Art experiences range from Field of Light, Lake Ballard to Adelaide Hills and Albury
Venture further afield to find these sculpture walks and spectacular installations.
Venture further afield to find these sculpture trails and installations.
Hills Sculpture Trail, South Australia
Over the course of three symposiums held in the grounds of the former home and studio of painter Hans Heysen near Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, an international bevy of sculptors crafted in stone while locals watched. The setting was inspiring. Many of the seminal gum trees Heysen painted still stand and sculptors travelled from across the world to work stone shipped from around the state, including marble from the Barossa and red granite from Coober Pedy. The resulting 26 works have been placed across the Hills and the Fleurieu Peninsula to form a self-drive trail. And, importantly, they’ve been knitted into the daily life of a region where I’m lucky enough to live. Every day I drive past the joyous Splash by Finland’s Sakari Peltola, and always pause in Mount Barker to admire the works that have been incorporated into the landscape, including Spacial Tension by young Australian sculptor Luke Zwolsman.
STAY Blakiston Creamery; stayz.com.au.
CHRISTINE McCABE
READ MORE: Cultural tourism on the road to recovery | Top regional galleries to visit
Yindyamarra Sculpture Trail, Albury, NSW
There are 11 custom-made installations and sculptures by indigenous artists on this 5km tract of the linked Wigirra Trail beside the Murray River. Each has a storyboard and there’s a smartphone app for extra insights. I meet artist Darren Wighton, who says the Murray is Milawa Billa in his language and it tells many stories of country along its 2400km reach. I also fall in step with Uncle Ken (“Tunny”) Murray, an elder of the Wiradjuri community, who worked on the funnel-like Maya Fish Trap sculpture; the originals were woven from reeds but the Yindyamarra installation is of sturdy steel components to withstand the weather. Other artworks have been fashioned from red river gums and metal but perhaps the most dramatic is also the simplest. It’s an oxidised metal oblong that frames a bend of the Murray, creating a living image of moving water, sturdy gums, and walkers and cyclists appearing as if crossing a screen. It’s by Katrina Weston and its title, The Bigger Picture, speaks volumes about this symbolic assembly of craft and storytelling.
STAY Circa 1928; circahotels.com.
SUSAN KUROSAWA
Field of Light, Uluru, NT
Since its 2016 launch, Bruce Munro’s ingenious carpet of lights has won international acclaim as a permanent feature of the outback landscape. The British artist’s illuminated installations in Albany, WA, and in Darwin have been worthy follow-ups to the red-sand original, which was due to be dismantled but is now extended indefinitely. There’s been a $1 million refurbishment of the fibre-optic cabling and the 50,000-plus solar-powered frosted glass spheres, which create a glimmering panorama with Uluru as backdrop. Munro camped hereabouts in 1992 and says, “The Field of Light installation was [an] idea that … kept on nagging at me … I saw a landscape of illuminated stems that, like dormant seeds in a dry desert that quietly wait until darkness falls, under a blazing blanket of southern stars, to bloom with gentle rhythms of light.” It’s a dream well realised.
STAY Longitude 131; longitude131.com.au.
SUSAN KUROSAWA
Inside Australia, Lake Ballard, WA
If you’ve ever squinted into the fierce outback sun you’ll know it’s easy to see things that aren’t there, but you would be forgiven for thinking the shimmering figures in the middle of a salt lake in the goldfields of WA are a mirage. In 2002, British artist Antony Gormley, creator of the famous Angel of the North overlooking the A1 between London and Edinburgh, made body scans of 51 locals from nearby Menzies and cast these in a mixture of iron, molybdenum, iridium, vanadium and titanium. The figures, life-size in height but shrunk by two-thirds in width, are scattered across 10sq km of the usually dry lake, each standing alone, rusted and pockmarked by the salt, shimmying in the heat haze. Wherever you turn, there’s another on the horizon, like the ghosts of gold diggers and pioneers past. Gormley called it Inside Australia.
STAY Hoover House B&B, Gwalia; gwalia.org.au.
LEE ATKINSON