Lenton Parr

Returning to Australia from England in 1957, Lenton Parr worked with an agricultural machinery manufacturer. This experience enhanced Parr’s mastery of industrial welding techniques and sheet-metal processes, and appreciation for industrial materiality, in particular steel, which Parr considered the principal material of the modern epoch and the centrality to the machine as a major source of modernist imagery. These developments in Parr’s practice, both practical and theoretical, are exemplified in Customs House screen, 1966.

A rare example of a screen work by Parr, who typically worked in three-dimensions, Customs House screen was commissioned for the former Customs House, William Street, Melbourne, in 1966 where it remained until the building sold in 1997. The large, abstract screen was designed to hide an electricity substation, while also allowing a free air flow. Indications of this purpose can be seen in certain aesthetic characteristics of the work, including its rough texture, produced using welding equipment to create molten textured surfaces, and the geometric detailing evocative of blades, bolts and shelves.

Customs House screen demonstrates the Centre Five group’s ideas on the integration of sculpture and architecture and the potential for sculpture to humanise urban environments and transform passive encounters to active consideration and engagement with public space.