Sculpture by the Sea in doubt amid budget shortfall

Organisers of Australia’s largest annual outdoor sculpture walk have made an urgent public plea for public and corporate donations, warning the event faces cancellation if it is unable to meet a $200,000 budget shortfall.

Sculpture by the Sea’s founder David Handley said he was informed last week the iconic Bondi to Tamarama cliff walk had been unsuccessful in securing two potential avenues of government funding after an eleventh-hour bid for support.

“Almost everyone thinks Sculpture by the Sea is well funded from government sources. It is not,” Handley said.

“We had to cancel this year’s Perth exhibition and did not expect that the people we were speaking with in the government for the last six months or more would not be able to secure the funds required, and we only found out late last week. We are hoping the NSW public and corporate donors will get behind us and the artists.”

The shortfall comes a year shy of the exhibition’s 30th anniversary, and in the same week as a key arts tax summit is to be held at the Sydney Opera House to find ways to extend a lifeline to the bleeding arts sector.

The iconic coastal walk draws around 450,000 visitors over 18 days, with some 94 works from artists from 14 countries to be installed for this year’s October 17 opening. Some international works have already arrived in Australia ahead of the show.

“The artists have been doing their last finishing touches while we have been operating on the basis that the show would go ahead, and we would get the money we needed, and then last week the news came through that these two sources were unable to come up with the funds,” Handley told the Herald. “We’ve been telling all the relevant government departments we were headed for a financial cliff and here we are.”

Handley has two weeks to raise $200,000 for the sculptural exhibition to take place. Should $100,000 be raised, a scaled-back exhibition can go ahead on the South Bondi headland, he said. However, it’s too late for Sculpture by the Sea’s long-running school education program, held since 2002. Separate to school excursions, the program was unable to proceed this year.