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A polished aluminium sculpture buried in Commonwealth Park in Canberra?
Surely that's a myth! The paperwork to get approval for something above ground in the Parliamentary Triangle would be hard enough, let alone for digging a trench a couple of metres deep.
Our questioner Terry Hodge asked Curious Canberra, "Why did Bert Flugelman bury one of his sculptures in Commonwealth Park? What was the purpose, what was the artist trying to say?"
When I saw the question my first thought was, 'Bulldust! That can't be real'.
I was familiar with Flugelman sculptures from seeing a number around the country through my travels as an ABC cameraman and I loved the variety of reflections and angles they offered to someone with a camera.
So I was as perplexed as Hodge as to why one of Flugelman's works would be underground. I set out to investigate.
Sculpture and the '70s
Back in 1975 an exhibition called Sculpture 75 was held in Commonwealth Park.
It was part of the larger Australia 75 festival and involved 31 sculptures in various forms, some of them even designed to be eaten by visitors.
Bert Flugelman's sculpture, called Earthwork, was indeed buried as photos from the time show.
Today, in the grass behind Stage 88, is a plaque that sits close to where the sculpture lies.
It's not known exactly where the buried artwork is, but a map from the Australia 75 exhibition shows it sitting around 50 metres away from the plaque that's currently there.
'Is it a sculpture if it's buried and we can't see it?'
The question as to why Flugelman buried his piece is not easy to answer.
National Gallery of Australia curator Lara Nicholls says it is important to remember the context in which Earthwork was made.
"It was a very non-traditional time for the making of sculpture, so the idea often with sculptors was actually to subvert all that had come before them," Ms Nicholls said.
"He decided in fact to bury it and to make a moment out of it and to leave that question in the air hanging; does it still exist? Is it a sculpture if it's buried and we can't see it?"
Flugelman himself is reported to have said that if he explained why he buried Earthwork "the whole point would be lost".
But he also said that he wished people to "imagine what is under their feet and dwell upon the artistic merit of how they were interred".
At the opening of the Australia 75 festival, then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said "The arts by their nature are a public activity, they are meant to be seen and heard."
The next day an editorial in the Canberra Times poked fun at Flugelman's buried sculpture: "Perhaps the organisers of Australia 77 will recruit an artist who will imagine he has buried a work of art in Commonwealth Gardens that the public, in turn, can imagine what he has buried."
Earthwork may not be known to many Canberrans today, but it was a controversial piece at the time of its burial.
A hidden history
Walking away from the plaque in Commonwealth Park I passed by several sculptures, a mural at the Ampitheatre, a playground and a giant chess board.
Although I could appreciate the work that went into each of these I was left feeling sad that Earthwork, mostly unknown, remains buried and unappreciated by tens of thousands of people who pass where it lies every year.
Next I visited Margaret Timpson Park opposite Belconnen Mall where Flugelman's sculpture Tumbling Cubes is erected.
Like Cones in the National Gallery's sculpture garden, you can experience this piece by seeing the way light hits it.
You can feel the smooth steel and the heat reflected off it, you can hear the dull thud as you tap it with your hands and even taste it (well, if you like that sort of thing).
It's a work of art that kids can play with, maybe it'll even inspire a future artist to follow in Flugelman's footsteps.
On a sunny day, our questioner visited the plaque in Commonwealth Park that comemmorates Earthwork.
"It doesn't actually say, 'this is where the sculpture is', it says there was a sculpture buried somewhere in the park," Terry said.
"There's still a little bit of a question mark dangling."
"Then again, there's part of me that doesn't want to know because that was probably Flugelman's intention for us not to be certain, to be always thinking about it".
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Who asked the question?
Terry Hodge is a retired public servant who lives in Fadden.
He and his wife Marian, son James and daughter Kelly moved to Canberra from Sydney in 1982.
Terry and Marian love to travel, particularly to visit their daughter and her family living in the UK and Marian's relatives in Holland.
Terry also enjoys any chance to go snow skiing.
Topics: contemporary-art, canberra-2600