Studio Thadian Pillai

Mixed media, fire
2008 - 2011

The Wishmakers is a 110 metre illuminated sculpture created within a public park to initiate the direct and reflective engagement of a population with its place of habitation. 

A performative work, The Wishmakers accompanied and grew with an audience of 9000 over the course of one day, from early morning until late into the night.  It initiated attachments between strangers by rooting them in the local and transforming the meaning of public open space.  Requiring the audience to articulate thoughts most critical to it at a particular moment in time, the work became an accumulative repository of aspiration and hope.

While The Wishmaker’s colonisation and possession of the landscape on behalf of its population places it in the tradition of ‘the gift’, its performative decommissioning and Epilogue in fire addresses how we implicate energy and environment in the realization of our desires. 

The Wishmakers was commissioned by Metal Culture: “When I finally made it to your field, the sun was setting and your sculpture was sprawling spectacularly across the space.  It made me catch my breath and take stock of the day for the first time.  If I had to have a single favourite moment of the day, it would have been then.”   Grace Acton, Metal Culture.