Bermagui’s Sculpture on the Edge

…is to the National Gallery of Australia Sculpture Garden as the Dubbo Zoo is to Taronga Park. It’s where the wild things are. ANU School of Art postgraduate sculptors (Amanda Stuart, Hanna Hoyne, Sally Simpson), together with alumnae Rachel Bowak, Rosalind Lemoh, and Jacqui Bradley and erstwhile Graduate Convenor Nigel Lendon, all headed east to participate in the weekend’s events. And refugee from Sculpture to Glass Workshop, alumnus Phil Spellman was also an invited artist, and Rachel and Nigel also spoke at the Sunday Symposium.

Curiously, the metaphor of the edge stimulated the Canberra artists to contribute works which evoked limits and boundaries in more ways than one. Testing the limits of the park-like setting of Bermagui’s Endeavour Point Headland, Amanda Stuart’s pack of wild dogs (Bush Pack) tore along the edge of the escarpment beyond the lawn, causing fright to the local puppies and their owners, reminding us of forms of life beyond the city limits. Hannah Hoyne’s spectacular Soulsearchanaut about to be Born is an angelic astronaut in a bubble threatening to fly out over the bay, towards Mt Dromedary. And sculpture graduate Rachel Bowak’s work Container terrorized the grey nomads in the caravan park next door with simultaneous images of paradise, and a way to get there… Cryogenics is not everyone’s idea of the perfect holiday destination!

Your reporter thought he was hallucinating when his view of the Bermagui Community Centre Hall from the world-famous Bermagui Gelati Clinic was momentarily eclipsed by some of the participants in the Bermagui Seaside fair, which was all happening at the same time. When the effects of his extraordinary gelato (fig with lemon lime and bitters) had worn off, he visited the site of the second part of the Sculpture event, an exhibition of small scale works.

Here he found Sally Simpson’s work Duality B , the Islamic reference of which complemented the Christian iconography of her other work. And Rosalind Lemoh put her fist down with Hands Like a Hammer, one of the three works she contributed to the exhibition.

Now click across to glasscentralcanberra and ArtWranglers for more images and commentary…