The Offering

Robbie Rowlands is a sculpture artist who discovered and transformed old building sits to make a statement about the community. For the exhibition of “The Offering”, Rowland discovered an old church in Dandenong that was due to be demolished. The church was an active building in the community until January this year and was built 105 years ago.

Rowland uses this church to try and show how it being demolished shows what is happening to the community. He cuts through parts of the building to show how the community is falling apart, along with the building. He grew up in a Christian family so this project was a bit sensitive for him. He felt the need to cut parts of the roof off, a part of the floor covering the old baptism bath, and cutting a cross out of the cupboard, and cutting little lines in it to make it look shriveled and dead in the back corner of the building, which is where the old Sunday school room was. By placing the dead cross here, it suggests that due to the lack of interest in the youth to save this building it has died, along with their faith.

It was a harder job for Rowland to do as he usually rips up mist of the floors, but the demolition crew had already removed about 97% of the floors and due to his upbringing, it was constantly on his mind what his mother would think of him, helping to destroy a church.
I appreciate Rowland for what he was trying to achieve, I like that some artist push the boundaries of art, and go outside the traditional paint on canvas or clay sculpture, but I personally don’t believe this is art. I can understand that by ripping up parts of the church to represent the downfall of the community and to some extent people’s faith, but the demolition crew did a much more successful job at destroying the inside of the church.