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.