Galvin Park Soccer Facilities – Integrated Public Artwork Commission

Location: 95 Shaws Road, Werribee, 3030, VIC

Established in 1969, Werribee City Football (Soccer) Club has been providing exposure to the sport of soccer to the highest level in Victoria for 50 years. The club strives to foster a social organisation that serves the needs of the local community, members, their families and friends by providing necessary facilities and infrastructure that enables active participation in soccer at a social and competitive level. This has included over the years, women, men and youth, but because they lack acceptable facilities in the current era, they have lost their female teams to neighbouring clubs, who have modern and up to date facilities. The club committed heavily to rebuilding their female program in 2020, prior to the impacts of Covid-19.

Galvin Park Soccer Reserve is currently Council's largest soccer facility. The reserve is regularly enquired for hire from community groups for large soccer events from the Chin Church, Nepalese, Sudanese, Ethiopian Communities and various school sport competitions across the western suburbs.

The pavilion upgrade project aims to improve:

Access for females to sport, providing females with the same opportunities as men.
Access to facilities which improve the health and wellbeing of a range of members of the community.
Local access to sport, leisure and community spaces.
Community connectedness.
Capacity building of future volunteers and members of user groups.
Foster continued participation from intergenerational diverse cultural and ethnic people
Engage with newly arrived people and communities
Provide positive, healthy opportunities for young people to participate in sport

As the finishing touch to the new facilities, an artwork was commissioned to be integrated into three specified panels on the side of the pavilions. The ideas and ethos of the residents were considered in the development of an artwork that spoke to their sense of community and place.

Australian artist Al Stark was selected as the artist on the project and developed an artwork to the brief’s themes, referencing nature and the surroundings, with an environmentally sensitive design and integrated lighting solution.

Stark hand-painted 3 panels at his studio in Yamba, NSW, working alongside Thylacine Design Studio’s art project manager, Shaun Kirby, to develop the design and prepare it for fabrication. New materials were used for the project, including custom, thin LED panels to backlight the artwork, which were placed behind ‘ImagInk’ printed glass – Stark’s artwork has been digitally printed onto glass using a ceramic pigment that is toughened with the glass in a furnace. The LED and glass panels are housed in custom steel and aluminium frames and attached to the pavilions.

The artwork, entitled ‘Birds, Bush and Sea’ and is permanently installed on the pavilions and automatically light up from dusk til dawn.

Artist Statement:

I wake… Watch birds in the trees.

Bush tunnels travelled, along to the sea.

The birds the bush and the sea is me.

Just for a minute inside till the end.

Symphonies, rhythm chaos,

Squawk and feather, other dimensions…

Grander plans indeed.

Life and death in light reflects

As shimmer on windy waves…

As wind in the tree leaves.