Artist: Mark Datodi
Year of Work: 2019
Location: 73 Park Steet
Description: Mark Datodi’s art practice explores ideas relating to suburbia and the impact of urban
expansion. His works combine sculptural elements and patters, which often originate from an amalgamation of street patterns and West Australian native bushland. Over the last 20 years
Mark Datodi has immersed himself in public art projects, sometimes in collaboration with other
artists, creating an impressive series of work across Western Australia.
The starting point for the Deco Totem design process was the architectural Art Deco aesthetic
of the building. Importantly, in reference to the building itself, the artwork form opens at its
height and leads the eye upwards to the building’s roof garden, which forms a ‘green link’
between the building, McDougall Park and the surrounding streetscape.
The leaf-like forms of the artwork are symbolic; the leaf is a symbol of hope, renewal and
revival. The leaf pattern references the beauty and precision in the repetitive forms of plants in
the natural world, the spread of tree branches, the shape of leaves, the flow of leaf veins and
linkages of the cells. Everything is in systematic harmony.
The gestural geometry of the sculptural work shows leaves that twist and overlap organically
and rhythmically upward featuring stylised patterning on these elements reinforcing the Art
Deco language of the work. The patterns cast shadows that will change with changes in light,
and create patterns and movement over the day and at night, as they have been ground lit.
Asset Type: Sculpture
Provenance: City of South Perth
Image Source City of South Perth