Big Vase – Vessel of (Horti)cultural Plenty

Langley's stated starting point is the vessel itself rather than the flowers. He has drawn on the role of the vessel in cultural history as a container for precious things: water, food, faith or knowledge. That reframes what the sculpture is about. A giant vase of flowers is decorative; a vessel understood as the thing civilisations have always used to hold what matters is an argument, and the horticultural pun in the title carries both readings at once.

Canberra is a reasonable place for it. The city was planned as a garden capital, its street planting is one of its defining features, and Floriade is its largest annual event – so horticulture is not a metaphor here but a founding idea.

The combination of kinetic and illuminated is unusual and demanding. Moving parts and LED arrays both require ongoing maintenance in ways a bronze does not, and a seventeen-year-old light-and-motion work still functioning is a credit to whoever keeps funding the electrician.

Its proportions are simply not known.