A new artwork in the Test Garden: compressions of art, science and time

A year on from its planting, the Test Garden at Fed Square is going gangbusters. Soft grasses rise above blooming succulents and flowers of purple and red pop-up, drawing the eye, inviting a closer look.

Follow your gaze downward, and you’ll discover Compressions – a new series of works by Melbourne-based artist, Francis Carmody.

Bright, smooth and plaster white, porous and volcanic black, rusty and irregular, the various square, circular and oblong shapes are about the size of a small side plate, each distinct ‘tile’ pressed into the soil of the garden, where they collect daily falling debris from the surrounding plants.

Tasked with creating a new site-specific public artwork for the garden, Carmody’s gentle organic sculptures made of compressed beeswax, gravel, plaster and wood chip feel at ease amongst the plants – without demanding immediate attention.

Compressions of space, time and matter 

Carmody’s intent for Compressions was to create a work that would compress both time and space, linking the two sites – the Test Garden, where the artwork would be placed, and the University of Melbourne’s Burnley Campus, a research centre where Carmody’s studio is located through the artist-in-residence program.

‘I thought it would be interesting to take that logic of compression and combine it in a few different ways,’ says Carmody.

‘And compositionally, there’re two works in the garden, one being an AR digital installation and one being a ground-based sculptural form. So that’s another compression.’

The work connects Carmody’s interest in exploring concepts of time and experimental approaches to materials through his practice.

‘I’m interested in expanding timescales from the Big Bang to now,’ says Carmody. ‘And through my projects, I try and fill in gaps in our collective knowledge with new stories and imagined scenarios.’

‘These projects bring together a wide range of knowledges and expertise – both on the initial question and formation side to the production and material exploration side – to realise these works.’

Expertise and materials

At Burnley, Carmody has had ready access to both experts and interesting materials to experiment with – such as various garden substrate materials of wood chip and scoria, a type of volcanic rock.

As part of a partnership between The University of Melbourne and the Melbourne Arts Precinct, Burnley-based researchers Associate Professor Claire Farrell and Dr Dean Schrieke are conducting a series of plant trials: research experiments relating to the Test Garden at Fed Square and Laak Boorndap – the 18,000 square metre urban garden being created as part of the Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation.

‘The opportunity to be embedded at a site like Burnley is amazing because it opens up a new suite of materials and processes to be exposed to,’ says Carmody. ‘It provides quite genuine contact with a massive range of industry-leading experts. And in my experience, having sustained contact with both of these things in the long term then generates and feeds into projects.’

Material and plant experiments, and data, compressed 

Part of what inspired Compressions was the existence of a hydraulic press at Burnley – a happenstance that led Carmody to experiment with compressing materials into sculptural forms.

‘The process was essentially gathering material from Burnley and mixing it with a polyurethane industrial outdoor binder that’s UV stable and isn’t going to cause any issues for the garden itself. And then making a mix – a lot like baking – and pouring it into a mould that has been 3D printed based on the forms and then using the compression ram to compress the mixture. Then, after a brief period of time, demoulding and repeating.’

The mould forms were developed through 3D modelling, based on plant trial data provided by Schrieke. Schrieke and his colleagues’ painstaking work is designed to provide a set of research-based insights to support the future success of the species-diverse Laak Boorndap garden, and the particular environmental challenges associated with being built on top of an exposed, constructed deck – with weight restrictions and limited soil depth.

‘We’re looking at how plant traits can be used as an indicator of a plant’s potential within a given set of environmental circumstances,’ says Schrieke. ‘What we’ve done is create a facsimile of Laak Boorndap in terms of its environmental characteristics – or the environmental characteristics that we assume will be present there. Some of those are designed or engineered – shallow substrates, free-draining substrates, high exposure (because it’s quite an open area) and variable amounts of water availability. Also, low maintenance.

‘We’re trialling 128 species that will be in the Laak Boorndap garden, and that’s a subset of a larger list of around 470 species,’ says Schrieke. ‘We’re growing them under those expected conditions and looking at how they respond as individuals. But also, we take what’s called a trait-based approach where we look really closely at their leaves in particular, because leaves are strongly related to a plant’s growth. They’re responsible for photosynthesis. We measure different characteristics of the leaves and we look at the response of those traits to the environment.’

Schrieke’s detailed work has generated huge amounts of data, inspiring the sometimes-familiar, mostly mysterious markings that appear on the compressed sculptural forms of Compressions.

‘The forms that the impressions have been made into range from direct transfers of graphs and visualisations that Dean has made,’ says Carmody, ‘to interpretations of water content, and nonspecific statistical analysis to convert spreadsheet data into curves and geometric forms.’

It’s this part-literal and part-abstracted approach to artistically interpreting Schrieke’s data that has formed the overall concept for Compressions – each sculptural mould created by Carmody through 3D modelling.

Getting from the casts to the finished sculptures has employed Carmody’s knack for materials experimentation – using that hydraulic press at Burnley to compress the various materials, so that these detailed impressions hold in the sculptures.

‘It’s quite playful,’ says Carmody. ‘I think the most prominent materials are probably scoria, which is a substrate that will be used in the Laak Boorndap garden, and beeswax, which has been sourced from Burnley’s site. There’s also wood chip, plaster, and other types of gravel that are all used at Burnley for different experiments.’

Look closely, and you will find 

‘When you first approach the Test Garden, you’ll see nothing, or you’ll see the Test Garden,’ says Carmody. ‘Upon closer inspection, you might begin to see small geometric forms in the garden bed, which are drawn from diagrams and data that Dean has collected through very rigorous processes.

‘And then there’s a digital drawing that is accessed through a QR code – a kind of spatial augmented reality drawing that expands on some of the hidden interconnectedness of the garden system.’

Carmody’s drawing is based on a genetic tree that Schrieke created, showing the relatedness between plant species in the garden, ‘so you can see where they diverge from a common ancestor,’ says Schrieke. ‘And then Francis has created a kind of abstracted drawing from that family tree.’

‘It’s my first time working with augmented reality,’ says Carmody, ‘which is something that’s been particularly interesting, and feels appropriate given it’s a public space.’

Using a smartphone, the AR drawing appears suspended above the Test Garden – white lines and curves connecting plants, a digital representation of eons of evolutionary history compressed into a moment in time.

A final test 

When you visit Compressions in the Test Garden, you may find the various tiles in different states of transformation – but don’t be concerned, this is by design, and Carmody expects he’ll learn more about his newly developed materials process throughout the life of the installation.

‘I very much see Compressions as both a standalone work, but also as a series of tests,’ says Carmody, ‘in the same way that the Test Garden itself is a test of sorts, for public interaction and how Laak Boorndap might look.’

Compressions was commissioned by Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation (MAP Co) with the University of Melbourne, and can be seen in the Test Garden at Fed Square until 31 March 2026. The Test Garden artist-in-residence program is a collaboration between MAP Co and the University’s Burnley campus and Art Museums.