Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe 2015

Welcome to the 69 exhibiting sculptors from 10 countries across the world whose works will be viewed by an estimated 200,000 visitors over three weeks. In particular welcome to the 28 exhibiting with us for the first time and Tim MacFarlane Reid (WA) who becomes just the third artist to join our Decade Club, having exhibited 10 times since the exhibition began in 2005. We are pleased to present an exhibition with 51 sculptures that are being shown for the first time in Australia, including three works by highly regarded Chinese sculptors Wang Shugang, Chen Wenling and Wendi Zhang, alongside renowned Czech artist David Černý who is exhibiting in Perth for the first time. The popularity of Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe with international artists and Japanese artists in particular, sees nine artists from Japan in this year's exhibition and many more who wished to exhibit. This prompted us to ask Keizo Ushio, who has exhibited every year since 2005, to write this year's catalogue essay on the attraction of the exhibition for Japanese artists. Thank you to this year's Curatorial Panel: Dr. Michael Hill; Julienne Penny; Dr Nien Schwarz; and Prof. Ted Snell for reviewing the hundreds of artist submissions. Lastly, thank you to our 11 full time and 4 part time staff in Perth and Sydney who work all year round to bring you Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe and to our Board under the Chairmanship of Andrew Bell SC. David Handley, Founding Director.

David Černý is a Czech sculptor whose works can be seen in many locations in Prague. His works tend to be controversial. was Born in Prague, Černý gained notoriety in 1991 by painting a Soviet tank pink, to serve as a war memorial in central Prague. As the Monument to Soviet tank crews was still a national cultural monument at that time, his act of civil disobedience was considered 'hooliganism' and he was briefly arrested. Another of Černý's conspicuous contributions to Prague is 'Tower Babies', a series of cast figures of crawling infants attached to Žižkov Television Tower. In 2000, Černý won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. In 2005, Černý created Shark, an image of Saddam Hussein in a tank of formaldehyde. The work was presented at the Prague Biennale 2 that same year. The work is a direct parody of a 1991 work by Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. In 2006, the work was banned twice, first in Middelkerke, Belgium, then in Bielsko-Biała, Poland. For the 2012 Summer Olympics Černý created 'London Booster', a double decker bus with mechanical arms for doing push-ups.

Virginia King’s sculpture celebrates life in the South Pacific. She draws attention to the beauty and fragility of the Earth’s eco-systems by magnifying and abstracting the scale and complexity of natural life forms. Her works are informed by mythology, history, science and literature, and express concerns about ecology and survival and the delicate balance between sustainability and progress. In 2015 King installed Wakatipu Vessel in Queenstown, New Zealand. She has also commissioned works for Hobsonville Wharf in Auckland, Ohinetahi in Governors Bay, Canberra Airport, Lambton Quay in Wellington, and Docklands Park in Melbourne. She has exhibited in Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke Island three times and won People’s Choice Awards for Matiatia Frond, 2003, Nautilus Whispers, 2007, and Radiolaria, 2011. King was a Distinguished Invited Artist at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi in 2010, and previously exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe in 2011. A pivotal experience in King’s life was being awarded an Antarctic Artist Fellowship in 1999. The visit to Antarctica allowed her to focus on the food chain and the microsphere and to reinforce her ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship.

Wang Shugang lives and works in Beijing. His works are internationally known and exhibited. In 2015 he joined the 'China Arte Brasil' in Sao Paolo, and has exhibited at Art Cologne in Germany and Art14 in London.

During the 1990s Shugang lived in Germany for over a decade and chose Essen and Duisburg, two former industrial hotspots in the so called Ruhr area, as the center of his life. It was there he first made close contact with western art: 20th century modern as well as German Expressionism, which had a sustainable influence and can still be seen in his work today. In 2014, he received the Ernst Barlach Award. Shugang finds his subjects in China. With his works he references the social life of the 'simple' or 'small people', and the loss of individualism in a faster and faster turning world.  

Stormie Mills first gave voice to the lost souls of the cityscape back in 1984.

In the three decades since, he has created an evocative collection of characters inspired by and deeply connected to the street.

His creative journey began in the forgotten corners of our cities, the abandoned buildings and broken back lanes provided a canvas.

As his practice developed, Stormie’s iconic characters found their way into the galleries and homes of collectors around Australia and the world.

Stormie’s palette is sharply monochromatic.

Black represents dirt, white speaks of erasure, grey is drawn from the cityscape and silver the language of dreams.

The works draw on a deep sense of isolation and yet each character seems to carry a message of hope.

These opposing elements in Stormie’s practice imbue his characters with a palpable presence and humanity.

And when art captures the tenderness of the human condition people connect with it.

Testament to this is the significant expansion of Stormie’s collector base in Australia in the past five years and his sold out shows in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.

His whimsical works are represented in galleries around Australia and Stormie’s private and public commissions light up streetscapes from Perth to Scotland to downtown Richmond USA.

In 2013 Stormie ventured into the world of three dimensions, transforming his iconic Bunnyman character into a series of four-metre high pop figurines that populated the streets of Brisbane for the city’s annual festival.

Visitors to Melbourne can immerse themselves in Stormie’s creative energy when they stay at The Cullen in Prahran.

The Street Art Suite was a groundbreaking commission for Stormie as it was the first time the Art Series Hotel Group had worked with an Australian street artist.

It put Stormie among a select group of international practitioners, who have a suite to their name, including D*FACE, Swoon and Blek le Rat. It’s not just Stormie’s art that has fostered a strong following, his compelling personal story and with his passion for his practice has made him a sought after speaker.

He took centre stage at FORM Gallery’s inaugural #PUBLICPerth street art festival in 2014 and he spoke at the world’s most respected design festival, the AG Ideas conference in 2012.

Stormie’s extensive portfolio has been captured in two beautiful volumes, Proximamente from 2007 and Dwi Yma, which was published in 2013.

 

 

 

Two person team Olivia Samec and James Moe are based in Fremantle Western Australia.

Life by the beach and constant travel to spectacular Western Australian beaches inspire nature based themes in their work. Samec and Moe have spent seven years living in remote Aboriginal Communities in WA‘s Western Desert and NT’s Arnhem Land, where they were able to sit with senior East Arnhem artists for long periods of time which has added another dimension of understanding of where and how they live. Works have been have been selected  to exhibit consistently for the last few years in Sculptures by the Sea Cottesloe 2014, 2011, 2010  as well as Castaways Sculpture Awards, and the inaugural Sculpture@Bathers Exhibition. Both have a deep respect for the marine environment.

Wendi Zhang graduated from the Northeast Normal University (Fine Arts College of Art and Design) with a master's degree. She has participated in many international and domestic sculpture exhibitions and has been awarded numerous prizes. Zhang uses steel mesh to explore, understand and create a visual language, forming unique points of view to form her personal artistic style. The soft natural shapes and hazy texture adopted in Zhang’s flamingos allow the eye to jump easily from one form to another. She uses a Chinese red pigment to increase and strengthen the visual impact. Her aim is to build a harmonious and ecological visual effect.

Andrew Burton’s sculptures and installations are often based on architectural or simple functional forms. Often seen in a landscape, these forms include buttresses, sheep folds or basic vessels. His most recent works are often made from materials that degrade over time – such as plants, but he also uses these in combination with more permanent materials, including clay.  Vessel is built from thousands of tiny handmade bricks, fragments of earlier works of art, since destroyed.

Burton’s work explores the tension between the permanent and the fugitive, and ways in which we visually understand the world through our perception of scale and form and through our sense for material and process.

Andrew Burton studied Fine Art at Newcastle University, England, graduating in 1986 with an MFA. Since then he has exhibited widely in Europe, Asia and North America. His collaborative projects have involved working with cow-dung workers and bamboo breakers in India, beachcombers in China and street artist in Canada. His work has won numerous prizes and awards and has been supported by the British Council.

This is the first time his work has been exhibited in Australia.

Burton is Professor of Fine Art at Newcastle University, England a post he has held since 2005. He lives and works in Northern England.

Norton Flavel graduated from Edith Cowan University, School of Visual Art, in 2001. At his graduation exhibition he was awarded the John Birman Memorial Award for the best work in any media. Since then Flavel has gone on to manage the Cannery Arts Centre, the regional gallery for South East Western Australia, and ECU’s Spectrum Project Space in Northbridge. Flavel has his own business which uses explosive forming techniques to produce complex metal forms. Flavel also works at ECU in the Glass, Sculpture and 3D Design studios where he assists staff and students achieve their visions. Exhibiting work both in Australia and overseas, Flavel has also worked on numerous public art projects and consulted for many well-known WA artists, particularly in technical areas such as moulding, casting, fabrication and installation. "A visual representation of the conflicting nature of being Australian: the positive is represented by the floating shining ball; the shackle and chain represents the negative". Norton Flavel, 2015.

Chen Wenling is recognised as one of the top contemporary sculptors in China today. Born in 1969 in Anxi, a remote village in Fujian province, Wenling remembers his family being so poor that his parents could not afford to buy him toys and he grew up making figurines out of clay to entertain himself. He counts himself lucky because his parents encouraged his artistic talent and Wenling went on to study at the Xiamen Academy of Art and Design, and then at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.The two main themes of Wenling’s sculptures are the manifestations of extreme humanity and immaterial images in a consumerist society. This is evident through his Red Boy series. It is neither realism nor vanguard sculpture, but instead the artists expression of himself to the critical state of life. Following a number of prestigious exhibitions, such as Art Basel in Switzerland and the Shanghai Biennale, Wenling participated in Sculpture by the Sea at Cottesloe in 2011, winning the People's Choice Award. In 2011, the artist exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus and his work Red Memory - Shy Boy was purchased by the City of Aarhus.

Having worked full time as a designer and sculptor in Bridgetown, Western Australia, since 1978, Kim Perrier believes that isolation has driven his resourcefulness and inventiveness. His development of new skills and working methods has been drawn from a diversity of material knowledge, craftsmanship, and technology. Of his practice, Perrier reflects: "I have never been one that needs to know the final outcome of any work before its finished. I allow the work to lead me to its final destination." Perrier’s current work reflects a consistency with his past emphasis on realism alongside the development of a more spiritual process of creation. The artist refers to this spirituality as the Nature Spirit, which has been a catalyst to understand the greater forces at work in our wondrous world. "We have lost this profound awareness of the Nature Spirit and our ability to communicate with it. I hope my work reflects the power of the Nature Spirit, and invokes its own mysticism and magic". Kim Perrier, 2015.