The Gang took advantage of a glorious (post)summer’s day to hightail it to Bermagui yesterday for our annual Sculpture on the Edge fix. And what a sweet day it was; sun, sea, lunch and Gulaga with a side serve of sculpture. Perfeck.

In terms of muscle, Sculpture on the Edge is clearly overshadowed by Sculpture by the Sea (now grown into a wondrous behemoth straddling Sydney/Perth/Denmark) and innumerable spin-offs from the same. But it would be a gross disservice to make unfavourable comparisons on that account. SOTE simply doesn’t have the demographic and monetary clout/support that underpins the plethora of prominent, flourishing events and can’t possibly compete with the status game that drives national sculptural pageantry. And it doesn’t seek to. What Sculpture on the Edge does have is of far greater importance; it has heart and zeal and vision (albeit localised.) It’s the classic ‘little engine that could’.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the event, a decade long&hard haul by initiator and prime mover Jan Ireland and her intrepid band of helpers (entirely voluntary, including Jan herself.) In anyone’s language it’s modestly sponsored (though obviously all due respect to Patrons Phillip Cox and Janet Hawley for stumping up the acquisitive prize and prestigious support from the get-go.) The Bega Valley Shire Council clambered aboard last year with the $10,000 acquisitive public art prize (for how long is not clear) but other awards are arguably less of a cost to the various sponsors than an outlay on a swish pair of new shoes. And $1000 from local juggernaut Bega Cheese comes across as somewhat shy of generous (you can write it off your tax, people!)

This being so, the greatest challenge for SOTE is the ability to attract and sustain a critical mass of entries given (a) the cost, to the artists, of shipping (particularly the large) works to the relative isolation of the Far South Coast and (b) the lure of greater kudos and lucre at the more pumped and aggrandized events. Thankfully for Bermagui those tidal (career)shifts are balanced by a core group of artists (both local and regional NSW/ACT) who do maintain an ongoing involvement, ensuring quality and diversity of the field regardless of number. Consequently SOTE is a little gem of a gig and totally in synch with its setting. (If the Burghers of Bega and Bermagui are looking for more bang, they’re going to have to put up a lot more buck and not necessarily only in prizes; the back-end, ie the organisation of the event, needs to be given, at the very least, some appropriate base funding.)

Anyways, enough of the soap-boxing. We had a lovely day of what never fails to be an entertaining engagement. It was great to see Richard Moffatt back in the swim – and hard to dismiss the wisdom of the judges awarding him the gong. His piece, The Giving Tree, hits a strikingly simpatico chord and can’t fail to be universally popular (apparently towns across the Shire are already squabbling over who should have it!) Congrats to Richard…

Richard Moffatt, The Giving Tree, steel

Okay, so from here on in we’re not going to show all the works, just the ones we liked the most (which we assure all and sundry is no reflection/judgement whatsoever on any of the pieces left out. We’re merely posting stuff that took our fancy/charmed us personally.)

In the small sculpture show:

Michael Snape’s always cool…

Michael Snape, Bowl 17, stainless steel

…we love Jimmy Rix, big time…

Jimmy Rix, First Signs of Spring, steel, copper, paint

…the winner of the Janet Shirley Walker Environmental Award…

Louise Pratt, Temptation, coal, resin, gold leaf

…cute bird biz…

Linda Davey, Curly Oyster Catchers, ceramic steel

…and, of course, we’ve gotta love this one (cos Megsie made it!)…

Megan Bottari, Teleo(phonic)morph: Channelling Sal (long distance call), lost wax cast crystal, found object

…and what’s not to love about Barak Zelig’s work…

Barak Zelig, Big Shot, plastic, metal, fabric

Barak Zelig, Little Betty, plastic, metal, fabric

…we can’t resist a pat…

Gunther Kopietz, Howling Dog, timber

…and we’re suckers for bunnies…

Victoria Nelson, Reclining Bunny, Carrara marble

…and a weave…

Sharon Stevens, Bower 1, 2, 3, stainless steel, copper

And then there was the Main Event: the big stuff…

More kanga biz…

Jimmy Rix, Roo Shooter, welded corten steel

Jimmy Rix, I Still Call Australia Home, welded cortex steel

…and this tickled our fancy (could’ve been entitled Rocky Hall!)…

Rowan Dixon, Stoned Again, granite, metal

…as did the peculiar…

Sian Watson, Drongo (Sitting), stained fabric, wire, steel, cotton, horse hair

Sian Watson, Drongo (Standing), stained fabric, wire, steel, cotton, horse hair

…the weird…

Steven Harrison, We are such stuff as dreams are made of, wood, plaster coated with Aquablock

…and the curiously elegant…

Barak Zelig, Shaping the Landscape, steel

Well worth the outing – catch it while you can (and choose your own favourites.)

Wraps up on Monday 14th March (closing event: Community Picnic and Fire Festival from 5-8pm Sunday 13th up on the Endeavour Point Headland.)

The Gang bestirred ourselves a couple of Tuesdays ago and headed to Bermagui for our annual kultural trifecta – sculpture, fish’n chips and gelati – aka Sculpture on the Edge. We’d managed to miss the skirmish of the opening, courtesy of a clashing commitment, and have to admit we weren’t overburdened by any regret to speak of (we’ve outgrown the pull of the brouhaha, thankfully.) And it’s nice to be able to contemplate the field without the constant interruptive chat.

We did, however, run into Jan Ireland (whose brainchild the event is) so all the requisite boxes were happily ticked. Jan does a fabulous job with SOTE against a torrid tide of village&valley agenda politics and it’s always a relief to see her survive yet another annual offensive. [Jan, we salute you. n(Ed)]

Anyways, the event itself (once up) is always worth the visit. It has everything; the good, the bad(-ish) and the (ever so slightly) ugly. More importantly, it’s also very entertaining.

We’re only going to drop in the works of note/our faves. This is not to be interpreted as any sort of judgement on the rest of the field – just that some artists present near identical work year after year after year after year and while it’s undoubtably good it just doesn’t float our boat anymore. So, we’ll start, it goes without saying, with the winner – Ross Cameron’s Tide Spiral…

Congrats to Ross. Because, no matter what else, it’s an intelligently considered entry that successfully meets the client’s brief; the client being the Bega Valley Shire Council, the brief being a piece of public art to be acquired for the shire.

Now it’s a fairly common thing for artists, when entering competitions, to bone up on and make work that shoes into the predilections of whosoever happens to be the selected judge – and ordinarily this is a practice we don’t encourage/subscribe to. However in this particular instance it actually makes utter sense. Of the three peeps responsible for adjudicating the BVSC acquisitive prize, only one has professional arts credentials – so he, poor bugger, carried the handicap of two Council reps with scarce to none (…a bit akin to having Bronwyn Bishop and, say, Scott Morrison’s parliamentary secretary on the panel.) It’s hardly surprising that they’ve gone for something familiar and non-threatening. Comfortable, even. And we totally get the shell/ocean reference (looks like a warner) and reject entirely the sotto voce titterings about it resembling poo.

[And here at GCC we have no negative bias whatsoever when it comes to poo, as you are all aware.  Besides, we were far more taken by another descriptive tendered on the day – ‘looks like a fat hippy on a cupcake!’ n(Ed)]

So we reckon that Tide Spiral is a dead set perfect fit for the Valley. And should they decide to place it at the high end of Littleton Gardens it’ll make an incredibly apposite visual segue across from the new Council offices to Woolworths (stylised logo and all.) But it’ll also look appropriate just about anywhere in the shire, really. Totes respect to Ross, he’s clearly caught the essence of the place.

A work we did get a laugh out of was Tony Millard’s This is where we are heading…

This wouldn’t look out of place in Littleton Gardens either, but the Burghers of Bega are unlikely to appreciate its finer points (and no we’re not talking genitalia, which was sadly Ken doll.)

But we digress – we actually started out at the Small Sculpture Show…so, back to the hall…

We have to confess that we’re really not into metal abstract formalism – mon dieu, quel horreur, sacrilège, we hear you cry. Well, get over it. Doesn’t stop us from appreciating the concept, engineering and smith-manship, far from it, but it just rarely does it for us (personally.) It’s always too…overwrought or something, and hard to warm to (unless it’s a Matthew Harding!) But the one piece in SOTE 2015 that we did like was Jen Mallinson’s shift to the wall with Kyuku Landscape…which we somehow managed to miss photographing. Bummer dudes – you’ll just have to take our word for it; quietly arresting in its poetic simplicity. Noice.

At the other end of the range was John Gosch’s Phoenix; 670 recycled spark plugs rendered into a curiously elegant affair…

We don’t usually go for the recycled farmyard tool compilations, but the Phoenix pulled it off. The other works that caught and held our attention were: Stephen Harrison’s Hamlet and Horatio…

…(having a good nag!)

Victoria Nelson’s Mother Earth…

…(shades of Sky Whale?)

Tracey Sarsfield’s strung-out The Departed Horizon…

…refreshingly contemporary.

Harrie Fasher’s Beauty (again, sorry, no image – we did take some but they didn’t do her piece justice)

And last but absolutely not least, Darren Mongta’s King Brown…

We love Darren’s work big time and, regardless of the judging outcomes on this particular occasion, we reckon it’d be extremely remiss of the BVSC if they didn’t purchase this work for the foyer of their new Civic Centre. At the very least it would signal a genuine interest and support of indigenous culture in our region. Just saying.

We broke for our trad Bermi lunch (with our dear friend Rosa)…

…before heading up the hill to the main arena.

A persistant problem with SOTE over the years has been the matter of site specificity and scale – and this continues to be the case. So you get a lot of stuff that would look perfectly lovely in somebody’s garden but frankly fail to hold their own in open, naked space.

Anyways, on the upside, the stand-outs were: Suzie Bleach and Andy Townsend’s A Burden…

…no surprises here, these guys are the antzpantz when it comes to nuanced articulation.

The Braidwood Central School Students’ The Birds…

…(omigod, we wish we had someone like Suzie and Andy teaching us art when we were kids!!)

Jimmy Rix’s Shy…

 

Well darls, it was the Canberra long weekend – which means Sculpture on the Edge time again. After work on Friday the Gang swung around via Wapengo to pick up Brigitte and off we tootled towards the promise of yet more rain. You’d reckon we’d’ve had enough of it by now – but we just think of the farmers and take it cheerfully on the chin. Luckily the worst of it held off for the opening formalities, and that’s the main thing, eh…

…besides, there was something almost lyrical about the umberella element, don’t ya reckon?…

Anyhoo, the inclement weather really wasn’t condusive to too much lingering – so it was all a bit like cultural speed dating. There was stuff we did like…

…and stuff we weren’t quite as keen on as many might expect (we like our Ned a tad more manly than this)…

Nonetheless it was all good fun, with lots of lovely peeps to natter with over a vino or two (in the shelter of the marquee) and well worth the drive. We even managed to catch our fave fish’n chips joint a minute before they closed.

Lovely. And then we dashed back to the headland to watch Yuri’s fire sculpture, which we’ve regrettably missed the last couple of years. But no joy with snaps, folks – the rain put a fairly severe dampener on proceedings – and we didn’t make it to the beach, either, so didn’t see Daniel Lafferty or John Ramsay’s work. We’ll have to try to get back – the images in the catalogue look  triff.

The next excitement was the Sculpture Symposium on Sunday (Megsie was one of the speakers, along with Ken Hutchinson, Randall Sinnamon and Michael Snape) hosted by Don and Cecile at their idyllic “Nerimbah”,  just south of Bermagui. Seriously gorgeous spot…

…and what a brilliant venue for a sculptural doo; talk about site specific – it was pure micky mouse. 

The symposium turned out to be a really enjoyable day, and very entertaining. And again, what a great group of peeps.

We even found a boyfriend for Lola (they would have made lovely babies, shame she’s been fixed.)

And, finally, in the late arvo we dashed back into Bermi to catch the Small Sculpture show before it closed (….yeah, alright, and a gelato) – whereapon we came across what we decided was possibly our fave piece in the overall gig – Randall Sinnamon’s Watch Dog.

Followed closely by Richard Raffan’s boats…

All power to Jan Ireland and her crew for another successful show. It’s so much work putting something like this together, particularly given that constant battle for funding. How wonderful to see the patronage of Philip Cox this year with the inaugural, acquisitive  “Cox Prize” (awarded to Senden Blackwood for a limestone sculpture that unfortunately we didn’t get a snap of – sorry.) Meanwhile Gordon Bull, Head of the School of Art at the ANU, also announced a residency in the Sculpture Workshop (awarded on this occasion to Randell Sinnamon.) Onward, ever upward, chaps. We’re looking forward to 2011 with great anticipation.

More snaps here.

Sculpture on the Edge runs until the 14th March.