Michaelie Crawford is best known as a public artist, making installations in various sculptural media. Working with communities early in her career influenced the direction of her art practice and much of her ensuing work continued to engage with communities and the public domain. Michaelie Crawford formed Turpin Crawford Studio with fellow artist Jennifer Turpin in Sydney in 1992. Together the artists produced numerous significant public art installations over the following decade and a half. Most of the installations by the duo are kinetic sculptures which respond to the motion of site specific natural forces.
A formative influence on Crawford was an art and children’s health project Art Injection 1 and 2 (1991 and 1992), in which Crawford participated while still a student at Sydney College of the Arts in the early 1990s. Her role in this project involved devising and implementing collaborative art programs between patients at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and students at Sydney College of the Arts. Her involvement in Art Injection has marked much of her subsequent practice, as demonstrated by numerous art workshops with school and community groups. Of specific note is The Memory Line (1996/97), a temporary art collaboration with Turpin for the Australian Conservation Foundation and Fairfield City Council. It engaged the wider community in the Restoring the Waters project (by landscape architects Schaeffer Barnsley), aiming to shift public perception to the potential benefits of restoring Clear Paddock Creek from a storm water canal to a natural creek system.
A hallmark of the Turpin-Crawford collaboration has been the use of water, light, wind and often intangible elements that reveal kinetic energies in the surrounding environment. This is particularly obvious in Tied to Tide (1999), a tide and wind driven kinetic installation on the Sydney Harbour foreshore at Pyrmont Point Park. The intended effect of this approach is to alert viewers to their immediate environment and allow the subtleties of nature to be appreciated. Works such as Tank (1998), do not interact directly with natural forces yet still create a similar sense of kinetic motion.
Crawford has also been involved with consultancy projects through Turpin Crawford Studio. This work involves serving on advisory panels, developing public art master plans such as the Competition Master Plan, Parramatta Civic Square (2004), and conducting a public art consultancy for Multiplex (2003/08).
Crawford also produces some studio work, although her main interest is working in the public sphere. She left Turpin Crawford Studio at the end of 2005 to spend more time with her children. She and Turpin resumed their collaboration in mid-2008. At the time of writing, Michaelie Crawford and her husband Bill Royal lived in Sydney with their two children.
- Writers:
- Roy, Julien
Note: Landscape Architecture student, Faculty of the Built Environment, UNSW
De Lorenzo, Dr Catherine
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2011
