Sculpture By The Sea, 14th Annual Bondi Exhibition
Escape. Sculpture by the Sea. Photo Gabesdog
14TH ANNUAL BONDI EXHIBITION, AUSTRALIA
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2010, the 14th annual exhibition, is on from 28 October – 14 November 2010.
See the spectacular Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk transformed into a giant sculpture park of over 100 sculptures by artists from Australia and across the world.
The kiss. Keld Moseholm. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Clyde Yee
Sculpture By The Sea launches tomorrow
By the Sydney Morning Herald
Sculptures by more than 100 artists from around the world will officially go on display on Thursday October 28th, in Sydney’s annual seaside sculpture park at Bondi.
Canopy, Sculpture by the Sea. Kevin Draper.Cottesloe 2006. Photo Louise Beaumont.
The 14th Sculpture By The Sea exhibition at Marks Park, will feature works selected by a panel of industry professionals from more than 500 entries.
Ocean fandango. Andrew Kay. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Clyde Yee
The exhibiting sculptors are from 11 countries, including Denmark, Japan, India, New Caledonia and the United States.
Transfiguration screw IX. Mitsuo Takeuchi. Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2009. Photo Jack Bett.
Twenty of the artists will be exhibiting for the first time, alongside eight who have shown 10 times or more – known as the Decade Club Artists.
Sculpture By The Sea regularly draws around 400,000 people over 18 days.
Evidence – the trail continues. Kerrie Argent. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Karen Castle
At the launch, the winner of the 2010 Balnaves Foundation Sculpture Prize of $60,000 will be named.
The winning work will be put on permanent public display.
Bush portals.Tony Davis. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Karen Castle (rouge)
Read More About: Sculpture by the Sea
By David Handley, Founding Director
The concept for Sculpture by the Sea was the culmination of many years thinking, where a new step in the thought process came up every year or so. Essentially the exhibition came from my wish to create a major free to the public arts event for Sydney.
Null. Sculpture by the Sea. Photo Paul Benjamin.
Like so many other people I have always loved large community arts events like ‘Opera in the Park’ and ‘Symphony Under the Stars’, especially the way total strangers sit next to each other listening to music while enjoying a picnic dinner and a few glasses of wine. To me this sense of community is too rarely displayed or available in the modern world where there are few opportunities for seriously enjoyable cultural activities that are free and not fringe.
A symbolic inscription of the imaginary. Sculpture by the Sea. Photo paul benjamin. Taken 2009
Pretty much straight away I thought there was a need for an accessible visual arts event in Sydney but the ‘what and where’ took some time to nut out especially as I did not have a visual arts background.
While running away from the corporate world and living in Prague in the early 1990′s I was taken to an outdoor sculpture park set amongst 13th century ruins near the town of Klatovy in northern Bohemia. Playing amongst the ruins and sculptures one night with my Czech art school friends I had my first experience of the power, if not majesty, of sculpture. From here my thoughts for the ‘event’ I might one day put on began to turn to sculpture.
Plastic vortex. Denise Pepper & Pierre Capponi. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Karen Castle.
Returning to Sydney, in 1996 friends who knew about my idea suggested i take a walk along the Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk. All around me I saw natural plinth after natural plinth where sculptures of all descriptions could be installed.
When all the trees are gone. Peter Phillips. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Gordana Kezic.
Produced on a shoe-string budget of $11,000, of which $8,500 went to the exhibiting artists in the form of the artist awards, the first exhibition was hustled together in 10 weeks. Given that we had no budget for security the first exhibition had to be limited to daytime and therefore to one day only, but this had the advantage of allowing Waverley Council to see how we produced the show before being prepared to authorise us to stage a multi day exhibition in 1998.
Arte de las playas. Alejandro Propato. Sculpture by the Sea, cottesloe 2010. Photo Clyde Yee
That 25,000 people visited the 1997 exhibition, the quality of the show and the media interest gave the impetus required for the future development of Sculpture by the Sea.
The eight. Sculpture by the Sea. Photo paul benjamin. Taken 2009-11
For 1998 the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG) through the Artistic Director of “A Sea Change” Andrea Stretton, commissioned five Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions around Australia for the 1998 Olympic Arts Festival. This was a huge step up for us and one which artists really responded to with over 260 sculptures being installed among five locations around Australia (Darwin, Noosa, Albany, Bondi and the Tasman Peninsula).
Steps. Sculpture by the Sea . Photo gabesdog. Taken 2009-11-13
In 2005 we launched Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe, held annually at Cottesloe Beach, Perth on Australia’s Indian Ocean coastal. With its sunsets, long horizon and the gorgeous pocket of beach near Indiana Tea House it’s a wonderful location.
It has been an exciting, frightening and busy time and to everyone involved, thank you for coming along for the ride.
The sun…captured. Null. Sculpture by the Sea. Photo Gabesdog.
