Yesterday, my wife and I with some friends (Jade, Claude and Stephen) went to see the 12th annual exhibition of “Sculpture by the sea” along the shoreline between Tamarama and Bondi beaches. This year was the first time my wife and I have gone to the exhibition (mainly due to the fact that we tend to be on holidays elsewhere at this time of the year) and we were so impressed that I’m sure we will go to it again (if we are in town) next year.

Sculpture by the sea is free to the public and occurs on the coastal walk between Bondi Beach (the nearest large beach to downtown Sydney) and Tamarama Beach. The walk is always beautiful, but during Sculpture by the sea it becomes a wonderful stroll past the amazing products of some very talented people’s imaginations.

In some people’s minds, art is something remote, that is kept in the temples of culture we call museums. The Sculpture by the sea exhibition counters such preconceptions by being so accessible to everyone and as such it has proved to be a great success with the Sydney public. It was certainly very well attended.

Below is a small sampling of the works on exhibition.

The work below is by Rod Mc Crae who was one of my teachers at the Sydney Institute of Design when I studied there. Rod is an incredibly talented man. His drawing skills are amazing and his mind is so creative. I used to be constantly amazed at how talented and inventive he is.

This work is a reference to Alice the elephant who was used at Bondi 97 years ago to provide elephant rides at the beach. The elephant figure is only one of a larger group of whimsical carnival characters.

The life sized plastic soldier below seemed so full of pathos. Amazing and sad at the same time. It made me think about when I was a child and how long ago that was.

Marguerite Derricourt’s “Flight of the Bogong” is about how the bogong moths (an important seasonal food supply for the Aborigines) during their migration from Queensland in the north to the Snowy Mountains in the south, end up being drawn in their millions to the brightly lit cities. 

A bit like people really, when you think about it.

When my friend Stephen saw the sculpture below he said that it reminded him of the best urinal in the world, that he’d ever seen at least, in a bar of of the Xin Tian Di area of Shanghai. Stephen said that the urinal was full of glass objects like the sculpture that one could empty their bladders on.

And I thought to myself, “why not!”

The iron urchins below was one of the few peices that obviously reflected the enviroment that the exhibition took place in.

As soon as I saw the work below I thought of the computer game “Riven”.

The “Fragment” below immediately reminded me of  “Cow up a tree” by John Kelly in Melbourne, even though it has nothing to do with the same ideas addressed by that work. I guess I thought about Kelly’s work because it has a tree with a black and white element in it.

I just wish I could’ve taken a photo of the “Humpback gunship” without the cluttered background so it could be seen more clearly.

There were many more works than what I’ve shown here, but of course I couldn’t put all of them up (damn the internet and how slow it is). What I’ve shown here aren’t necessarily the best works but they are the works I was better able to photograph due to the lighting conditions (shooting into the sun for example) and the masses of people in the way.

Yesterday was one of those perfect clear spring days where the weather was just right. Sunny and warm without being uncomfortable. It was such a great day spending time with friends, walking along a beautiful coastline looking at art. Pretty hard to beat and it’s one of the reasons why I love living in Sydney.