Sculpture Award and Exhibition I
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Sculpture Award and Exhibition i NINTH WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY SCULPTURE AWARD AND EXHIBITION 7 May – 6 June 2021 Campbelltown Campus ii Western Sydney University Sculpture Award and Exhibition 1 FOREWORD Western Sydney University is proud to present Program. In 2019, the University received two the 9th biennial Western Sydney Sculpture such sculpture donations, from Nigel Harrison Award and Exhibition at our Campbelltown and Christopher Hodges. In addition, I would Campus Sculpture Park. Our esteemed like to recognise key sponsors and partners curatorial panel - Kon Gouriotis, Nigel Harrison, for their continued support and contributions Renee Porter and Monica McMahon - have to this culturally significant event. These selected 20 sculptures from a competitive list include: Landcom, the sponsor of the People’s of entries. This impressive line-up of Australian Choice Award; Quest Campbelltown for the and international works has been created provision of accommodation for competition specifically to interact with the built and finalists; and the Peter Eichhorn Family, for natural environment of the campus. Acquired sponsoring a $5,000, non-acquisitive prize, by the University, the winning work will be awarded to either an emerging, mid-career permanently installed alongside past winners or senior Australian sculptor to assist them within the parklands. in furthering their artistic development. The University also acknowledges the additional The Exhibition is a realisation of University’s support of Campbelltown Council and ongoing commitment to arts and culture in particularly the Mayor of Campbelltown, Cr our region and beyond, as articulated in our George Britcevic, who is generously hosting decadal strategy Western Sydney Creative. the Mayoral reception for the participating The University’s commitment to the ongoing artists at Campbelltown Arts Centre at which development of the Campbelltown Campus the winner of the People’s Choice Award will be sculpture park is a further articulation of this announced. commitment to creative endeavours. More broadly, both the Exhibition and Sculpture Finally, the contributions of the curatorial panel Park are expressions of the University’s and judges, members of the exhibition project commitment to community engagement and team, and all the entrants to the competition, regional development articulated in our new especially the finalists represented in this strategic plan, Sustaining Success 2021-2026. catalogue and exhibition, should be noted with The University is immensely proud of the thanks. Sculpture Park. Stretching between the two main entrances of the campus, it promotes I hope you enjoy this event which celebrates community pride and engagement with the commitment, passion and enthusiasm of cultural activity within the public domain, these exhibiting artists. provides a valuable educational and cultural resource for the region, and enhances the COVER PAGE campus environment for teaching and learning. Professor Barney Glover AO DAN LORRIMER, Fault Sector, 2016 Vice-Chancellor and President, Winner of 2018 Western Sydney University On behalf of the University, I would like to Western Sydney University Acquisitive Sculpture Award. thank previous competition finalists who Photograph by Monica Pronk. gifted sculptures through the Cultural Gifts 2 Western Sydney University Sculpture Award and Exhibition 3 WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY SCULPTURE AWARD AND EXHIBITION 2021 Wash your hands and listen up: Art and the lessons of 2020 by Dr Tracey Clement The Ninth Western Sydney Sculpture Award In any scenario there is always more Sculpture in particular has to be seen to be While none of the works in the Ninth Western Sculptures such as these have more than The story of the ongoing toxic legacy of and Exhibition is taking place in 2021, because, than one story. believed. And not just seen; it needs to be felt. Sydney Sculpture Award and Exhibition would one story to tell; their malleable meanings colonisation is confronting, and not a narrative well… 2020. These numbers used to be Looking at a screen it’s impossible to get a be in their natural habitat online, some could shift as they adapt to different surroundings. everyone wants to hear. But we all need to shorthand for the perfect vison of hindsight. And the local art scene, of course, is no sense of its materiality, its heft, its demands easily commute between town and country. Meanwhile, other works in the Ninth Western listen. In fact, many of the stories told by the Now they conjure up the impossibility of exception. Some Australian artists lost their on space. Sculpture requires face-to-face The totemic towers of Merran Esson’s Stillness Sydney Sculpture Award and Exhibition rely works in the Ninth Western Sydney Sculpture making plans, the yawning gulf that separates jobs while some gallerists boasted record interaction; it needs to be sidled up to, leaned would seem resolutely organic if they were on the landscape to help generate their power. Award and Exhibition are difficult. Afterall, rich from poor, sick from well, me from you, and sales. After the World Health Organisation over, cowered under. It exerts a physical pull on caught sprouting from the black bitumen of a For example, as the title of her work indicates, telling complex tales in multiple registers is one us – here in Australia – from everyone else. (WHO) declared a global pandemic on 11 March all of the senses, tempting us to sniff, to tap, to city street. But placed on grass and apparently Jennifer Cochrane’s Cubes with Trees needs of the key strengths of art. Even some of the 2020 our ability to interact with art in the real poke or stroke, even when we know bursting up from the earth, their bright ovoid an arboreal setting. And both Samantha sculptures, which, at first glance may seem to What a year. The annus horribilis of 2020 world dwindled rapidly as events, such as the we shouldn’t. forms seeking the sun, they are clearly the Stephenson’s painted steel sculpture, Notion of be doing nothing more than highlighting the was 12 months (and counting, because it’s Ninth Western Sydney Sculpture Award and result of human ingenuity. Kirsteen Pieterse’s Flight, and John Petrie’s tall stacks of marble, beauty of the natural world are, by placing us in not over yet, not really) of very real disasters Exhibition, were postponed or cancelled. But The 20 finalists in the Ninth Western Sydney ode to damaged trees, Prosthesis, would look Call, incorporate the lake on Western Sydney the environment with the work, simultaneously and metaphorical silver linings, of precarity, while everyone lucky enough to have a home Sculpture Award and Exhibition (Mark Booth, elegant on the marble tiled forecourt of a University’s Campbelltown campus as an (if we care to listen) speaking to our capacity inequity, and multivalent narratives. was confined therein (and some for much Jennifer Cochrane, Chris Edwards, Merran gleaming high-rise, but outside, among the integral part of the work. to threaten this beauty. longer than others) the opportunities to make Esson, Harrie Fasher, John Fitzmaurice, Jim living trees whose loss it laments, this work In 2020 some people scuffled in the arts excursions online proliferated. Flook, Martin George, Akira Kamada, Bec is infused with an otherwise unobtainable Elsewhere, Chris Edwards, a descendent of the If 2020 has taught us anything (besides how to supermarket aisles over the last plastic- Litvan, Ludwig Mlcek, Ingrid Morley, Vlasé poignancy. Harrie Fasher’s kinetic sculpture, Gumbaynggirr people from Nambucca Heads, wash our hands properly) it’s that we need to wrapped packet of toilet paper. Others learned Suddenly, certain barriers to accessibility were Nikoleski, Denese Oates, John Petrie, Kirsteen Songs Without a Sound, resembles a three- uses the physical location of the Western hear multiple points of view and acknowledge to bake sourdough loaves. Or maybe they were removed; physical mobility, geographical Pieterse, Louis Pratt, Samantha Stephenson, dimensional sketch of a horse, suspended in Sydney Sculpture Award and Exhibition to tell the needs of others. A bat, suffering from loss the same people. Who knows? For many of location, and even money, for example, didn’t Jayanto Tan, and Arthur Wicks) were no doubt space. Mounted in a hectic metropolitan hub its a complex story of loss and survival. In Missed of habitat due to deforestation bit a human, us 2020 was the year that we finally learned matter quite as much as before. Anyone with deeply relieved that organisers of the show movements might cause busy office workers Him!!, Edwards seems to have flung three and global suffering ensued. Or so one story to wash our hands properly as public health a screen tapped into the internet (which postponed to 2021 instead of pirouetting to the to long for the freedom of wild creatures, but giant steel boomerangs at an unseen quarry. goes. All living things – trees, humans and announcements posted everywhere reminded admittedly is not actually everyone) had more expedient option of a virtual outing. planted in a field this same horse becomes The presence of these massive tools asks us other animals, even viruses – are all entwined us (like a wise and patient grandmother) that unprecedented access to cultural events as tame and tethered; the opposite of free. to see what is absent: acknowledgement of together . We need art that tells multivalent there was more to the task than a perfunctory arts organisations around the world scrambled This delay means that their works are able to Indigenous industry and sovereignty. And by stories. And we need to listen. pass with the soap and dash under the tap. to stay engaged with their audiences during remain relevant – seen in all three dimensions, embedding his warrior’s weapons deep in For others (909 unfortunate others here lockdown. But not all artworks flourish in the as intended, and almost exclusively staged the earth the artist also points to the violence in Australia, and nearly 2.8 million others land of pixels.