The Appetite for The Sculptor's Supper Club

There’s talk of starting up the old Sculpture Supper Club again.

For those who didn’t know of it or never went, the club consisted of a group of sculptors who shared similar hopes and sculptural values.

The aim was to have a civil discussion about sculpture with comments filtered through a chair. Discussions would be interspersed with entrée, main and dessert, with alcohol consumed at a level to reduce inhibitions without losing them.

We had met from the mid-eighties to the late nineties, often monthly, but probably ten times a year.

Ultimately for one reason or another, nobody knows which, the dinners stopped.

Some of those sculptors now are older. Others have no horizon over which to peer. Some sculptors will relish the prospect of the dinners starting again while others, smarting still, may restrain themselves.

There remains an appetite for discussion and for the meals we enjoyed at Tetsuya initially and for the last several years at Bon Riccordo in Paddington. Where and how and when we may meet soon is yet to be determined.

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The Choir 2024

Outsiders and other sculptors wondered at our commitment to the dinners. The dinners seemed more inward looking than genuinely inquisitive. That is often the way when groups gather and by gathering differentiate themselves from others.

When I was a young sculptor in the early seventies, it was a moment of great hope and vision in our collective cultural voice. Our predecessors had not had the advantage of this optimism and had gone off to Europe mostly, or America where they could find opportunities to realise their personal ambition, where eyes and ears were open and curious to register meaning when it was presented.

By the mid-seventies we were confident we had both the scope to speak and listen, without leaning into a foreign culture, a foreign voice.

In the mid-seventies we were confident that we could synthesise our being here in this new and different place to which our forebears had brought us.

It is conceivable that those aspirations were exhausted by the end of those dinners in the last days of the twentieth century. It is possible that our hopes and vision had come to nothing or that by then there should have been some cultural recognition of our presence. Our awakening had not brought all of us alive to the same opportunities.

Recently ambitious younger sculptors have seen the light and gone away. The recognition of an absence of discerning ears and eyes and the limited dollars on offer was clear and obvious.

What is remarkable about Australia is that we have made work and continue to make work because we can. The making of work is the support of it. Because of the limited appetite for our work, we have had to be responsible for the work we make. This aspect can be challenging however, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are privileged.

Recently, in the last ten years or so, I have come to see that my voice is not a singular activity. I have recognised in fact that if I do not see my voice as being part of a collective choir of voices, then I have no voice at all. Individual strength is always group sourced.

Stay posted.

Armed

Cars often conceal their occupants with their tinted windows. Some activities however, necessitate an open window.

There are two innocent subjects here. There’s the hand that shows it has not yet been employed, and there’s the new beautiful yet unsmoked cigarette.

A brand new cigarette is a thing of beauty. Held by such a hand as this, what could go awry?

By Five Dock, from Iron Cove Bridge, this newness already will have passed. All that whiteness will have gone away. There will be nothing much to spin between the fingers.

Casuarina Floor

Under the Casuarinas the leaves fall onto the ground and like their Piney friends, they inhibit the growth of other plants. Apart from the odd blow-in, this is a mono-species environment. These leaves alone determine the language spoken at ground level.

From in their life above, which was all long and line-like, that character is changed. Nothing is long on the ground. A line crossed too many times becomes a mat. The leaves are stitched together from gravity and from falling into a confined space now. They are no longer required to conform to the demands of wind and air and rain. If it’s a retirement home for leaves, we should all lodge our deposits for room here.

Panda

On my walks with Panda he always makes a point of ‘zooming’ through these leaves, disrupting their insistent restedness.

While the carpet resides under the Casuarinas, there is a disappointing Frenchness to their niceness, which is way too soft and gentle for here.

2 Queues

With the sound of the flow of water 

The water inside me wants to be with that water. “Let me out of here!”, the water inside me says. “I want to go home”.

All the water wants to band together to be part of a puddle, a pond, a lake. The water inside me has no sense of belonging only a need to betray me. 

It is water’s way and cannot be overcome. 

Water is in a queue to get out of me.

There’s another queue.

Water in Darwin 2022

The fat in the milk, the cake, that roll with dinner. They’re all calling out to join me, to come into me, to become part of the fat castle.

This fat colludes to overpower my appetite to be thin. 

The fat is empowered by my desire of it. The engine of my desire draws it to me. I am its lord and saviour. I am the fat magnet. While the water is disloyal, the fat’s lingering presence is unwelcome.

Thin arm

Cafe Art

‘I Have A Thinking Feeling’ is my latest ‘Ciaotime’ menu board contribution.

I welcome the opportunity to write or draw something here, from time to time, that lasts as long the demands for renewal. My last contribution remained for several months. Chalk is designed to be wiped off, so it has been gratifying that the wiping urge has been held back by some agency in the drawings.

Its appearance here on the blog, or its digital manifestation, is relatively virtually comparatively permanent, such is the fastness the blog brings.

The blog presents as virtual hardware compared to the impermanence of chalk.

We are removed somewhat from the physical world as a consequence of our reliance on phones and screens, so that the act of wiping is part of a skill set less practised.

I remember chalk associated with schoolrooms and the dust hovering in the air from having been enthusiastically erased by the English teacher, or was he a Latin teacher? The dust would get caught in his academic gown before it had a chance to land on the floor of the classroom.

The chalk made for a theatricality which was persuasive and my knowledge of English grammar is well infused now as a result.

My other memory of this teacher was in the bathrooms where after rugby, he would come to check that we were well behaved. I went to an English grammar school in my first three years in London in the early sixties. We used to wash off the mud in great communal baths that could accommodate 20 boys and you could slide across the full width of the bath if you had sufficient soap on your body to work as lubrication.

We were always mystified by why he would come to exercise his authority when it was so far out of his subject range.

‘I have a thinking feeling’ needs no explanation other than it seems to convey the spirit, somewhat, of our age, where feelings can so often be always somehow on a downward sinking projectory.

Here, the thinking instead seems to possess some of the qualities that helium brings, of lifting a thing, to make it buoyant and jovial, lightheaded , happy.

To make such a proposition as this is not treasonous but does run against the general instruction lately, which is to be dire.

2 into 3

2 into 3

Panda sleeping

“The extent that I am relaxed or asleep belies the considerable effort made to get me here.”

“It was not only through the deliberate deployment of limbs that I could achieve this state of physical surrender.”

“I also needed to conceive the idea.”

“This physical and mental effort was required to draw the admiration from my hosts, my family, my love, on which I depend.” 

         Panda 7th September, 2024

Polystyrene Dog 110 x 35 x 5cm

The Number's Loss

Against the numbers we cannot argue. 

Sometimes though numbers add up to more than sums. 

Sometimes they are less than they subtract. 

Sometimes numbers just change into something else, incalculably. 

When the number ceases to behave  numerically it can become anything at all. 

As soon as it ceases to function numerically, it flies. 

A constant theme in all numbers is mobility. Numbers always seem to be on the run. Numbers are always in a race to get to the end as fast as possible. 

From counting with very handy fingers early, we moved to the Abacus. Then slide rules softened our mental arithmetic. Calculators, computers, and IT now.

Against IT, nothing will compete, we argued. 

The function of numbers is to Calculate. 

The ‘calculation’ is the equivalent of a ‘conclusion’ one derived from thinking. 

It would be remiss of the user of numbers or words to deny themselves the richness of the best outcome of their endeavours. 

On the way to Bungendore tonight, the dash lit up to reveal this. 

It’s not a round number.

The numbers have all lost their curves.

These are just stiches to sew my journey together.

My truck is a sewing machine.

To all writers out there

‘Keeping’ is the term employed for those who write blogs. They keep them in the way diaries are ‘kept’, for mainly private and personal reasons. They are kept close to the chest and not given out at arms length. A book is written and offered more at arm’s length.

On the one hand a blog is more public than a diary however, the readership is only marginally larger than what a diary attracts. This is what my ‘traffic’ records testify most days of the week.

I keep a blog to cultivate my thoughts but they are not honed in the way a broader publication requires. ‘Publication’ requires filters, editorial control and an overview. Publication exposes the writing to  a harsher light. The writing needs to survive the scrutiny of more critical readers.

The blog writer is an amateur writer and cannot accept a ‘writer’ status.

I will never be ‘publication ready’ as I have run out of time to grow there.

Open and closed options

I would like to have had the patience and focus to write a book, write and illustrate children’s books as Norman Lindsay was able to do. And others.

Instead, with the blog writing I have only cultivated my thinking from which I can better grow sculpture.

It doesn’t really matter what I think, or anybody thinks and even ‘time’, which had previously been the most reliable examiner is not having the best century.

We only do the things we do because we fail to pause long enough to ask ourselves why we do them.

Wearable Art

I was invited to present a work for the final Wearable Art event at Stone Villa in Petersham on 25th November, 2023.

This video was recorded by Stuart Purves from Australian Galleries.

My band, ‘Terrible Music’ recorded the track to accompany the performance.

Thanks to band members Stephen Ralph and Nick Strike for their contribution.

All the works were made to celebrate The Indigenous Voice which continues to speak and to inform our lives.

SSS at SxS 2023

Sculpture by the Sea delivers a platform to show the latest works from members of The Sydney School of Sculpture.

Who belongs to this group is determined by me. Members often choose to not identify as members. Whether non-members, fringe members or full members, there is no show that presents a better forum for this group of sculptors. This group has always been and remains the core of work shown at SxS, and is the main reason for the continuing success of the show.

The International works make an important contribution, as do the ecology and installation works. The inclusion of this work along with more novelty works helps to draw audience and sponsorship. This ‘diversity’ may be perceived as enriching or distracting.

I am naming here the works which best contribute to the debate about what sculpture has to offer at SxS 2023 from an SSS perspective.

They are illustrated in no particular order.

In and Of Itself Philip Spelman

All the works listed here are part of the same conversation about what sculpture is. Without the shared conversation, these individual works would not have been made. While several of the sculptors have no connection to Sydney, they are still speaking the broad language with which the ‘SSS’ has been concerned,.

That Line Orest Kewan

There have been better years at SxS Bondi however, there is enough good work here to keep the conversation alive. While there is little critical recognition of the ‘SSS’ contribution, the continuing vitality here confirms the value of principles upheld.

The Past is Just Behind Ingrid Morley

Even despite a determination to be independent of this movement, sculptors are drawn into the conversation either consciously or unconsciously. We are motivated with this show to be the best we can be, to do the best work. Subjective considerations are exposed on the headland and only the very clearly executed works shine.

23.5 Degrees John Petrie

Australiana James Rogers

Dialled North Ben Tooth

The Sydney School of Sculpture is the result of a sustained conversation about what sculpture is. It is unique in that no sculptural conversation has been sustained for this long. While some may argue the sculpture conversation is as long as human history, this more local dialect is at least fifty years long. Other sculptural conversations of the 20th and 21st centuries have been relatively short-lived.

TV Eye Paul Bacon

The SSS can be characterised as being concerned with making sculpture which unifies separate components so that those parts can no longer be distinguished from each other. The sculptures are mostly open form and observe sculptural innovation from the British and American mid twentieth century sculpture. A common sensibility is applied to these histories.

Cheryl’s Night Garden Dave Horton

Cascade Ron Robertson-Swann

This common language among sculptors has taken fifty years to speak coherently. Fluency is a consequence not of the contributions of individuals but of the group, speaking as one. This ideal standard was set in 1905, when Picasso’s and Braque’s sculptures and paintings were mostly indistinguishable from each other or when the identities of New Guinea carvers was irrelevant when enjoying that work. The low demand for sculpture among collectors here, has enabled an evolution of language relatively free from market influences.

Crooked Men from Hurricane Gully Stephen King

Because the SSS has prospered from market resistance, that suggests that continuing health depends upon that lack of support being sustained, even after the SSS is ultimately identified as culturally critical. In a consumer society, success mostly serves as a spoiler.

Castle in The Air Ayako Saito

In The Wind Paul Selwood

Trust Leo Loomans

This richness of conversation could be boosted with the presence of at least three sculptors who choose to not participate here.

Plinth Notes

We have just passed through a plinth-free phase in history, for sculpture. 

It took a thousand years to pull sculpture down off its plinth. With sculpture from the early seventies we saw sculpture come into the world and we could finally enjoy a one to one relationship with it, down on the ground. This was a democracy after all, where we were all ‘equal’.

For fifty years we came to accept this ‘awakening’ as fact. We took it as gospel that sculpture was here among us for good. 

Over the years this ‘plinthlessness’ has been accepted and employed as the way to show sculpture at Sculpture by The Sea and elsewhere. If the sculpture needed more than what gravity provided, then the means of support would be disguised, hidden under the ground and covered up with turf to match the turf. 

Why is it, that despite this revelation of groundedness that the works often look so ‘footloose’, so unprotected, and unsupported? 

Why do the sculptures so often look like imposters into the landscape, however good their features are?

My proposition is that sculpture more often than not, needs a base, a plinth. It needs an architecture to accommodate it. It doesn’t need a roof or walls but mostly it needs a floor, to house it, to separate it from everything else.

Everything needs a frame to be properly demarcated from everything else. To quote Stuart Purves, from Australian Galleries, (where I exhibit), “A sculpture needs to be shown respect and the plinth provides this respect. Without a plinth the sculpture looks ‘plonked’.”

It doesn’t need to be a plinth that a monument had, to raise it above the merely human into the nearly godly realm. The sculpture just needs to own its own space. 

‘Plinthlessness’ has aided the exhibition designer, who has not had to integrate the added complexity of placing plinths into their ‘schema’. It may be also that plinths cause budget blowouts.

S’epanouir Linda Bowden

Australiana James Rogers

Linda Bowden’s S’epanouir and James Roger’s Australiana are examples of where a plinth would have improved the legibility of the work. There are at least twelve works in the show where this observation can be applied.

For no other reason we know that the life of the work will be extended fivefold by being separated from the ground. Our eyes know that intuitively.

I mention this now because while it may have been noticed, it hasn’t been noted. 

Blogging

Why do I bother?

It’s quite hard to write these blog posts. Sometimes an idea I have is strong enough to generate a readable piece. If I have a strong enough feeling for the subject, the structure flows out effortlessly. The pleasure of writing then makes magic and chemistry happen. I guess that’s what’s sustaining. 

Others, such as the Opera House piece take forever to write. I just know it’s something I need to articulate and sometimes in pushing too hard the writing becomes stilted, like with all of life that suffers from excess pushing. Pushing without it showing is the go.

I get a ‘buzz’ from posting something I’m pleased with. I watch to see whether readers have found the same pleasure, or not, from looking at the ‘traffic overview’. 

That pleasure is addictive and when the traffic slows and then stops I am motivated to make the effort again in order to achieve the same pleasure. 

Some blog posts I share with those I know, or suspect may have some interest, but I try not to pester my friends and acquaintances too much. 

I won’t advertise this piece for example. It’s a bit-navel gazing. In this instance writing it out provides sufficient pleasure to not require audience. 

When I’m not concerned with issues of state or art, when there is no prospect of changing the world for better, I keep those posts to myself, but post them anyway, if it makes sense to me. 

This addiction to maintaining a blog happens in the context of the demise of the blog as a preferred platform. I am somewhat out of date with persisting with it. 

Whatever it takes to feel ok, is what we do, and hope others are not damaged in the process. 

Yes, Up

Yes, Up 250cm x 70cm x 170cm 2023

Yes, Up 2023

The Yes sculptures I have made were never going to be assimilated for promotional use. My Yes sculptures are sculptures and can speak quietly now.

The Yes in Yes, Up didn’t make it to the top of the ladder from having aspired to be there.

Yes!

Yes! is the second of my Yes sculptures (See TheYes Sculpture in earlier blog post). This is the first carved sculpture made at Wamboin.

The sculpture was made from material gifted to me by Janet Laurence. Heartshock / After Nature, was a work made by her and shown at The MCA in 2019. I have respected what she was doing in that work and added my voice. We have a common regard for the surface markings made by earlier inhabitants of the tree.

Heartshock/After Nature 2019 Janet Laurence MCA

From its earlier reclining position, I have made the log of the tree stand vertically and inverted it, so that it stands freely. I have carved one word, constituting three letters, which face different directions. This aids its three dimensional standing and in so doing, addresses everyone in the room.

Between each letter there is a breath of the tree from which the carving is made. We are reminded from where it came, from what it spoke, with its whispering persistent voice.

That carved word is Yes, which follows other recent work which celebrates emerging Indigenous recognition and respect.

Yes! Carved hardwood 78cm x 120cm x 280cm

The image above shows the work deep-etched to give a better sense of the sculpture outside the studio.

Several attempts to show the work in time for the referendum have failed which makes this work a record of the times and the spirit in which it was made.

Toby Ralph is an advertising guru employed to analyse where the selling of the referendum failed. He has made the point that if you can’t explain it, singing it won’t sell the idea better. I disagree with that sentiment. Sometimes we need to be lifted when reason is not strong enough.

 These notes were on the label to accompany The Voice sculpture in The Wynne Prize, which is touring NSW in 2023.

‘This is the sound of The Voice, which has been speaking to me for nearly 250 years, nearly a quarter of a millennium.

I have been reluctant to listen, distracted by the task of finding myself in this place.

I have been reluctant to hear The Voice even while all that time The Voice was speaking, singing, waiting for me to hear it.

The Voice doesn’t shout. It draws you in, and as you listen to it, you find yourself more at home.

You may have run here, but from this place you will not need to run away.

This work is the shape of my listening.’

Yes! Carved hardwood 78cm x 120cm x 280cm

Homescreen

I have just installed a sculpture in a home in Bronte. It was purpose made for the site, in response to the site, to the client, to what I imagined the client might want and what I was motivated to make.

Homescreen under construction at Wamboin

When making a work, you go by your thinking and by your instincts.

The client was generous to not limit my thinking, by not saying what they would like. They trusted me.

Homescreen in different light.

On the day the sculpture was installed, the work provided somewhat of a surprise to the client. The anticipation of a particular ‘pleasure’ was not immediately apparent.

This work was challenging and demanding. It did not sit compliantly on the wall but added an element that was as potent as the building. The sculpture somewhat subjugated the building.

This work would change what it was to live in the house, and by doing so, would make being there different.

It may be that this overstates or exaggerates what the work does, or will do. It was the impression though that I was left, as I left, on the day of installation.

Homescreen Photo:CP

Normally, when viewing a work of art, you want to see all of it. With Homescreen, when you are looking at it some part is always missing. Viewed from inside the house, the sides of the work are hidden by the walls. The bottom of the work is concealed by the terrace. The only way to see the whole work is to be in it. There is no standing back, to get a distance to appraise it. Like with ‘Field Art’ of the 1960’s, you can only see a work when you are immersed in it.

The work functions like a decompression chamber. You pass through as you leave home and you are momentarily consumed by it when you return.

By good fortune, the afternoon sun shines across the work teasing out the rises and the hollows.

For me this sculpture commission has been an altogether happy experience. As I said to the client, commissioning a sculpture is like adopting a child. You don’t know what you’ve got until you have come to know it. It’s a relationship.

Homescreen Photo: CP

Keen observers will notice the title of the work has changed from Home to Homescreen. There is already a Home in my work history and Homescreen is a better title for this work.

The Yes Sculpture

Trees planted in Balmain in the 1970’s have grown to the extent they are undermining the foundations of our homes. This tree was hanging perilously close to power lines, immediately next door. Thank you Tony and Anne for providing material to explore my support of The Voice.

The Yes Sculpture Michael Snape 2023 Hardwood 182cm x 100cm x 90cm

The sense of joy at the prospect of voting YES in the (still) upcoming referendum has been muddied recently by our collective capacity for doubt and suspicion. The NO campaign seems to have found traction to suggest an upcoming negative result.

If our spirits were high at the prospect of hearing and properly integrating an Indigenous Voice, they are now damp.

We are all now damp with uncertainty, suspicion and self-protection. The NO campaign brings out in us the opposite of joy.

The Yes Sculpture Michael Snape 2023

This sculpture expresses the joy I felt at the prospect of a better hearing of the Indigenous Voice. This joy will persist beyond the result of the referendum.

The voices already heard have steered the ship in an irreversible direction towards Indigenous recognition. We are seeing Indigenous People in every walk of life more than we did before. Where they have for a long time been highly visible in sport and culture, the Indigenous voice is being heard in government, in the media and on advisory boards.

I have Indigenous friends now. I didn’t before.

The Yes Sculpture Michael Snape 2023

This sculpture shows, from my perspective, the opportunity we had and the opportunity we still have, to honour the First Peoples of this country.

We have no reason to doubt what may come from a Yes outcome.

This sculpture seeks to make a contribution to the strength and clarity of The Voice, by blowing the cobwebs of doubt away.

This sculpture is an argument for the Yes campaign, but can be applied also down the track, to future circumstances.

The Yes Sculpture Michael Snape 2023

Art and Politics, from my personal experience are chalk and cheese.

In this instance I have found a voice offering a voice to others.

Before the vote, this sculpture may be useful to add weight to the Yes campaign. After the vote, it will retain the same use or revert to art’s usual status.

Reflections on The Opera House

The Opera House at Fifty

Fifty years ago, I embarked on a relationship with my partner.                                                               

Fifty years ago, I finished art school and began my life in art.                                                                  

Fifty years ago, The Opera House opened. I feel as though I am just getting going, which means that The Opera House is still new.

I grew up at Cremorne and every day on the ferry to school I passed by the Opera House when it was under construction.

Every day I was struck by its beauty, as the arcs grew and unfurled into the sky. I knew that I was witnessing a miracle and that I and all who were there at that time were privileged. Before I went to art school, I worked as a file clerk at The Opera House, after Utzon had left and I got to know every niche, every tunnel and staircase in the building.

Because it was at such an informative stage of my life, The Opera House became part of me. The standard set by The Opera House invited me to emulate that standard as much as I was able, as much as my culture could find equivalents.

The Change (Figure 1.) was made in 1987, 25 years after I left art school. This work borrows from several influences, one of which was The Opera House.

                                           Figure 1. The Change Michael Snape 1987 Hickson Road, Sydney

As a consequence of the arrival of this building, we didn’t need to go overseas to witness what could be achieved with our vision and our imagination. From this example we were given the license to aspire here.

Gough Whitlam was voted in around this time also, fifty years ago.

Fifty years ago, Picasso died.

In the fifty years since the building was completed, no work of architecture or art, has come to inspire us more than this building does.

My contention is that The Opera House is the single most important artwork of the twentieth century. It achieves much more than any American art did through the heights of abstraction. It leaves all of what European and British painting and sculpture achieved over that period. Architects over the years have sought to achieve as much as this building does, but the shadow cast by this building is so big nothing comes close. Even all the wealth of the Middle East could not dislodge The Opera House from its standing.

Beauty cannot be employed as a measuring stick. I am proposing however, that this building is incomparably ‘beautiful’.

 What is it that is so moving about this building?

The Opera House qualifies as a masterpiece. No matter how many of its virtues are described, it continues to escape characterisation. It always remains more than the sum of its parts. No matter how many times you come upon it, from whatever distance, it always takes you by surprise. It always lifts your spirit. The Opera House lifts the spirit and it also changes. It is a shape shifter.

The building begs metaphorical reading.

It’s a lotus flower floating on the harbour with its petals opening. It is a flotilla of boats straining at the line for the starter’s gun. It may be that the curved forms of the shells are simply alluring. The outer shell is underwear and the building is flaunting itself. Could it be that this building is not only excellent but also erotic, to explain its appeal?

For its complexity of form, the building reads simply. Even when you are far away, you are close to it.

The building exists as a fragmented object. It is not represented as one form. It is both highly shaped and dispersed. Its separated parts are related so well that we see one object. To be both fragmented and integrated draws the eye, to induce us to make sense of it.

We accept its fragmentation of parts without question. We see one object and yet it is a field of arcs that swing and collide as freely as if describing a dance sequence. You may register the ‘fact’ of the building, but it exists as a dream. For all of what it may remind us, it is an ‘abstract’, in the purest sense.

The building is also mathematics. The geometrical principles from which the building is derived gives the building its shape.

The Opera House may remind us of other things, like sails and flowers. It reminds us also of art to which it owes some debt. It borrows from Eero Saarinen, (See Fig.2) the architect who re-introduced the language of concrete shells to architecture. It borrows from the Italian futurist, Alberto Boccioni. The figure in Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, (See Fig.3) strides exultantly into the twentieth century. The Opera House is the destination this figure was striding towards. The building is ‘futurist’ in a literal sense.

Figure 2

Figure 3

As beautiful as The Opera House is, it is also frightening. It looms and reaches out of the harbour. Not even a shark has this many teeth. We can see the belly of the beast behind the great glass walls as it rears out of the harbour.

The Opera House is like a midden. These tiled shells are oyster shells and remind us of what was here before. From its scattered parts the building is like a ruin. It is as if bleached, like The Acropolis and stands on Bennelong point like The Acropolis stands over Athens.

The Opera House is timeless.

It is a nest of eggs, hatched, and we are the life produced.

The Legacy for Architecture.

Since its completion, the building transformed the profession of architecture, particularly here in Australia.

This building showed what a building could be. It made every other building of the twentieth century relatively prosaic. The conditions out of which The Opera House grew, would never be repeated. There would never be as open a brief to let The Opera House in, with its unproven construction methods. There would never be a budget that would be allowed to bleed as much as this one did. There would never be a government naive enough to undertake the task of this construction. There would never be a country young enough and on the edge of becoming as this one was. There would never be another Utzon, so ready to reap the rewards these conditions offered.

No architect again would enjoy the conditions from which The Opera House prospered. Thereafter, buildings were shaped by budgets and briefs. No site would again offer the same three-dimensional potential, without the prospect of being spoiled by neighbours.

From this example, architects were encouraged to believe their buildings could be equally ‘aspirational’. Because no brief would ever be offered with as much scope, those architects would be disappointed.

In this age of ‘starchitects’, Utzon was more priest/architect. He inspired devotion and even those architects who originally worked with him became ‘disciples’. They had been touched and were revered. By this time The Sydney School of Architecture had become well established however, its principles were grounded more than lofty. This new benchmark was unstainable.

Utzon’s disciples became ‘priestitects’. They made buildings that were ironically ethereal, as if nothing was better than a pale comparison. The buildings the disciples made were nature compliant, invisible, as if only the opposite of what The Opera House proposed, was achievable.

The Opera House succeeds as a work of art but failed as a building.

Where the cathedrals of Europe provided an interior which was as exultant as the exterior, The Opera House delivered an interior which offered comfort and competent Danish design.

The outside of a building makes a promise to deliver an equivalent interior. While the interior of The Opera House is not a lie, one is always let down on entering the theatres of The Opera House. The quality of culture provided in the theatres can make up for this loss, but it’s a big ask.  (See Fig.4)                                                  

Figure 4. From left, this writer, centre, Leon Fink, right, Stuart Purves

As with pottery, a building is a vessel. If the building fails to contain its contents, if it metaphorically leaks, then it fails in its task to be a building.  

When I was working as a file clerk in 1970, the inner skins had still not been fully constructed. I used to climb through the gaps between the outer shells and the scaffolding and sprayed concrete armature of the inner skin. While I might have distrusted my then nineteen year-old intuition, it felt wrong. Whether Utzon was pushed, or whether he resigned from the pressure, my contention is that he never found an interior equivalence for the outer shells. He may have been grateful to pass on the task to others.

Among architects, this notion has no traction, such was his standing.

This interior failure constitutes the absence of an interior. The building can therefore be appraised for its exterior form, which is inescapably sculptural. A ‘sculpture’ is not obliged to contain, in the same way as a building or a pot. The Opera House is best experienced as one experiences a sculpture.

You can view The Opera House from a distance. From a distance you can be enticed towards it. From having come there, you can walk around it. You see it from so many parts of Sydney. It fails as a building because it is sitting in the middle of a gallery! (See Fig. 5)

Figure 5. The Opera House viewed from The Overseas Terminal

The quality of a work stands when it shows that after a time, it has not aged. It is not the expression of its time, where fashions can dominate.

The Opera House stands, as if completed yesterday. Other buildings constructed fifty years ago, show their age, or have been demolished.

We all occupy a bigger space as a consequence of the presence of this building and we are invited by its presence, to share its spirit.

PS. This is a quote by Jorn Utzon sent to me by Basil Patrick

“I have made a sculpture… you will never be finished with it - when you pass around it or see it against the sky…something new goes on all the time… together with the sun, the light and the clouds, it makes a living thing.”

The Menu

Courtney from Ciaotime, in Balmain invited me to use the blackboard and chalk to do as I chose, at my leisure.

I did this drawing, which is neither a drawing nor a poem but brings a pleasure both those mediums offer.

Being that it is a menu board, nothing added to it in chalk or any other material will transform it. How is it then, that the black of the blackboard is suddenly so black like the night and the chalk on it like stars and moons? The signature takes ownership as if there is something at stake.

The words borrow from the menu’s purpose to question the patron’s desires. The menu normally serves to contract options more than broaden, to make ‘choice’ obsolete.

But this is Balmain where everything is interrogated. Balmain remains the seat of the revolution.

The words themselves are spread well. The letters are spaced and relaxed. They ‘breathe’ on the menu board like the choices inside, in the Bain Marie.

Photo: Courtney

Accidentally, without intending, the words are borrowed from Arlo Guthrie’s song where he he says, ‘You can have anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant’. This may be just a retro thing.

Under the microscope we can observe the tiniest detail but in the big picture life proceeds as per normal.

Wamboin Postcard 19.8.2023

Sculptures arrive and are moved to a promising site only to be moved again.

It’s not like shuffling deckchairs on The Titanic. These movements will transform the environment for the better.

Sometimes a sculpture will arrive in a place for which it was destined to be.

See below the latest changes and movements and views from different angles and light and weather.

This is a complied group from The Folded Forest.

The Crown arrived recently on consignment from its owners in the city

Yes. The tilt has been fixed.

Slow Turn was shown in Sculpture by The Sea in 2022.

Brooch 2011

Brooch 2011

Brooch 2011

The Sea 2008

The works get moved and each move brings a different light, as in, reading. A mood will change a work as well as the time of day. The drama, evidenced in some of these photos is compelling, without necessarily being a dispassionate representation of the works.

The rough vegetation is transformed by these works. They punctuate the landscape, to give it a comforting structure.

To what end, remains to be seen.

What APY Artists and other Indigenous Artists Give

We often use newspaper to light a fire. Greg Bearup used The Australian to light a fire, and it went off.  After a while though, it didn’t take. What he said just wasn’t true.

Just so you know, as artists, we all get help.

Sometimes, as a sculptor, I don’t touch a work until it’s finished. I haven’t lost control if I don’t make all the changes to execute it. Sometimes a suggestion made by another person will help me see the work more objectively, to lead me out of a fog I have wandered into. Assistance may offer technical skills that I lack, but need. I don’t forfeit authorship at these times. My work is always drawn from a wide catchment and grows from it. This is how art works. It’s how art is made.

It was disappointing therefore that The Australian gave space to the Bearup story. He wasted our time with notions of deceit and counterfeit when none existed.  In the process, hearts were broken. Livelihoods were threatened.  Let’s add stress to the dispossessed.

Culturally, we have such a fear of being duped, that we were initially, collectively, taken in. Even the most respected art institutions in the country drew themselves away from the support of this work. Sales stalled significantly. Exhibitions were postponed.

We are so fortunate in Australia to witness this work, drawn as it is from such a deep well of experience and history. Why would we want to reject this gift by throwing a pall over it? It expands our view that a Western perspective otherwise contracts. The views these APY and other indigenous works open us to opportunities no other culture has. These works thrill us and significantly add to what we are. They partly make us. The extraordinary privilege of shared culture should be treasured.

We, and all of the world are captivated by these works because we see in them a past that has a future, whereas our own seemingly lacks one.

We should Growup.