{"id":188034,"date":"2023-10-20T18:40:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T18:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsneednews.com\/?p=188034"},"modified":"2023-10-20T18:40:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T18:40:08","slug":"no-matter-how-crowded-it-gets-dont-miss-these-works-at-sculpture-by-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsneednews.com\/lifestyle\/no-matter-how-crowded-it-gets-dont-miss-these-works-at-sculpture-by-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"No matter how crowded it gets, don\u2019t miss these works at Sculpture by the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"
By <\/span>John McDonald<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.<\/p>\n As a looming El Nino system promises a hot, dry summer, Sculpture by the Sea<\/i> has once again demonstrated its magical powers as a bringer of rain. Threatened by droughts and bushfires, perhaps we should abandon the unreliable science of meteorology and organise outdoor sculpture exhibitions in the driest parts of the country.<\/p>\n Last week, as the SXS team laboured to install sculptures along the foreshores between Bondi and Tamarama, the wind whipped up and dark, purple-grey clouds crowded the sky. It wasn\u2019t conducive to moving heavy artworks with cranes, but it made for wonderful photos. The red covering on one work, the bright yellow of another, set against that backdrop, was a study in contrasts fit for a Jeffrey Smart painting.<\/p>\n Looking out to sea, whales were frolicking close to the shore, providing a special bonus for those viewers who come back, every October, to see this ridiculously popular exhibition. If the whales and the brooding skies can keep up their act for the next two weeks \u2013 and the rain holds off – it should be a memorable year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n John Petrie with his work, 23.5 degrees, which won this year\u2019s Sculpture by the Sea.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Janie Barrett<\/cite><\/p>\n The show has become one of Sydney\u2019s biggest annual events, but SXS generalissimo, David Handley, was keen to let me know about its international penetration. He wasn\u2019t simply referring to the number of works by artists from other countries, including Japan, the United States, Austria, England, China, Lithuania, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Singapore, India, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Ukraine, Greece, France, Iraq, Hong Kong, Canada, and Western Australia.<\/p>\n Handley\u2019s point was that SXS has become a reputation-builder for artists from around the world, who see it as a major international showcase. The show is also attracting attention from overseas collectors, who are prepared to buy works and have them shipped from Sydney. In brief, he was arguing that SXS is connecting this country to the world in a way that local art museums, government agencies and commercial galleries have been unable or unwilling to match.<\/p>\n The conclusion that follows is that SXS deserves a greater level of government and corporate support, so it can go on to bigger things \u2013 including the kind of international events it previously held in Denmark, and attracting more superstars of world art. There will be plenty of other schemes and aspirations locked away in Handley\u2019s desk drawer.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the 2023 exhibition is up and running, and crowds are already gathering on the foreshores. I\u2019m going to take a rapid overview of this year\u2019s offerings, with the caveat that some works were not installed when I visited, and I\u2019m only discussing those pieces I\u2019ve seen at first-hand. You\u2019ll simply have to go along and find out if I\u2019ve missed any masterpieces. As ever, do not under any circumstances imagine you\u2019ll get a parking spot!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n David Horton\u2019s Cheryl\u2019s Night Garden.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood.<\/cite><\/p>\n Dave Horton is a Sydney sculptor who saves his most important works for SXS. This year he has pulled out all stops and been rewarded with the coveted circular stone area at the foot of Marks Park overlooking the ocean. Cheryl\u2019s Night Garden<\/i> is almost architectural in its ambitions. Dominated by a curved archway, it\u2019s a piece that invites us to walk around it and gaze through it. Based on a domestic garden, it also has a mechanical dimension – a legacy of the steel off-cuts from which it has been constructed. One imagines the work should serve some useful purpose, such as making astronomical observations. The slightly battered circular plinth upon which it sits was originally produced for Anthony Caro (1924-2013), arguably the most famous sculptor of the modern era, who exhibited in the 2011 show in the same location. In its blend of elegance and complexity, Horton\u2019s work is a fitting homage to this modern master of welded steel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lucy Barker\u2019s On Line Clothes Swap.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n This year marks Lucy Barker\u2019s entry into the Decade Club, as it\u2019s the tenth time she has been included in SXS. Unlike many of her co-exhibitors, Barker is an artist without a signature style who creates diverse objects and installations with a conceptual basis. In a broadly humorous way she engages with \u201cenvironmental and social change\u201d, this time with a custom-made Hills Hoist at the end of a concrete garden path. It\u2019s a participatory work in which visitors are invited to take an item of clothing from the washing line and leave one in its place. The theme is the need for all of us to embrace recycling and the elimination of waste. It\u2019s a speculative piece that if it succeeds, will make every day at SXS resemble a busy laundry day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Naja Utzon Popov\u2019s Momentum.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n Inheritor of a couple of famous names, Danish ceramic sculptor, Naja Utzon Popov is the granddaughter of Jorn Utzon, architect of the Sydney Opera House, and the daughter of Australian architect, Alex Popov. For SXS she has created a set of black ceramic tree trunks festooned with delicate porcelain shells that might be leaves or even fungi. It\u2019s a celebration of nature\u2019s resilience in bouncing back from the most disastrous bushfires, as these fragile, white and green glazed forms cluster around a set of dry-looking poles that made me think of the larrakitj<\/i> of Arnhem Land. It\u2019s a long way from the forests of Scandinavia, but Popov\u2019s own life has been the perfect bridge between two diverse parts of the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Laurence Edwards\u2019 Man of Stones.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time British sculptor, Laurence Edwards, has participated in SXS. He was also present in 2015, but this time he is enjoying a wave of local popularity that has seen him hold a survey at the Orange Regional Gallery, and have a major work exhibited outside of the Art Gallery of NSW. Edwards\u2019s Man of Stones<\/i>, which was also shown in Orange, is one of a series of monumental, masculine figures who seem to belong to some primordial era when human beings still lived as hunter-gatherers. The other option is a science fictional one, of a post-apocalyptic world in which we\u2019ve reverted to a primitive hand-to-mouth existence. Either way, Edwards\u2019s bronze man laden with mysterious bundles, is a striking presence among the rocks at Bondi.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chen Wenling\u2019s The Top of the Balance.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n From the moment he began showing with SXS in 2011, Chen Wenling has been a firm favourite with audiences. One of China\u2019s leading sculptors, an artist with a strong sense of showmanship, Chen is exhibiting another of those trademark red boys. This one is balancing a vast stainless-steel globe on his head – a \u201cLook! No hands!\u201d version of Atlas. The seashore is familiar territory for Chen, who made his name with an installation of 140 fibreglass red boys on the beach at Xiamen in 2001. His message, then and now, was \u201cSeize the day\u201d, a philosophy he has put into practice over the past two decades. Unlike so many Chinese artists who have been trenchant social critics, Chen feels the best thing he can do is channel positive energies into his sculptures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n S\u2019epanouir by Linda Bowen.<\/span>Credit: <\/span> Janie Barrett<\/cite><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lifeblood 1 by Johannes Pannekoek.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Janie Barrett<\/cite><\/p>\n I\u2019m pairing Linda Bowden with Johannes Pannekoek because both artists have made fluent, abstract metal sculptures that seek to capture a vital life force while echoing the rhythms of the waves off Bondi. Bowden\u2019s S\u2019epanouir<\/i> takes its title from the French verb \u201cto blossom\u201d, a sentiment acted out by a set of dancing, loosely connected metal forms that celebrate the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Pannekoek takes a grander approach, with his large-scale Lifeblood 1<\/i> resembling a single ribbon that twists and turns like a snake in an open-ended homage to nature. Both works might be bracketed with Michael Le Grand\u2019s Ebb and Flow<\/i>, another metal sculpture imbued with those same natural rhythms. I\u2019ve yet to see le Grand\u2019s piece, but on past performances, one knows he can produce the goods.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Glue Society\u2019s Hot with the Chance of a Late Storm.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n You may feel a touch of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu when gazing upon the Glue Society\u2019s sculpture of a melted Mr. Whippy van plonked in a corner of the beach in Tamarama. Hot wth a Late Storm<\/i>, was first exhibited in SXS 2006, and is making a comeback an entire generation later. A visual gag about global warming, it speaks even more eloquently today, in the world of new temperature records and warnings that we are already past the point of no return. When first shown, the work became a huge hit on social media, and it\u2019s only too likely this will happen all over again. If the joke isn\u2019t quite as funny the second time around, blame the climate, not the artists.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Morgan Jones\u2019 Starstruck.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ayako Saito\u2019s Castle in the Air.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n I\u2019m bracketing these two works as impressive examples of what may be achieved with a few stray pieces of metal and a coat of paint. With sculpture it\u2019s just as hard to know what to leave out as what to put in \u2013 or rather, where to stop. Saito, who enters the SXS Decade Club this year, has created a refined, spatially complex work in a shade of deep blue that allows a glimpse of a staircase and windows, inviting us to look both at and through the structure. Jones has made a tightly compressed piece in which a few basic shapes are yoked togther with the tension of a nut turned on a bolt. If Saito\u2019s blue has a recessive effect, Jones\u2019s bright yellow paint job makes the work stand out with amazing vividness \u2013 a lesson he may have learned from Ron Robertson-Swann\u2019s Vault<\/i> (1980) which remains the most talked-about sculpture in Australian history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tung-Min Hu\u2019s Ark.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n Taiwanese artist, Tung-Min Hu has attempted the magic trick of capturing a splash of water in the medium of stainless steel. In life there is no moment when this water would not be in motion, in art, that moment is frozen for all eternity. By way of compensation, the shiny, reflective surface bestows a sense of liquidity. Hu says he has taken his inspiration from \u201cthe space formed by Taiwan\u2019s Datun Mountain and Keelung River\u201d \u2013 a surprisingly specific reference for such an abstract work. The Ark<\/i> of the title refers to the actual shape of the sculpture, which looks vaguely boat-like, although no animals are present. It\u2019s been established that audiences love shiny things, and the only artist in the show that may have outshone Hu, is young Western Australian sculptor, Sam Hopkins, whose Distorted Perception<\/i> is a guaranteed selfie magnet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eiji Hayakawa\u2019s Giant in the Forest.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>James Brickwood<\/cite><\/p>\n Speaking of selfies, every year SXS benefits from hundreds of thousands of photos posted on social media by visitors. Certain works become favourites for the photo-hungry hordes, and Eiji Hayakawa has produced one of them in Giant in the Forest<\/i> \u2013 a stainless steel gorilla that almost begs viewers to strike a pose and take out their mobile phones. Hayakawa is not among the Japanese veterans of SXS \u2013 Keizo Ushio is back for the 23rd time at Bondi since 1999! \u2013 but he already knows how to make a good first impression. The theme is broadly conservationist, but the result is pure entertainment.<\/p>\n Sculpture By the Sea<\/em> 2023 is at <\/b>Bondi to Tamarama until November 6.<\/b><\/p>\nSave articles for later<\/h3>\n
Dave Horton: Cheryl\u2019s Night Garden<\/b><\/h3>\n
Lucy Barker: On Line Clothes Swap
<\/b><\/h3>\nNaja Utzon Popov: Momentum
<\/b><\/h3>\nLaurence Edwards: Man of Stones
<\/b><\/h3>\nChen Wenling: The Top of the Balance
<\/b><\/h3>\nLinda Bowden: S\u2019epanouir
<\/b>Johannes Pannekoek: Lifeblood 1
<\/b><\/h3>\nThe Glue Society: Hot with the Chance of a Late Storm
<\/b><\/h3>\nAyako Saito: Castle in the Air
<\/b>Morgan Jones: Starstruck
<\/b><\/h3>\nTung-Min Hu: Ark
<\/b><\/h3>\nEiji Hayakawa: Giant in the Forest
<\/b><\/h3>\nMost Viewed in Culture<\/h2>\n