2023 Sculpture Prize

...if you wish long enough, hard enough and you
travel over the seas in the dark of night you may

find in the early morning the elusive and non-
existing, the hope of something...If you do, cast it in

stone to carry home and keep forever...
This elephant is part of my wider artistic practice
which poses a phenomenological consideration of
the psychological feeling of ‘out-of-placeness’.

“Weedy” is, on face value, the translocation of a
delicate underwater scene to land – my
representation of a beautiful weedy sea dragon. It
is also a product of my exploration with the
materials of metal and glass – playing with the
movements of currents and the combinations of
colours and rust.

I wanted to build a timber sphere that a person
could sit inside. I imagine it safely suspended from
the branch of a tall tree, so a future participant can
swing to and fro.

​Decades ago walking on the south coast of
Tasmania, while snorkelling in a secluded lagoon, I
noticed a small group of black duck feeding nearby.
I attempted to approach them underwater, but I was
detected early on. This sculpture is a fantasy of
what may have happened if I’d got closer.

Our strengths are amplified when we combine them
with the strengths of others. The platypus suggests
that when two beings combine, the result is
beautiful. Our geometric platypus is creatively put
together with carefully selected shapes.
Oonah swims and momentarily rests on a rock in
the riverbed, enjoying her surroundings in an
untouched paradise. An intricate yet bold sculpture
in rich natural rusty patinas enhances any setting.

The viewer is initially intrigued by the similarity of
the piece to a common adjustable makeup mirror.
On looking closer they see that the mirror echoes
the semi-chaotic designs made in nature by a
flowing creek arranging sticks or the glacially slow
inexorable downhill flow of the dolerite boulder
fields on kunanyi / Mt. Wellington.

This piece is my take on the ancient standing stone
circles from the UK. As no one truly knows why
they were erected, I can only imagine their true
purpose. Was it ceremonial, religious or magical?
In my piece the figure in the middle is trapped, and
through the use of symbols and sound their power
is drained away to use for someone else’s gain.
The symbols on top of the larger pyramids
represent Earth, Air, fire, Water, love and Loss. The
smaller pieces I imagine being used during the
ceremony to mark time or important events.

​The button grass bench is sculptural yet functional
seating inspired by Tasmania’s native button grass.
The seating makes one feel embraced as if sitting
amongst the scrub.

​For years my sculptural practise has been based in
the language of minimal geometric abstraction.
“Tango” is the first time I find myself stepping away
from a desire to articulate calm composure in my
work and instead strive for a sense of movement
and joy.

The world is made up of cycles and systems that,
like the posts and beams of this house, interlink
and interlock. The Cloud House is a place for
peaceful contemplation by humans. It’s an invitation
to consider the systems that we are part of – how
we are interlocked with them, and how they are
recorded by us.

​I was so enthused by my first sight of Rodin’s ballet
dancers, that more than 20 years ago, my first
sculptural work was a ballet dancer. In my mind,
this work, “Arabesque”, exemplifies the elegance,
gracefulness and beauty of the dance in traditional ballet, combined with the joy and effortlessness of Isadora Duncan’s choreographic innovations.

I'm fascinated by the beauty of mechanical things,
the symmetry, precision and balance. Even when I
know they are destructive. We manipulate the landscape around us to make our lives more comfortable but often in this process we disrupt and destroy the balance of nature, is it odd we are doing this at an ever quickening speed.

This piece celebrates the nature of connective
participation of life, and the safety of being inherent
in that. in valuing the active abundance of being a
self, or in the witnessing this in another being, ways
of living in characteristic pattern and motion can be
felt and observed. our shared perception and
interactivity privileges action within balance and
harmonious relationships. 

This piece is a commemoration monument for all
the rocks in exile. Selected for their glory, beauty,
uniqueness, rocks get picked up from "natural
habitat". More than often, the appreciation is short
lived, and they end up stuffed in the ashtray of our
car, in an anonymous flower pot, or fatally to the
bin. Here this monument redeems with humour all
the lost rocks, giving them a safe and legitimate
new place to stand. You are invited to come and
offer your own lost rocks to the accumulating
installation. It is often an effort to only observe what
we find beautiful without the will to make it ours.

Introducing "The bird said" - a whimsical and
inspiring 3D sculpture merging human and avian
elements. "The bird said" sparks individual interpretation reminding us to embrace our potential, rise above hardships, and explore endless horizons.

Flight is a representation of breaking out and flying free.

​These three women have all taken off their faces,
tired of the effort required. One is nurturing her
own face. The sculpture alludes to the way people
put on a face, using make-up or facial expressions.
It harkens back to the poet TS Eliot’s line ‘to
prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’.

​A memorial sculpture dedicated to the
affectionately named Fatty Blob Bot, the first of a
predicted high percent of Australian robots with
malfunctioning OP SYS’s1. Oversight & denial of
need for off griddle recreation pursuits, healthy
reboots & a largess for random access memory has
sadly lead to increased obesity, morbidity &
torpidity amongst these requirement robots of our
great nation. Fatty represents the end of earthly
time for bots, destined to hyper-reality, up in the
Cloud, in a SAAS4 far far away.

​We know the Dodo is extinct, eliminated by
slaughter. Now the Masked Owl is threatened with
extinction, as we are salami slicing away at their
habitat and poisoning them indirectly through the
food chain. Us humans are also threatened
indirectly by our impact on the climate and
biosphere, which leaves no room for the diversity of
plants and animals on which we depend.

Recently I've been fortunate to be staying in a
beachside shack, north coast Tasmania and this
piece idea is inspired by that experience.