There’s a Giant Rock Crushing a Car in the Middle of Sydney.

Obviously.

Sydney has some of the most famous landmarks in the world…. The Opera House… The Harbour Bridge… Bondi Beach… And then, sitting in a roundabout at Walsh Bay, there’s a 1999 Ford Festiva crushed under a giant quartz boulder like the universe finally got sick of bad parking.

It’s called Still Life with Stone and Car, and no, it wasn’t an accident. Although you’d be forgiven for thinking someone had a particularly rough Tuesday. The artwork was created by American artist Jimmie Durham for the 2004 Biennale of Sydney… and the story of how it got there is arguably better than the artwork itself.

First, they bought a Ford Festiva

Not a Ferrari, not a Mercedes, not some beautiful vintage car that would cause people to gasp when it was destroyed… A 1999 Ford Festiva which was apparently purchased in Homebush, which feels appropriate LOL … then Durham went looking for a rock. He eventually chose an enormous quartz boulder from a quarry on the NSW Central Coast weighing roughly two tonnes.

Car. Check.

Rock. Check.

Crane.

Obviously.

Then they took the whole operation to the Sydney Opera House

In June 2004, a crowd gathered on the forecourt of one of the world’s most recognisable buildings to watch a grown man use a crane to lower an enormous rock onto a perfectly serviceable Ford Festiva, all in the name of art. The boulder crushed the roof of the car, people watched, presumably someone clapped, and Still Life with Stone and Car was born.

Being part of the 2004 Biennale of Sydney, this was intended to explore ideas around monuments, nature and our relationship with the physical world, which if we’re honest, is probably the correct interpretation. Although “rock beats car” also seems reasonable.

So why is it sitting in a roundabout?

After its Opera House debut, the smashed Festiva and its new two-tonne passenger eventually found a permanent home at Walsh Bay. Today it sits in the middle of the roundabout where Hickson Road meets Pottinger Street, not far from Dawes Point and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and it’s been there long enough that Sydney has done what Australia does particularly well, completely normalised it.

Imagine seeing it for the first time, you’re walking around Sydney taking photos of the Harbour Bridge when suddenly, Why the f is there a rock on that car? Meanwhile a local walks past carrying a coffee without even turning their head, because that’s just the rock car.

That’s the funny thing about public art in Australia

Put something strange enough in a city for long enough and eventually everyone stops asking questions. Melbourne has a giant purse, Perth has a giant cactus, Canberra has hot-air balloons shaped like things that definitely weren’t designed by committee, and Sydney has a Ford Festiva that appears to have lost an argument with geology. After a while, these things stop being strange, they become directions, “Where do I turn?”, “Go past the car with the rock and take the next left”, all perfectly reasonable Australian sentence.

The car has also aged considerably less gracefully than the rock

When the artwork was first created, it looked much more like the aftermath of an extraordinarily specific accident, it still had the unmistakable appearance of a car, over the years, pieces have disappeared and the vehicle has deteriorated. The rock, unsurprisingly, is doing fine (another victory for geology, hooray!). But somehow that makes the whole thing better. 22 years later, the boulder is still sitting there, the Festiva is still underneath it. Thousands of people pass it every week, tourists stop, take photos, google it, and discover that yes, somebody really did deliberately crush a car with a giant rock outside the Opera House and then decide Sydney should keep it.

And we absolutely should

Because cities need weird things, not everything needs to be beautiful, not everything needs to make immediate sense, sometimes something just needs to make you stop and say “What the hell is that?”, and then you’ve got a story. So next time you’re wandering around Walsh Bay, keep an eye out for the little red Ford Festiva underneath approximately two tonnes of Australian quartz.

Still Life with Stone and Car – Sydney

What: Still Life with Stone and Car
Artist: Jimmie Durham
Created: 2004
Originally created for: 14th Biennale of Sydney
Original performance: Sydney Opera House forecourt
Where is it now: Hickson Road/Pottinger Street roundabout, Walsh Bay, Sydney
Featuring: One 1999 Ford Festiva and one extremely committed rock

More weird Australia

Australia gets considerably stranger once you leave the obvious tourist attractions behind.

And we’re here for it. At Left Field, our workers travel through regional Australia following harvests, farms and seasonal work, which means we come across plenty of places, people and stories that don’t make the tourism brochures.

We’ll keep sharing the good ones.