Making art, whichever art it might be, is a research project.
The main function of a gallery is to provide a forum to show that research. Thank you to Australian Galleries.
This exhibition is one part of a long term project that addresses the following questions.
What is sculpture? How can the life of sculpture be sustained?
What constitutes clarity? When is something nothing and nothing something?
These works talk to each other to determine that.
They also talk to the long conversation which is The Sydney School of Sculpture conversation.
Work on ‘The folded forest’ began as the new casino at Barangaroo reached into the sky to look down onto Balmain.
The eye is always absorbed by curves and the sculpture increasingly indicated lineage to that building. We can choose neither our parents nor our influences!
The works are drawn lines on steel cut and bent with heat to swell the steel into three from two dimensions. They employ Corten steel, a grinder with a cutting disc and heat for bending.
The sculptures made themselves out of this process revealing opportunities for both richness and simplicity.
- Michael Snape, 2020
The sentence
This writer runs the risk of tinkering with words as an amateur might.
Because this writer does not see their writing as a ‘central’ activity, writing constitutes an aspect of laziness when more central work should be undertaken.
Writing is very similar to sculpture though. Great ponderous words need to be assembled to make sense and induce meanings and feelings in the reader just like a sculpture needs good parts and good connections between them. Sweat is as likely a product of wordcraft as sculpturecraft, after all.
It gave me great pleasure and pride recently therefore, to have constructed a sentence which had sculptural qualities.
Addressed to Telstra, it was part of an attempt to have my brother’s phone reconnected.
To describe its qualities is to leave nothing to either the imagination or interpretation.
The Sentence 2020 Words on screen
Speculations on the sydney school of sculpturE
The sculptors who best encapsulate the spirit of The Sydney School of Sculpture (SSS), are James Rogers, Jan King, Paul Hopmeier, Paul Selwood, Harrie Fasher, Orest Keywon, Michael Buzacott and this writer.
Other sculptors, Ron Robertson-Swann, Michael LeGrand, Ian McKay, Kevin Norton, Dave Horton, Ayako Saito remain more attached to English sculpture and have not adapted the sculptural language to being here.
The work of the second group is less mediated by the local landscape. These sculptors may prefer to be excluded from a ‘regional identification’ when in their minds sculpture has universal themes. This writer identifies those ‘universal’ themes, as English ones.
This distinction has no bearing on the quality of the work. The task here is to identify aspects which best characterise The Sydney School.
Sculptors move in and out of the SSS sculpture space according to their conviction and commitment. Because of the very limited ‘career’ opportunities within the movement, many sculptors over the years have moved on or attached themselves to more art world friendly forms where ‘individual’ practice is championed. Because the work only looks like itself, it cannot be identified as being something else, for which a viewer may be searching.
The physical ingredient the SSS sculptor employs over their more ‘English’ counterpart is heat. Heat makes steel soft. When the heat is removed the steel stays fast. The ‘English’ sculptor forms the work cold. With ‘English’ sculpture, the heat only occurs at the welded joint, between parts.
The ground on which Australia stands is iron ore. Like clay comes out of the ground, so does steel. That ore is extracted and smelted, to become steel. To become sculpture, it goes through a liquid phase again. This heat provides the gateway to expression. The use of steel is an extension of the place. The temperament of the sculptor shapes it. It is a primordial process, instinctive and reactive. The place impacts on the language of sculpture, which is The Sydney School.
The preferred use of steel and heat is one aspect that unifies the SSS sculptors. Steel is also used because it is direct and immediate and does not require a second processing, such as casting. The sculptor’s voice is registered in a robust and durable material and the work can be placed in the weather with minimum damage. The material is relatively inexpensive and can be worked in response to the scale of the human figure.
There has been sustained dialogue among the sculptors to extend the language that the use of steel presents. Through association with one another, individual styles are made redundant. Through their association, the sculpture engine has a sustaining power than one sculptor alone cannot muster. The work of Picasso and Braque before the First World War was equally committed to a trans-individual research practice which was Cubism.
The Sydney School was informed by innovations in the mid and late twentieth century in both the US and Europe. David Smith and Anthony Caro significantly extended the sculptural language. Part of the task of the SSS is to revitalise and extend the Cubism project from which the art world has mostly shied away.
The collective energy generated within the SSS group arises through friendship, competition and argument. The school spans three generations.
Success and market corruption brings about the end of most ‘schools’, as much as neglect does. The sculptors have maintained momentum in their practice by flying under the commercial and critical radar. A Sydney art world that prefers to be dazzled has no time for the slower art of the SSS
To escape a difficult identification with steel sculpture, some very good sculptors are experimenting with more traditional methods such as carving. Harry Georgeson, who was trained at The National Art School and lives in New York carves and casts sculpture. Stephen Ralph, also trained at NAS now carves as does Dale Miles. Cathy Weismann models the figure and casts in bronze. Time will determine which work survives.
This writer proposes the longest legacy will arise through the SSS innovation in the use of steel as the material of choice.
The National Art School sculpture department has for nearly one hundred years provided the sculpture education to establish this language standard and stands alone among the art schools of the world for this reason.*
When this education is applied to reflecting the spirit of place, a long lasting sculptural conversation is possible. The Sydney School of Sculpture is that conversation.
There has been little critical recognition of the achievements of the school. Those champions that were, shrank away or died. It is conceivable that this neglect has served a protective purpose. A writer will need to present themselves soon, before the land out of which all this work came, swallows it again.
All material ultimately does not survive over time outside. All sculpture everywhere is in a queue to come inside. Truth can bide its time as it always does, but there are rumblings here at the back of the internet.
Steel Is a Rock 1999 Michael Snape, Balmain
Harbourside sculpture Show 2020 Judging criteria
Art is said to be an expression, and a means to truth and knowledge. Great art can emerge from social catastrophes. So, by tapping into a creative mind during COVID times, this sense of ourselves and our values may be just the antidote we need to inspire, smooth and offer unity, harmony and clarity. These powerful empathetic expressions give art the reality in the shared message that HOPE never looked so hopeFULL!
As we still have a call-out to artists to express this, we took this opportunity to direct some questions to this year’s HarbourSculpture Judge, Michael Snape. What we got back was not only enlightening, but raw and characterful. His words speak volumes of the reality that we are confronting and give direction to our curatorial policy.
Michael’s words offer a totally surprising and encouraging perspective that we hope will ignite those creative utterances!
Ingrid Tkatchew
[In his own words…….]
What am I looking for? What makes asubmission stand out?
Like everyone, I am looking to be moved, inspired, taken away. I am looking for signs of life. Art takes us ‘out of it’.
That sounds kind of obvious, but it is rarer than you’d think.
I would prefer not to be shocked into taking my attention, and political intent is probably mostly better applied elsewhere.
One-liners are out. Two sentences ok, but three-dimensional paragraphs are preferred.
I would be moved by the depth of feeling expressed in a work. I would be absorbed by that which required being absorbed to make it. Anything too ‘licked’ is out.
The sculptor speaks on behalf of the capacity of the culture to be conscious and alive. The more that culture is reflected, the better the show will be. A good sculpture reflects a cultured community.
Sculpture is not new. It’s ancient. A work which reflects hard-won values will be noticed!
How can our life reflect on that history? Not much, but it should try, and not chuck the baby...! (terrible expression)
A sculpture should show the virtuosity of a musician. It should be able to play the material. There should be coherent language visible. The work needs to be visually audible.
Sentiment, didacticism, and vanity will be noticed and resisted!
Evidence of surrender will be sought. Surrender to material, to idea, to process. How much can you give of yourself before you give in?
A sculpture only exists in the tradition it represents. No work free-stands independently. If it attempts to, it will fall over. Or be noticed for five minutes, or a year or ten, but not twenty!
In summary:
Signs of life. A voice. An urgency. Anything which catches, holds, from which I cannot turn away. Anything which employs the principles of unity, harmony, and clarity. That has genuinely asked itself, ‘What does it mean to be alive?’.
Can sculpture yield to the pressuresimposed by the present?
This is the challenge. This is what I will be hungry to see.
We have talked about the happeningsshaping our world for many artists, how doyou perceive it? Has the currentenvironment projected/changed yourcreativity – has it inspired you?
Has the world changed recently? Does the changing shape of the world inform the artist? Is trauma useful?
I would suggest the more we have to turn away, the more we need to be mesmerised by what we do. The extent that we are transfixed by that distraction is useful.
Often though, we are disabled by troubles, and worries dry us out and exhaust us. The artist, we all, must muster strength as circumstance saps us. COVID though, has woken us from our immobility, our stupefied comfort, our sense of entitlement. I believe it is timely, terrible, and sad for many, but important to make us ask again, ‘what are our values’?
We are more awake, which must be a good thing.
What does HOPE look like to you?
By HOPE, in caps? HOPE is a rock we cling to, that stops us going down the creek. Better down the creek, so much stuff to see. HOPE serves to keep the dishes done and the bills paid.
As a local of 40+ years, what is Balmain today?
Balmain is what it has always been. A peninsula somewhat removed even with all the transport and road opportunities provided to join with a broader community. We are consequently peninsular in our thinking and responses. Thankfully, we speak the same language as the mainlanders. Balmain has been spared the general abandonment of the village and the community.
The middle class has invaded Balmain but not changed it. Balmain changes all those who come to it. Balmainers generally do not care for their appearance as others might, people from Chatswood, or Punchbowl or Woollahra. In the seventies we used to go up the shops in our pyjamas. It’s less relaxed now, but still generally anything goes.
Balmainers ultimately intuit left while advocating Howard, Abbott and Morrison.
Strangely, while advocating locality and community, Balmain people tend to be solitary, philosophical, and melancholy. They have cerebral inclinations, literary rather than artistic and have not noticed, with some exceptions, the removal of my ‘Balmain Traffic Song’!
Thanks Michael. We look forward to the re-instalment of the ‘Balmain Traffic Song’, with ever-more traffic closing us into the peninsula. Most of all, we look forward to Michael joining the HarbourSculpture committee to critique the entries and judge this year’s exhibition.
Boot turning
The sole of the boot provides another turn on the wooden leg of the table that a lathe cannot achieve. The profile of the lathe turned leg always remains the same.
Working from the figure
Working from the human figure is a betrayal of abstraction.
Working from the figure is a betrayal of ‘conception’. (‘Conceptual art’ was such a terrible name for an art movement.)
Working from the figure can only be defended when it can’t be helped, when the artist can’t help themselves.
Working from the figure is working from oneself. When you speak and the figure comes out, there’s no hiding it. It’s like burping yawning crying, too bad if it’s impolite. Let it out!
Let it all hang out!
Working from the figure doesn’t belong to this time, but it belongs everywhere else! It belongs to the past and the future, but not the present.
Working from the figure provides pleasure that overrides these obstacles.
Upcoming posts
The Tools of Seduction
What is the Sydney School of Sculpture (SSS) and who are it’s members?
Still outside art
All the work here at Wamboin is outside. As remarked in an earlier blog post, all sculpture is in a queue to come inside, out of the wind and rain.
The art that is already inside, is the art that has been demure, vulnerable, sweet. Oh. Please don’t leave me outside. It’s cold out there.
That art has not stood the test of real heat, let alone time.
All art has to serve its time outside to be strong enough to survive.
‘We’re strong’, the sculptures declare, ‘but we’re not that strong we can wait outside forever’.
it is fairly safe to say that the art that got in(side) early will be the first art to be decommissioned.
Mark my words, outside!
Steel makes no claim on the viewer to be loved as other materials and media are loveable, with their various attributes. Steel is not tactile. It is hard. Human flesh is repelled by steel, whether it’s cold or hot. It is tech-deficient, seamful, heavy and expensive to move.
So. Stay outside sculpture and you, steel sculpture, you stand at the very back of the queue.
The Book
Table Chasers was shown at Australian Galleries, Sydney in 2017. This work was made from off-cuts produced from The Eclipse, also made that year. Three triangular prisms were stacked in the gallery matter of factly.
Table Chasers 2017 Australian Galleries, Paddington
The three parts of Table Chasers were subsequently reworked as vertical elements incorporating other pre-made figures. Renamed Three Chapters, this was shown at Hillview in the Southern Highlands in 2018 and 2019.
Three Chapters 2019 Hillview, Moss Vale
Three Chapters was brought to Wamboin and made into The Book. in 2020. Its earlier forms, so compelling at the time, are now reduced to a random process. The Book makes sense in the 9 metre height.
The Book 2020 Wamboin
Was the work made over three years or was it made over one? Are the components of its history any longer relevant? It’s a book because it has such an arduous history and because it is so big, like a book is big. It goes on, like a book does with its words stacked up, small letters which make up the small words which make the sentences and paragraphs and chapters.
The Book in the valley
You can make out The Book through the leaves of the trees as you walk down into the valley from the hilltop.
The Book 2020
THE COMMONWEALTH ABYSS
Commonwealth Abyss was made in 2010. It has been sited here at Wamboin so that you come upon it close up within an intimate space.
It has been sited to welcome visors to Wamboin, a greeting sculpture.
The Commonwealth Abyss 2010
Most often you can’t anticipate when a sculpture is visible, or invites attention.
The Commonwealth Abyss 2010
The camera interprets the sculpture randomly as a visitor leaving lights the trees as it goes past and introduces a fourth colour, briefly.
The Commonwealth Abyss 2010
The work is most alluring in its most recent placement on the other side of the dam where it can be vewed only from a distance. It is sited two metres above the edge of the dam so it appears suspended. You don’t have to deal with its materiality or its particular three dimensional qualities. The viewer has less of an opportunity to interpret a meaning. It’s subliminal now, only glimpsed.
The sculpture here serves to animate the landscape. Where we may have previously looked across to the other side of the dam, now we look into the distance and have a longing to get to it, to see what it holds, that we want.
The shed
The shed is a different shed every time.
The shed 2020
The shed 2019
The shed 2019
The shed 2019
The shed 2020
The shad 2019
The shed 2019
The shed 2020
The shed 2018
The shed 2020
The shed under the full moon. 2920
The shed from next door 2019
The shed views from above. 2019
Earth moving around the shed. 2020
CELERY
Road marking, Balmain
What is particularly striking here is the clean break of the lines.
Normally these kinds of lines bend, before they break.
These lines travel fast, or normally when we look at them we are travelling fast, faster than walking, certainly. Generally we don’t notice them unless we are driving or being driven.
Double lines too demand close attention. You are forbidden particularly from crossing two lines.
When you make a mistake, at school, it is particularly galling to have mistakes doubly underlined. Two lines rub in the mistake.
Double lines take and hold the eye.
They have certainty and authority.
Double lines travel in a straight line or they bend. They are flexible, rubbery, like the road, compatible with the way cars turn according to shapes delivered by steering.
Road markings generally, provide the score for the driver, not to interpret, but to follow, as if interpretation and safety are unrelated.
For these reasons the image above is quite troubling. These lines do not bend, they break. They are suddenly fresh, like celery.. This is blanched celery snapped like celery can do at the wrong part of the stalk when you want to eat it. These white lines have a celery length to them, in relation to their width.
We don’t want fresh white lines that break. The car won’t deliver a turn with a sharp corner.
Because the lines are quite compact, they can be taken in at a glance. Because the lines function so poorly as road markings, they qualify as art or at least they are sitting art’s test in the hope of qualifying.
Too flat to qualify as a sculpture, it’s quite like a painting though.
Also, this corner has an intimate pedestrian quality which dispels driver territorial marking. This foreignness enhances the scope for wider interpretation.
Celery
More long bow
We see the things that take our eye. Our eye is trained by our interests and taste.
Derailed train on tv
Fish markets, Pyrmont
The things we see have common themes, with no purpose, no deeper intention.
Balmain corner indication.
These observed items emerge without invitation and find themselves In a family.
Fourfold 2019
That something concrete emerges from that family is not surprising, but no too big account should be made of it.
The Crossing
The Crossing was made in 2016.
I had been struggling to find a way of crossing the cultural divide between my culture and Indigenous culture. I couldn’t do it. The gap was too wide so I decided to build a crossing. Because of the scale of the task, it had to be strong and heavy enough to survive outside, and wide enough to reach to the other side.
This is where The Crossing was made. February, 2016
When The Crossing was installed at Sculpture by The Sea, it was installed at Tamarama, where high seas rolled it over. It was subsequently moved to higher ground, (sand), to where the water had never been and it was rolled over again.
The Crossing rolled by the high seas. November, 2016
The sculpture was subsequently brought to Wamboin.
The Crossing installed at Wamboin May, 2020
The Crossing after rain. August 2020
That The Crossing has found a purpose as a consequence of last night’s rain cannot be read as having a greater purpose.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
It wasn’t so much we needed a crossing but some water to cross, perhaps.
PlInth rendered secondary!
First Coming
This work is well represented on this website. It may mean I like it or it’s a good one. Each image brings a different representation of the work.
The palette (sic), is still to be removed here. What was a pristine plinth has a supporting role now, no longer a starring one.
Sculptures can be photographed from different angles, distances and lights. Different atmospheres though is a Wamboin phenomenon.
Back misted.
Is the plinth the right shape? The right height?
Time will tell. Time will say. Time never lies.
The consideration of the plinth as an autonomous object, without the sculpture has been waived, but I am sure that once having put its hand up, will do so again down the Wamboin track.
Getting a word In
Very hard to get a word in egdeways, in conversation sometimes.
No time either to formulate an argument. When you get the edgeways word in, it’s sometimes half baked. Something to say is something best written. If there are no readers, listeners, at least the words have been delivered front on, without being squeezed out edgeways.
It’s possible that youth, excitement, conversation and progress go hand in hand. At 68, conversation is something best pursued alone, to produce a worthwhile argument.
Social distancing is perfect.
Dear reader
Dear blog reader,
This blog and I, enjoy some readership. You are not so numerous that at any one time you are most likely the only reader.
Its not a one to one, but almost as good with one to none, with my speaking and your being interested, annoyed, curious, aroused very silently.
It is the privilege of the blogger who can reflect without interruption. The reader is not required to feign interest if they are not interested. They are able to leave at any time. It is a convenient non-relationship.
You the reader though IS able to respond, should you be tempted. Your immaculate silence is optional.
It is a new feature of the blog that readers can like a post, please don’t, or they can make a comment. As the ‘blogger’, I am able to approve the ‘publication’ or not of the comment, should it be rude or advertorial.
To this day I have received 2 comments both of which were approved by me, but have not been published.
It’s a work in progress.
CItiesstriveonstress
Stress hurts the individual, endangers the health of them. Bad for those with whom those individuals come into contact. Everyone gets stressed. Contagious, like other stuff.
For the city though, it can’t get enough, stress. Like petrol, makes the individual rev. A bunch of revheads can make an organisation sing, make a city sing.
Stress empowers striving, reaching, pushing to attain the impossible dream.
Actually, we’re coming to the end of this 200 year experiment. It’s too hard. Achievements don’t stick for long. The sparkle tarnishes fast.
Everything in town is a tip in waiting.
Stressjustmakesamess.
Three
Three trees
Three black wattles have died young. Wattles’ lives have varying lengths. They die or survive for unknown reasons.
Their waving here is young and full of the promise of a future life which turns out was a lie.
They wave and the sky provides an accompaniment as if the clouds were life’s vapours.
They died together, went down as one, companions more in their death than their life.
Three conjures significance as if a story is embedded. Even without knowledge of religion, the scene has a biblical resonance. ‘They gave their lives for us.’
The three trees make a unit. There is a compelling unity. They separate themselves from the landscape, when the rule of the landscape is that nothing can be separated from the whole. No one thing shall be idolised is the rule here, at Wamboin, here in Australia, here in the world and yet?
Wamboin postcard a new take
Photos kindly provided here show a different take on Wamboin.
Detail of The Interior 1990. Photo: Anne Murray
Detail The Interior 1990. Photo: Anne Murray