Old Landscape: New Garden
Sculpture at Seawinds, Purves Road, Arthurs Seat
March 11 - May 12, 2001
{Sue Boucher}


It is in the outdoor setting that sculpture is ultimately accessible to a mass audience, and three outdoor sculpture exhibitions within as many months certainly indicates a renewed interest in the three-dimensional object beyond the ubiquitous white cube. This range of opportunities to exhibit should excite many an active sculptor wanting to partake in the ultimate challenge of dealing with scale against the O’ Grande One.

It is through these exhibitions that sculptors have the opportunity of realising work of any great scale.

It is perhaps due to the lack of beneficiaries that the organization of appropriate venues for outdoor work has been limited. As for many artists the self-funding of large projects is a gamble of time and money, especially when studio and storage space is at a price.

With the Helen Lempriere Sculpture Award, sculptors at last have the opportunity of substantial financial reward for their efforts through a significant outdoor sculpture prize. For the more experimental there is the biannual exhibition at Gasworks Arts Park, and also the hope for an ongoing exhibition in the St Kilda Botanical Gardens organised by the CSA. Further a field there is Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi.


'Night Figure', 1996- Peter Coloe

Locally, the curator and writer Ken Scarlett has long been a great advocate of sculpture. Scarlett has provided a mass of opportunities for sculptors, developing over the last decade or so a series of survey exhibitions at venues such as Heide Park, Mildura Arts Centre, Shepparton Art Gallery, the Royal Botanical Gardens, and the Alfred Nicholas and George Tindale Gardens in the Dandenong Ranges. Sculptors, their audience and the general public have witnessed a consistent standard of sculptural practice in the most generous of settings and Scarlett’s latest exhibition, Sculpture at Seawinds is no exception. At the magnificent height of Arthurs Seat, spectacular bay views and regenerated native growth provide a wonderful landscape for sculptors to incorporate their work.

This exhibition as developed by Scarlett is a great cross-section of practices, styles and materials and accentuates the diversity now current in sculpture. Transforming his role as a curator, Scarlett allowed 10 mature sculptors to choose 20 younger artists to show along side each other. In all, 28 sculptors make up this exhibition. The effect is diverse, both in the construction and complexity of the works and the conviction with which they are presented. The level of experience between the individual artists is clearly evident, but as seen through other survey shows presented by Scarlett, is a charismatic affection he has toward sculpture as an ever-evolving practice, and the nurturing of young talent.

The more senior artists’ works stand out for their strong concern with formalist principles and values, even if heavily ingrained in individual styles. The results are predictable but with an ease of design and sophistication of form that can only be appreciated. Peter Cole’s Night Figure, 1996, is a beautiful example of linear abstraction that would have difficulty competing within the landscape but for beautiful positioning, allowing a full backdrop of the sky.


'1,1,2,3,5 Rabbits on Wallpaper', 2001- Scott Mitchell

The emerging artists too present a predictably high standard of work. The difference between this group and the more established artists is that work presented here is individually characteristic without distinguished formal parameters. Materials are manipulated beyond their traditional focus and become a medium for greater understanding. Robert Bridgewater continues to painstakingly carve patterning onto wood, resulting in exotic surfaces to forms. Bridgewater’s work, whilst suggestive of nature’s ingenuity also mimics processes associated with mechanisation.

The younger artists generate energy, through experimentation of materials and concepts, to varying degrees of success. They are lucky enough to be able to view their work along side more successful art and hopefully learn to distinguish the difference.

The consuming task of competing with nature’s beauty and grandeur is perhaps made easier beside constructed paths and garden beds. But some works are more emersed in the environment and quite successfully. Loretta Quinn achieves this through the placement of her Dream-Memory, 2001. Her domed temple rests in the duck dam, a most peaceful corner of Seawinds. The dam, completely blanketed by aqua foliage, loses all clarity and the temptation to walk over the surface to take part in this small sanctuary is intense. For Quinn, the environment becomes a very integral part of the work. Simone Slee’s sound sculpture Applause, 2001, relies heavily on the existence of a downward sloping path. From the small rise the landscape takes on the feeling of an auditorium, accentuated once her piece is triggered.

Very few of the works in this exhibition rely on the same involvement of the environment, and although the purity of true alliance within the landscape may never be attainable, it is one of the challenges of exhibiting outdoors.

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