Of Poetry and Place
The inaugural University of Western Sydney Acquisitive Sculpture Award 2004

Landscapes, writes archaeologist Peter Tilley, "form potent mediums for socialization and knowledge for to know a landscape is to know who you are, how to go on and where you belong. Personal and social identities are played out in the context of landscapes and the multitude of places that constitute them. To be human is to be place bound in a fundamental way." (Tilley: 2004:25)

So too, orchestration of particular landscapes in particular ways reveals successive positioning of individuals and whole cultures and unravels a history of human desire invested in place. (Waiters: 1999: 1) The formative landscape we remember as children and as young adults remains part of our identity as do the histories we learn which are embedded in the land.

In the case of this important inaugural sculpture competition the landscape is elemental, extending beyond the aesthetic of backdrop. Each artist confronts and converses with the landscape seeking that working relationship between nature and culture that confirms their identity and defines their humanity.

The entrants have been asked to situate their work within a specific corner of Tharawal land, today forming the lakeside environment of the University of Western Sydney's Campbelltown Campus. The location of each sculpture within the landscape thus becomes as important as the work itself, and each artist must experience this landscape intimately if the work is to resonate and to capture something of the poetry of place. The colour, surface texture, play of light and sound, the mass and scale of each work are only fully realized in a working relationship with the site. Furthermore, as this is an acquisitive award, the winning work becomes a permanent part of that landscape, to be experienced along with the lake, the contour of the land, the native grasses and the contemporary plantings.

Sculpture familiarizes the landscape. It introduces a human presence and purpose, a marker, a reminder of our corporeal relationship with place and the natural world. Sculptures may commemorate or delineate, they are part of a tangible mapping of the landscape and they engage with the elements in fundamental often whimsical ways. At the same time the most important function of any work of art is to make visible that which is hidden; to remind the spectator of the fragility and the impermanence of life, in tandem with the most sublime of aspirations and the most mundane of desires, in short, of the human condition.

Arthur Wicks' interactive piece, Surface Tension, has the power to do that, working directly with the site and simultaneously penetrating the world-weary soul. Activated by the presence of the spectator, and powered by the sun, the whimsical boatmen set off on their futile journey. Theirs is a narrative without conclusion, a destination never achieved. As they propel their primitive craft across the lake and back, the humour of their jerking mechanical movements but thinly veils the pathos of their entrapment.

Dr Marilyn Walters

 

 

To go to the Virtual Gallery Wing devoted to the 3 man boat Surface Tension, click HERE