In April 1917, Marcel Duchamp exhibited the canonical sculpture Fountain at the Grand Central Palace in New York. Duchamp signed the work “R. Mutt”: a satirical emblem borrowed from “Mott Works,” a manufacturer of sanitary ware. The “artistic work” was a urinal, laid on its side and presented on a pedestal in the gallery. In one simple operation, Duchamp disrupted conventional art practice and the role of the artist, perhaps forever. Conceptual art was born, and ideas about “authorship” have never been the same.
Authorship in landscape architecture is bound by more conventional norms, deriving primarily from international law: the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886). Australia’s (last amended July 2022) gives force to the Convention within the Commonwealth and embodies the long history of copyright law in Australia. This lineage can be traced back to the Statute of Anne of 1710, an Act of the British Parliament that was designed to protect authors from the losses caused by
