This year marks the 25th Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi, and the crowds have grown from 25,000 at the first event to about half a million visitors. One of the works on display in 2023 is "The Past is Just Behind" by Jenolan sculptor Ingrid Morley. She has exhibited six or seven times before, but this is the first for about fifteen years.
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Morley lives and works under the shadow of tall pine trees near Oberon, and in this place of extremes in temperature and light, forestry and nature, mountains and caves, she creates monumental sculptural work from steel that surrounds her studio.
Artists are often asked about how they get their inspiration for their work. It's a difficult question to answer, but Morley had a go.
"I get my inspiration from visual cues, the landscape and the things around me. For this work I found myself looking at machines, particularly earthmoving machines, and that is the origin of the industrial appearance of the work," she said.
Ingid says that she remembers the words from Alfred Tennyson's poem "Ulysses":
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life."
"For this work I took materials which were rusted and abandoned and made something new," she said.
In the process of developing the work Morley worked across incremental scales. Working first with card she created a small maquette, followed by a larger steel maquette at 1.3 metres high. This then evolved into a monumental sculpture of 2.6 metres high. The gradation of scale was critical to the imagining and evolution of the work. "I just thought I have to make a statement about being alive. And I made this work the scale that I thought it should be."
There was also an emotional inspiration for this work, and it's reflected in the name "The Past is Just Behind".
As well as losing a friend in an accident, Morley lost her studio and storage and the memories that go with them in the 2019 fires.
"The drawings and sculpture have acted as restorative pieces for me. They are an expression of joy after a period of grief and the ensuing struggle to find the momentum to move forward," she said.
"They are very much trying to find a way from the past and finding something completely fresh. It is almost amputating the past, cutting it off. Even though it doesn't, because you carry it anyway."
Sculpture seems to attract more criticism than other artistic ventures like painting or music.
"I think this is because much sculpture is exhibited in public places, but paintings, music and so on are often in places where you have to voluntarily go to be exposed, often by invitation," she said.
"Statues are right there in front of you and can't really be avoided. Architecture can be seen as a form of art and the same thing applies there - you can't not see a building."
When asked about the life of a professional artist, Morley thought about the reaction to an artist's work. "You don't have to understand what an artwork is about, because the observer can bring their own experiences and emotions to their own interpretation. I worry when I see people on gallery tours with headphones on being told what each painting is about while limiting the time in front of each work. Not everyone likes the same thing, but art is supposed to be challenging and emotional."
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi runs from October 21- November 5. Ingrid Morley's work has recently been on display at the Orange Regional Gallery and at Sculptures in the Garden in Mudgee. She is represented by Defiance Gallery in Paddington, and a new exhibition of her work will be opening there on November 18.
