This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
35.33413° S, 149.08642° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Eleven metres of wind-powered ballet in the sky, standing in the median strip of a Canberra arterial road.
Phil Price's Dinornis Maximus went up in 2008 as a gateway on the northern edge of Woden Town Centre, and artsACT describes it as a prominent wind-activated kinetic sculpture using fully sealed rolling bearing systems designed for longevity and environmental resilience – a phrase that quietly acknowledges the hardest problem in kinetic public art.
That problem is maintenance. A moving sculpture that stops moving looks broken in a way a static one never does, and bearings exposed to weather and grit are the first thing to fail. Specifying sealed systems for longevity at the design stage is the difference between a work that runs for decades and one that seizes and becomes an embarrassment.
The title is a joke worth catching. Dinornis maximus is a scientific name for the giant moa – the largest of the extinct New Zealand birds. Price is a New Zealand sculptor, and naming a tall, thin, swaying Canberra sculpture after an enormous flightless bird from home is a quiet piece of self-reference.
A median strip is also an unusual and rather good site. The work is seen almost entirely from moving cars, from both directions, at speed – so a form that changes shape continuously in the wind gives every passing driver a different sculpture.
Woden also holds David Jensz's Culture Fragment, so the town centre has two substantial contemporary works.
The fabric of it did not survive into any source.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
