Mike Hewson could be Australia’s most scrutinised artist — not necessarily by gallery-goers, but by the harshest critics of all: parents.
Mr Hewson designs and builds “risky” playgrounds, typified by climbable rocks with with jutting edges, buckets placed precariously on top of one another, and misshapen iron monkey bars.
But his designs are anything but haphazard.
Each tiny detail is painstakingly planned to the millimetre.
Mr Hewson’s new $2.5 million playground in Southbank, which he calls Rocks on wheels, is his first in Melbourne.
It is one of a number of “innovative” playgrounds recently commissioned by the City of Melbourne.
Inspired by Diane Arbus’s 1962 installation of the same name, it features a series of towering bluestones quarried from Port Fairy, which sit on small, wheeled trolleys bolted into the ground.
Strong reactions no surprise
Before being installed, an exact replica was built in a warehouse off-site, where it was adjusted and analysed by a swarm of geologists, structural engineers, crane consultants and playground auditors, before being given the tick of safety approval.
But when the playground’s protective barrier was removed, it immediately attracted scepticism from parents, and media coverage probing its safety.
Mr Hewson is used to it – his three other playgrounds in Wollongong and Sydney received the same reaction.
“A playground embodies society’s values around family and child raising, which is a charged format to be working in,” he…
