There it sits in Alfred Deakin Place off the main street of Ballarat, just as confronting, divisive and aesthetically repugnant as the original on which it's based. It's Callum Morton's Monument #32: Helter Shelter (2018), a huge papier mâché reproduction of the top half of American President Donald Trump's head. It's all there as we so unwillingly remember: the fake yellow suntan, the thinning white teased pompadour, the narcissistically slitted eyes.
It's enormous, fading in the sun and ramshackle (it's evidently hollow, without you having to rap your knuckles on it to find out). And you're meant to sit in it because behind the facade on the other side is a hidden bench in an alcove with room for several people.
The idea? To put yourself in Trump's head for a while, whatever that would mean. To empathise, to sympathise, to know for a while what it'd be like to be Trump. To listen from the other side to what people say about him—and you only have to stand looking on for a while to hear all kinds of weird and revealing things being uttered in his presence.
Rex Butler teaches Art History in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University.
