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What to pay for an artwork that purports to soothe patients’ worries?
In the case of Bendigo Health and the city’s art gallery, the answer is $300,000.
The organisations have commissioned two monolithic glass sculptures to sit inside the new Bendigo hospital’s therapeutic gardens.
The lucrative art job was awarded to Sydney artist Louis Pratt in February last year during an announcement inside the Bendigo Art Gallery, but residents are only now getting the chance to see what is being planned for the hospital grounds.
Entitled Alchemy, the two glass prisms containing likenesses of a man and woman, nicknamed The King and The Queen.
Each sculpture will weigh six tonnes, stand almost 2.5 metres tall and be lit at night to create the illusion of moving water.
The winning design for the gallery and hospital collaboration was selected by a panel of staff from both organisations, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services.
Speaking at the commission announcement, gallery director Karen Quinlan described the choice of artwork as “significant and provocative”.
“Public art enhances our shared spaces,” Ms Quinlan said.
“Whether its ephemeral, temporary, or permanently fixed, a work of art creates space in our lives for reflection.”
Mr Pratt did not commit last February to a delivery date for Alchemy and the artworks are still yet to be delivered.
“These building programs push and pull,” he said.
Despite being scheduled for completion in the middle of next year, the garden in which the sculptures will be situated was finished in March, just one month after the new premises opened.
Exemplar Health chief executive officer Michele Morrison this week called the sculptures a “gift to the Bendigo Hospital and wider community”, but would not comment on the project’s cost and timing.
The gallery and the artist were contacted.