For over 15 years, Sculpture By The Sea has transformed the iconic Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk into a stunning outdoor sculpture exhibition. This year it promises to be quite literally bigger and better than ever, featuring over a hundred stunning works by both established and emerging artists from Australia and overseas. Sculpture By The Sea may grace the Sydney coastline, but according to founding director David Handley, its inspiration came from far-flung North Bohemia.
“I lived in Prague from 1993 to 1995 and I went with some of my Czech friends to a sculpture park in Klatovy,” says Handley. “It was there that I got the drama and theatricality of sculpture one night when we were playing a game that was a bit like Theatresports meets hide and seek. I just suddenly understood what sculpture was about and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to bring something like this to the coast of Australia?’”
One of the best parts of the exhibition is that anyone can attend, regardless of budget. “I just thought that the world needed more free things,” Handley explains. “I really wanted to put on a major public event where anyone could turn up and enjoy the exhibition without having to spend a single cent.”
This isn’t the only way in which Sculpture By The Sea gives back. In addition to grants and cash prizes that the artists themselves are awarded, public programs are put in place to ensure that as many people as possible can enjoy the show. One of the most important of these is the Tactile Tours for the visually impaired.
“I thought that this was a very special way that we could contribute to people who are blind or visually impaired,” says the director. “It’s an aspect of the show that I would like to expand upon considerably. We don’t have the funds to do that at the level that we would like to. What we do with this and our Disabled Access Program is actually at a financial loss to our organisation, but it’s very important for us.”
Unfortunately, this is an often-heard story when it comes to arts programs. Despite the fact that Sculpture By The Sea offers so much to both the general public and the Australian arts community, it can be a struggle to pull together. As Handley explains, “Sadly, in the last fortnight we’ve had three of our major sponsorship and philanthropic opportunities fall over. As we go into this year’s exhibition we’re not quite where we would like to be financially, which is always an added stress and burden.”
Regardless of the challenges, Handley and his team are incredibly excited about this year’s program, which promises to be huge in terms of both the quantity of pieces, as well as the sheer size of some of them.
“There are a number of ginormous installations. Cave Urban’s work Save Our Souls is a 12-and-a-half-metre-high bamboo lighthouse on the sandstone lookout at the end of Marks Park. Then in the middle of the park Stephen King has an 11-metre-high tower called Folly.
“On Tamarama Beach we have an installation by Alejandro Propato called Permanent Sunrise which is six kilometres of coloured nylon fishing line to create the sense of vibrant colour. Then there’s a giant 15-[metre]-diameter frying pan in which, if you want to bake and get melanoma, you can lie in the middle of.”
Sculpture By The Sea 2014 is fromThursday October 23 to Sunday November 9 on theBondi to Tamarama coastal walk.
