UWS Sculpture Award and Exhibition 2012 - Art Gallery - University ...

creation of landscaped recreational spaces, where nature,would appear to be thrown away and replaced by themanufactured in our pursuits of leisure.Other works that reference and utilise found industrialartefacts include Matt Godden’s That and Ingrid Morley’sPocketful of Gold....buckets full of sorrow. Godden captures thefundamental structure of the valve which can be found bothwithin the modern industrial world and organically within thecirculatory system within our own bodies and marvels at thepower of this fundamental structure in life. Morley’s salvagedindustrial hopper bins, were found in an abandoned coppermine near Oberon, NSW. The artist’s very act of interventionto repair this industrial structure once embedded within ascarred landscape from mining “provokes questions aboutwhat we destroy in order to produce.” 1 Gary Deirmendjian’s,seed |sēd| is concerned with the origins of things that growwhether that is plants or skyscrapers. The work takes theform of a concrete cross exposing its metal skeleton. Thisstructure is reproduced in many fabricated buildings withinthe industrial world and at the same time it resembles aseed bursting forth from a pod. Deirmenjian’s work isconcerned with industrial growth out pacing or overtakingnature’s growth, which seems to be in direct competitionwith it and like Morley questions the consequences of this.Found remnants over time indicating memory of the past isobvious in the works too of Martin Rowney and Neil DouglasLaredo. Homestead by Rowney draws upon his archaeologicalbackground and reflects upon, the individual historicaland cultural signature of place based on the artefacts leftbehind. Rowney recreates imaginary ruins that could havebeen the foundations of a former home once located onthe Campbelltown campus when it was a pastoral property.Laredo’s Fence also suggests the former use of this oncepastoral landscape by creating an architectural form createdfrom railway sleepers that recalls the weathered timberfence posts found on rural properties, so familiar around thecontinent. The woodlands adjacent to this sculpture addsa further depth to this site specific structure reminding theviewer that those fence posts were once felled from anextensive bushland that has since been cleared.Pin Hsun Hsiang’s Totem of Language calls to mind theancient tower of Babel, however, this totem has orientalorigins within its design and each brick has been inscribedwith one of the 5000 languages that have been spokenthroughout time. Totems traditionally are a symbol ofcohesion within a community as is language. This sculptureacts like a marker within this landscape, implying thatlanguage is both the gateway and the building block of allsocieties, past and present.Greer Taylor’s Facet is concerned with space, particularlyrevealing the interior space, which is usually hidden withina solidly formed sculpture. The artist invites the viewer tosee through, where the inside becomes the outside, like aholograph there is a visual illusion in trying to create a solidmass that slips from interior to exterior and back again. Thework appears to be making visible to the naked eye themoving particles that make up in a solid form.The viewer is involved at a very visceral level of participationin the very creation of the installation Transit Orbit byVanessa Stanley and becomes part of it. The spiral mirrortiled path not only serves to reflect the environment butgives the viewer an opportunity to view themselves within it.Immersed in the woodlands, clouds, sky and viewer are allreflected by this work, shifting ones perception of light andspace within this site specific work as they walk within it.Geoff Overheu’s, Gates of Reason recalls plastic constructionbarriers and plays upon the viewers understandingand cultivated obedience to modern traffic rules. Thisbarrier/gateway marks an entry point at which the vieweris encouraged to stop and view the bronze bas reliefsculptures residing within the barrier construction itself.These bronze works depict past philosophers, Pope’s andeven pop icons, which the artist considers at times, serveas mental barriers within our thought processes if we blindlyfollow or are guided by them. The material used within thesculpture, bronze juxtaposed with plastic, represents twoends of history, the Bronze Age through to now, the manmade age of plastic.Martin Simms, Remote, is essentially a solar powered neonsign comprised of universally recognizable symbols, touch4