The people’s guide to Sculpture by the Sea: Art, heatstroke and guilt

Considering its (allegedly) almost aborted launch, it makes sense why the first thing you’ll clock at this year’s Sculpture by the Sea is the swarms of chuggers requesting a “voluntary contribution” to support the art show. You might even wonder how voluntary it is after you’ve been asked if you’ve contributed more than five times within your first 10 minutes there. Is this a soft launch for a future admission fee? Tony Burke probably hopes so.

Ironically, people seem prepared to pay to keep the art show free. Everyone loves sculptures, just like everyone hates the shame of being a freeloading scumbag. One of the volunteers told me he’d seen people strong-arming their friends into chipping in, and kids running up to EFTPOS machines with their parents’ Google Wallets wide open. Fun for the whole family!

If there’s not a giant piggy bank sculpture at next year’s show, I’ll be surprised. But for now, let’s get on with this year’s show.

The artist’s way

Tim Storrier’s Splotcher opens the exhibition at the Bondi end, a sculpture of an artist clutching a paintbrush and bucket, in a furiously determined pose, wearing a dunce cap with the word “IDIOT” on it. It’s so life-like that two onlookers near me questioned if it was a street performer, waved their hands in front of its face, and awaited a reaction. This is what TikTok prank videos have done to us.

You could say it’s odd to start an art exhibition with a work that labels artists as idiots, but maybe it’s just a self-deprecating jab at the tumultuous life artists have chosen for themselves: a life that involves relying on NRMA and kids with Google Wallets just to have a place to show your work.

Over at Marks Park, NSW artist Dale Miles offers a more generous view of the artist’s life with his work Open Studio, in which he turns his studio space into a living installation so passersby can watch him happily at work. It’s maybe too conceptual for most: I watched almost everyone walk right by it without a sideward glance, seemingly unaware it was an art piece, on their way to the food truck serving overpriced churros. There’s another potential revenue stream for the event: start fining people for such blatant disrespect.

Bigger is better

This year’s showstopper is Andrew Cullen’s Rustle, a massive 11m-long water dragon made from intricately panelled recycled timber. It basks gloriously in the ridiculous 40-degree heat of mid-October, just to further remind you that us warm-bloods are doomed.

On a similar scale is Brazilian artist Geraldo Zamproni’s Vital Threads, a giant needle piercing its way through the cliffside, similar to the big red pencil he displayed in the same spot in 2019. Annoyingly, he’s had it installed sideways, so you’ll have to jog half a kilometre down the road just to get the eye of the needle in one of your phone snaps.

The ‘Boot’, that giant sandstone rock near the Bondi end of the walk, this year belongs to Sydney/Perth-based artist Kasane Low. Her work, Indra’s Net, covers the rock in marine netting dotted with 500 porcelain fortune cookies. “Fortunes contained within the cookies reveal boundless hope and possibility,” says her artist’s statement, and yet all I can see is a beached whale trapped in a fishing net, covered in barnacles. Do I need medication?

Line up for the photo-ops

NSW artist Drew McDonald, who won both the people’s choice and kids’ choice awards last year with his Dadaist half-banana/half-shark work Sharnana, is back at it with SOMA, the most memorably absurd image at this year’s event. It features two dolphins diving out of a shiny red toaster, which sits on a sandstone plinth. Like the banana-shark, you could stand there racking your brains about what it all means (a comment on warming oceans?) or you could just stare wondrously and enjoy it.

The Power of Knowledge, from Chinese artist LuLu, is a tilted seesaw with a giant boulder on one side and a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations weighing down the other. As far as statements go, it’s about as subtle as the boulder. But it won’t stop kids or, say, a gentle reviewer who’s just trying to do his job from trying to climb the seesaw and then drawing shame on himself and his publication when he’s berated to “don’t touch!” by a volunteer.

Graeme Pattinson’s Phone Zone, a bright red TARDIS filled with vintage telephones, is more hands on. I saw a steady stream of bored grandchildren getting an education on what “phones looked like in my day” and learning the unnecessary phrase “Maxwell Smart’s phone shoe”. And everyone says kids are the ones obsessed with phones!

Begrudgement, a bronze statue by Canadian artist Ruth Abernethy from her wider series Declarations of Interdependence, speaks to my bitter soul. Two grumpy figures with bowl cuts and sullen expressions hover back-to-back, as though they’d rather be anywhere else. There’s a comic quality to the work that tips it enjoyably towards whimsy, so much that you wanna lean right there with them, your own little circle of annoyance.

Lucy Barker and Jane Gillings’ Ways of Seeing is another interactive favourite, featuring kaleidoscopes made from salvaged 44-gallon drums. You’ll be queuing beside it for what feels like hours, waiting while all the dorks get their selfies in an Insta-worthy mosaic. (Yes, I did it too, obviously.)

Elegance in action

Japanese artist Keizo Ushio, returning for the 25th consecutive year, again showcases his elegant touch. Oushi Zokei – Flight is an astounding twist of black granite, atop rugged Japanese sandstone, that brings to mind a whale’s tail poking from the sea.

James Rogers Siren’s Song, a steel sculpture bursting with fluidity and movement, won the $70,000 main prize. Even better, his artist’s statement – “Saltwater washes away disappointments among other things” – is a quote from Master and Commander, every discerning cinephile’s favourite sea movie.

Further down the coastline is South Australian artist Georgina Mills’ Unseen, a sculpture honouring the “the wisdom and dignity of the ageing woman”. An elderly woman in a swimsuit, forged from acrylic resin, sits atop a marble pylon in quiet poise, passing judgement on anyone who dares stop for a selfie. “I’ve been swimming these ocean pools longer than you’ve been alive!” I can hear her yelling at me.

Spooky season

Kerry Cannon’s Envy might be the most fantastical sculpture on display, in a foreboding Brothers Grimm kind of way. Featuring the flat facade of a church surrounded by flying goblins, it’s inspired by Goya’s nightmarish Los Caprichos etchings, which will help you understand why you’re immediately creeped out by it.

Further down the road sits Iraq/WA artist Ayad Alqaragholli’s For Peace, a bronze and stainless steel lounge chair that sits by the Tamarama cliffside with a Poe-esque raven perched on its arm. As I waited to take my turn on the seat, I overheard the artist telling an onlooker that “Picasso was wrong about the raven”, which is exactly the kind of thing you want to overhear an artist say. Now I just need someone to tell me what it means.

Sculpture by the Sea runs between Bondi and Tamarama until November 3.