Art critic Christopher Allen gives his verdict on Sculpture by the Sea

By far the best work in the exhibition as anyone with an eye for sculpture should be able to see is this work, writes Christopher Allen

A woman looks over a sculpture by the Cave Urban studio, titled Transience, at Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi Beach. Picture: Getty Images

Much of the work at this year’s Sculpture by the Sea, as usual, is minor or indifferent, but there are also distinguished and familiar names here, including Ron Robertson-Swann, whose exhibition opens on Monday at Australian Galleries in Sydney, and Michael Snape, who has made a deceptively simple work that appears to be composed of a single sheet with five cuts.

Among other notable works are the spherical huts made of woven bamboo by Cave Urban, a studio that operates at the intersection of architecture and sculpture, and a number of distinctive pieces both by veterans such as Orest Keywan and younger artists like Harrie Fasher and Dale Miles.

MORE NEWS:

Sculpture by the Sea’s ‘Viewfinder’

Emerging China art finds home

There is a special tribute to Czech and Slovak sculptors this year, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the end of communism in eastern Europe.

On the negative side, there are as always works produced in both stone and metal that appear to have been devised by computer and executed mechanically: this is corporate decoration rather than art; the all-important connection between the human hand and the materials, where forms are living rather than perfect, is replaced by the dead surface produced by mechanical drills and polishers. In this kind of work, the slicker the finish, the more sterile the overall effect.

It is sad that so much of this commercial product comes from East Asia, and lands where the imperfect and the random were embraced in traditional art.

A walk around the exhibition also confirms that no good sculpture can be made of plastic or fibreglass.

In the end, it is simply perverse to attempt to make art out of material that we associate principally with the conundrum of recycling garbage. On the other hand, there are a few very fine pieces, like James Rogers’s Baptismos, with its tall freehand bark-like strips of steel that form a visual balance and unite like a copse of trees.

The main prize was awarded to Morgan Jones for a rather uninteresting and formally simplistic piece displayed on the beach at Tamarama, The Sun Also Rises.

Morgan Jones poses with his award-winning The Sun Also Rises. Picture: AAP

By far the best work in the exhibition, as anyone with an eye for sculpture should be able to see, is Dave Horton’s group of three massive and powerful forms painted in a richly saturated blue. Horton is an abstract sculptor whose work, as we have seen in recent exhibitions, is deeply informed by his knowledge of the history of figural carving and modelling as well as a remarkable sensitivity to the potential life of found materials.

Dave Horton’s Early One Evening.

These three works are like a masterclass in sculpture in themselves. There are formal links between them, and yet each is quite distinct; they are balanced and harmonious, but full of movement and dynamism.

As in earlier years, the power of Horton’s work begins with its groundedness, and then develops in the strength and clarity of his horizontals and verticals, against which those elements that are consciously out of vertical become even more expressive.

Formal invention is endless, in depth as well as in the other dimensions, and the deep matte blue at once glows in direct light and sinks into darkness in the shadows, creating an-ever changing pattern of almost pictorial forms as the sunlight moves across the exhibition space.

While at Sculpture by the Sea, to paraphrase the famous sign in the bar at Raffles in Singapore, why not visit Ella Dreyfus at Bondi Pavillion?

We have all had the experience of seeing a friend’s child after the interval of a few years and being struck by the subtle but profound change that has taken place. They have become taller, the shape and proportions of their face have altered, and beneath these outward shifts we sense the evolving psychic reality of a being whose apprehension of the world is becoming more complex and whose sense of self is correspondingly growing more problematic.

This is exactly the experience memorably captured in a series of photographs by Ella Dreyfus, a distinguished photographer and senior member of the staff of the National Art School. This particular series began some 16 years ago when she took portraits of her son and a group of his friends just before their 12th birthdays. Seven years later, she took another set, and now, as they approach the age of 27, they have sat for her again.

The result is a fascinating suite of pictures in which we see young men develop from childhood to adolescence and adulthood. Even as children these boys are already quite distinct individuals, and yet the first pictures are typically open, cheerful and eager.

The second ones become more complicated: now 18 or 19, the boys have lost the androgynous quality of the very young; they have become more distinctly male, with longer faces and larger bones.

They are physically a bit more awkward, and psychologically they have become more self-conscious and even guarded, for each now has secrets.

Ella Dreyfus_Under Twenty Seven ACD 2005 2012 2019_ 2019

In the third set, finally, they are young adults; they have found a new poise and self-confidence, which is matched by a corresponding equilibrium but also a more decided masculinity in their features: faces are longer and broader – the lower third of the face is notably much more pronounced than in their childish version – and eyes are smaller in proportion to the face. The mature person is still unfolding but already, even at such a point of youth, the inexorable forces of age and entropy are leaving their first marks.

Ella Dreyfus: Under Twenty-Seven Bondi Pavilion, Sydney, until November 3. Sculpture by the Sea. Bondi coastal walk, Sydney. Until November 10.