The City of Perth is under increasing pressure to drop its plans to replace one of the city’s most beloved public artworks with a 7-metre tall effigy of an astronaut, which as been derided as a piece of “factory-produced space junk”.
Until four years ago, Ore Obelisk, affectionately known as The Kebab by the people of Perth, stood in the heritage-listed Stirling Gardens in the heart of the city. The 15-metre work made from local geological minerals, created by the architect, artist and Perth’s first city planner, Paul Ritter, was erected in 1971 to celebrate Western Australia’s population reaching one million, and was one of the city’s first public artworks.
But in 2021, the sculpture was cut into pieces and placed in storage, after council deemed it had become unsafe.
The Kebab’s original plinth still stands, awaiting the sculpture’s restoration and return. No report ever eventuated examining the three options presented to council in 2022 – conservation, relocation or decommissioning.
Then last year, Perth’s then mayor, Basil Zempilas – now leader of the Western Australian Liberal party – announced a new work would take The Kebab’s place.
A 7-metre high effigy of an astronaut, called Boonji Spaceman, the creation of American art entrepreneur Brendan Murphy, would be erected on the site.
Usually selling for about $1.5m, the statues, which have graffiti-like inscriptions over them, have been appearing in cities across the world in recent years, including London, Houston, Oslo and Washington DC – as well as a luxury resort on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
In February, a Boonji Spaceman encrusted with a 517-carat diamond visor valued at almost $33m landed in the lobby of a five star hotel in the Saudi Arabia capital of Riyadh.
It is all part of Miami-based Murphy’s Boonji Project, which includes a collection of 11,111 unique digital Non-Fungible Tokens launched on the Ethereum blockchain.
Purchasers of Boonji Avatar NFTs get access to member-only events, merchandise, and physical/digital artwork, according to Murphy’s website, and have so far generated more than US $15m in income.
Australia is getting its astronaut for free, however, the City of Perth announced in June last year, with council bearing only the $150,000 to $250,000 cost of its transportation from the US, and its temporary installation on The Kebab’s plinth.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to be able to bring what would be a real tourist attraction which fits the story of Perth to our city,” Zempilas said at the time, adding that the price of transporting and installing the statue was “a small price to pay for a world-class attraction”.
‘Offensive’
The supplanting of The Kebab with Boonji Spaceman has drawn a groundswell of opposition, including from the WA Public Art Inventory; a community action group called Save the Kebab that has collected more than 1,400 signatures on a petition; and one of Australia’s wealthiest women, Janet Holmes à Court.
“It is offensive to Paul Ritter and his family, and to all Western Australian artists, that the council would remove the Ore Obelisk and replace it with an international sculpture,” Holmes à Court said in a statement to the Guardian.
Helen Curtis – who is a spokesperson for Save the Kebab, a member the National Trust’s Public Arts and Monuments Committee and a member of WA’s State Design Review Panel and the City of Stirling’s Art Advisory Panel – said the council’s decision to supplant Ritter’s obelisk with a mass-produced American statue – and its associated cost to rate payers – lacked transparency. Moreover, she said, the proposed work bore no cultural, historical or environmental relationship to the historical gardens, which were created for the state’s first governor using forced labour by the local Nyoongar people in the 1830s.
“The Boonji Spaceman has no place in Perth, it has zero relevance to Perth,” Curtis said.
“The City of Perth has ridden roughshod over any consultation by just landing it there, not talking to the elders about this, or talking to the council’s arts advisory group.
“They have just made a captain’s call saying we’re going to plonk this thing here, because we think it’s a good idea.”
In a statement, City of Perth said The Kebab became an unacceptable safety risk after an 80kg stone fell off it in 2021.
In a statement, the council disputed Save the Kebab’s claims that the Boonji Spaceman bore no local cultural or historical significance.
“The Boonji Spaceman artwork is relevant to Perth in that the work relates to the 1962 triple-orbit of the Earth by American astronaut John Glenn,” the statement said, referring to Glenn’s famous observation from space of a brightly lit Perth, leading to its “city of light” moniker.
The council also disputed claims the acquisition went against its own public art policy, which states public art will “showcase the best of contemporary Western Australian, Australian and international art, encouraging new ideas and the application of new techniques and approaches,” the statement said.
Curtis told the Guardian Boonji Spaceman may have contravened Perth’s Public Art CP 4.8 criteria which precludes “objects that are mass-produced or reproduced” and “commercial promotions in any form”.
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Content on Murphy’s website and on social media show the Boonji Project is a marketing and wealth-generating venture, Curtis claimed.
“The Boonji Spaceman epitomises vacuous monumentalism,” she said.
“[And] it is supporting the work of a millionaire former Wall Street banker, who has publicly admitted he has little talent and wants to just make money.”
Who is Brendan Murphy?
It is true that Murphy is a former Wall Street trader. He is also a former professional basketballer and poker player.
After the 9/11 attacks in New York, the self-taught Murphy embarked on an art-creating venture, admitting in a 2022 interview with billionaire social media influencer, Scientologist and vocal Trump supporter Grant Cardone, that “I don’t have a lot of talent” but followed Cardone’s own 10X wealth creation philosophy.
Promoting his Boonji Project, Murphy told Cardone that he rated the importance of marketing in his art at 9.5 out of 10 “because you can market shitty art and still make a living”.
“My famous saying that’s a spin-off from you is, ‘I’m trying to add zeros’,” he told Cordone, who praised Murphy in the video as “a freaking master marketer” and “bullshitter … and I say bullshit like, I hold this word in reverence.”
The 2022 YouTube interview with Cordone, is being used as further evidence by groups opposed to Perth’s Boonji Spaceman that the project is a commercial venture, marketing an object that art critic John McDonald has described as a “piece of factory-produced space junk”.
“City of Perth may as well install a bunch of designer handbags [in Stirling Gardens] and call it art, as this mass-produced overgrown ornament,” he told the Guardian.
The council also needed to provide further information over any commercial arrangements it has made with Murphy’s Australian gallerist, Paul Gullotti of Perth’s commercial Gullotti Galleries in Cottesloe, Curtis claimed.
The gift of the spaceman was made by the artist on the condition Gullotti Galleries undertook the installation, which was originally budgeted by council at $171,000 and has now has now grown to $250,000.
Gullotti Galleries will feature a solo exhibition of Murphy’s works later this year.
“There has been no transparency by City of Perth,” Curtis claimed.
The City of Perth would only confirm that the budget was now $250,000.
Gullotti referred the Guardian’s queries on the gift and installation agreement – and a request to speak to Murphy – to Perth public relations company Devahasdin, whose director, Sandra Devahasdin, assured the Guardian on Wednesday the artist would break his silence on the controversy and address the alleged misinformation circulated by the project’s critics.
The following day, Devahasdin emailed the Guardian saying “Unfortunately we are unable to provide you with our facts at this time”.