The Big Hose – GOMA

The gesture is knowing. Big Things have generally been made by publicans, orchardists, motel owners and shire councils, and the art world has historically regarded them with affectionate condescension. A gallery commissioning one on purpose, naming the tradition, and putting it on the riverfront lawn rather than inside is a deliberate reversal of that.

A garden hose is also a shrewd subject. It is domestic, suburban, unheroic, and in Australia carries a specific charge: hose bans, water restrictions, the sound of a summer evening, and the memory of drinking from one. Nothing about it is regional or promotional, which is exactly how it differs from every roadside object it is invoking.

Interactive and permanent are the operative words. The work is meant to be used rather than photographed from a car park, on a lawn where people already sit.

At 119 metres it is the longest object in this catalogue by a considerable margin, though length is a different proposition from height.

Its monumental public-art character places it in the extended catalogue rather than the roadside core.Neither the sources nor the catalogue give the material used and its proportions.