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Plantforms Sculpture - Lenton Parr

Location Chadstone Shopping Centre, 1341 Dandenong Road,, CHADSTONE VIC 3148 - Property No B6514 File Number B6514 Level State

[1/1] B6514 Sculpture-Lenton Parr

Statement of Significance

The sculpture known as Plantforms by Lenton Parr is significant at the State level as a very influential work by the artist and the only organic work by him. During the 1960s and 1970s a number of Australian sculptors such as Norma Redpath, Ron Upton, David Tolley, Gerald Lewers and Bert Flugelman worked in an organic style, although Lenton Parr moved on to the use of much more mechanical forms as the basis of his sculpture. Plantforms is probably the largest and most impressive of the organic works produced by Lenton Parr and the only one in this style that he produced for a public site.
At the time, in the late 1950s, it was very unusual to hold a limited competition and invite sculptors to submit maquettes - in fact there were remarkably few commissions. The National Gallery of Victoria obviously regarded it as an important occasion, as they exhibited all entries at the Gallery. When installed in 1960 at Chadstone it was probably the only piece of contemporary sculpture in the suburbs and one of very few in Melbourne (eg Trial of Socrates by Tom Bass, University of Melbourne, 1954-56: Gerald Lewers' Fountain at ICI Building, 1958).
Classified: 14/12/1994