People are always complimenting me on my childlike exuberance (or, as they usually put it, my emotional immaturity), so when I found out there was a six-metre-tall statue of a playful kiddie on the Sunshine Coast, I grabbed Bigella and trundled over there.
After having my sippy cup and an afternoon nap, of course!
iDIDIT! was created by babyfaced artist Russel Anderson in 2017, and can be found frolicking in Birtinya’s lively Village Park. A tribute to the young and the young at heart, its not unusual to find dozens of poeple monkeying about on the grassy knoll he rests upon.
Whilst there I even witnessed a pensioner, 95 if he was a day, trundle up on his mobility scooter and then, inspired by the statue’s splendour, pull off a a perfectly-executed backflip with a half-pike.
“I did it!” he cheered afterwards.
Rambunctious Russel spent more than eight months fashioning iDITIT! from more than 250 layers of weathering steel, providing a timeless appearance that contrasts magnificently against the impermanence of youth.
“Every layer was hand-drawn and cut into about a thousand pieces that had to interconnect – there was no ‘oopsy-daisy’, I only got one go at it,” Russel told Salt Magazine. “There were in excess of 6000 holes and bolts to hold the pieces together.
“It was a weird shape too – there was a wiggly shirt and wiggly hair. It was about trusting I’d designed it correctly. I’d never done anything like it before.”
The public responded, not surprisingly, with youthful zeal. Then a gutter journalist wrote a hit piece revealing the cost of iDIDIT! – a very reasonable $220,000, paid for by property developers Stockland – and a bunch of big babies threw their toys out of the pram in the worst way possible.
New Kid On The Block
iDIDIT! became the target of an online hate campaign that bordered on child abuse. Russel – poor, kind, talented Russel – was crushed. His gift to the world, which breathes life and levity into a nondescript park, was putting smiles on faces every day of the week. But it wasn’t enough for some.
“It put me off doing art,” Russell wept. “It gutted me. I put everything into it and it got to me. I was thinking, ‘I can’t comprehend I’ve built this with that amount of money’. Most of the cost was materials, the steel, the cutting and the labour to weld it. It’s Australian steel, too – I could have bought it from China, but you don’t know what you’re getting.”
Well the Chinese do have their One Big Child Policy – teehee!
“People I know jumped on Facebook and tried to tell people the facts, but I didn’t want to engage with people. I thought, ‘this is my personal life. I don’t want to be attacked for something I worked hard for’. I’d just built the best thing I’d ever built!”
One would assume that the good folk of the Sunny Coast – home to The Big Mower, The Big Pineapple, Matilda and The Black Ant – would be more open-minded.
Russel’s tale is a perfect metaphor for the loss of childhood innocence. If iDIDIT! – cheeky and pure and made of several tonnes of dilapidated metal – must bend to the societal pressures of bigotry and ignorance, what hope does a regular-sized child have?
Well I Guess This Is Growing Up
The sculpture transforms throughout the day, as if experiencing all the stages of boyhood. At dawn, iDIDIT! stands cold and alone against the blooming Queensland sun, reborn every morning. By noon, the piece shows off its scuffs and scrapes, a melancholy elegy to misspent youth. And finally, at dusk, iDIDIT! is wrapped in a cocoon of darkness, signalling the end of childhood and the inevitable journey into adolescence.
“The boy has a bit of a serious message underneath it all about rehabilitation, but it’s meant to be fun and joyous,” Russel continued. “I’m not trying to offend people and I’m not political in any way. That’s my thing about public art – I’m trying to lighten things up a bit. Aesthetics are important of course, and workmanship. It needs to be well built.”
Well, iDIDIT! is certainly well-built. I’d need to do months of Billy Blanks’ Tae Bo to build up lats like that!
“The boy is very accessible and that’s really important to me,” added Russel. “You have a memory of doing a handstand and you relate to it instantly. I’ve not really done figurative work like that as a rule and it meets my criteria – the whimsy, the playfulness – there’s so much I can do in that world.”
It was this waggishness that so enchanted Bigella and moi as we sat in The Big Child’s shadow.
“You know, Bigella,” I whispered, gently taking her hand. “iDIDIT! has inspired me with his innocence and joy. I think it’s time we had a child of our own.”
“Oh, Bigs!” she gasped, a tear meandering its way down her cheek. “Do you really mean it?”
“Yeah, a statue just like this would look great in the front yard. I’ll give Russel Anderson a call, right after you change my nappy!”
