveys a narrative, inspires dialogue with the observer, and embraces the unique qualities of each material.
A miniature mock-up of Meyer’s Centennial Park sculpture, Connections. Photo: Jack Fenby
“The medium and the material each have different stories in how they look finished, how they’re placed,” he says.
“Form, I think, is the one that I still keep coming back to. How does it share an idea? How is it engaging? Is it playful? Do you dwell? Do you want to spend time? Do you want to see something?”
Form also governs how Meyer approaches his mentoring and collaboration with other artists. At the moment, he’s working with John ‘Bundy’ Bannerman as part of the Guildhouse Catapult Mentorship Program.
“With Bundy, I’ve enjoyed bringing someone who has a desire and will to learn, and the ability to lean into unfamiliar ground,” Meyer says.
“The mentoring is trying to understand how a simple object in his work influences things like composition and form,” he says. “Objects can have different meaning and different purpose, so it’s about defining the object and what it says.”
These ideas are all tied in with what Meyer’s believes humanity needs in this current epoch — a realignment and reconnection with our sense of identity.
“Personal expression is a form of self-identity, and it provides calm. [If] we’re not in touch with this personal expression, we’ve actually lost where we are.
“We need to celebrate the arts more than ever, as a way of human expression.”
In the Studio is a regular series presented by InReview in partnership with not-for-profit organisation Guildhouse.
Read more about Exhibition Studios and Karl Meyer’s work here.