Is a sculpture really a sculpture if you can’t see it?

Inge King’s Island Sculpture (1991), a three-metre-high creation made from steel, sits on the edge of a lake in the grounds of McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery. It represents what we traditionally define as sculpture: solid, three-dimensional, imposing.

But as the Park turns 50, it doesn’t want to be tied to tradition. Sculpture can be so much more; the medium has evolved dramatically to take in soundscapes, light installations, photography and video.

Lisa Byrne, director of the McClelland Gallery, with Norma Redpath’s sculpture Desert Arch, 1968.Credit: Simon Schluter

Lisa Byrne, director of Australia’s oldest sculpture park, says their half-century celebrations deliberately kicked off with sonic art, “the ultimate end of contemporary sculpture”.

Madelynne Cornish’s Borderlands was a highlight, a visual and sound piece about the local environment; she lived onsite for six weeks, making her work during lockdown. In a commission through the Besen Foundation, Cornish honed in on local kookaburras, wood pigeons, even electro-magnetic fields. “That work referenced the built environment, the bush environment, urban sounds, all those things - and the unseeable,” says Byrne. “It amped up the idea of ‘site specific’ ... [with] various visual and audio elements of how that environment works as an ecosystem.”

Byrne argues sculpture and science have a lot in common, particularly in the sonic world that tells researchers so much about our environment.

Ron Mueck’s Wild Man.Credit: Mark Ashkanasy

Events at the gallery across the rest of the year place this evolution front and centre, investigating and redefining the medium, as well as acknowledging where it’s come from. “People see sculpture as object-based but at a contemporary level, it is what it does in space,” Byrne says. “Where we live day-to-day is a sculptural environment – it affects us and how we operate ... Those philosophical questions are coming more to the fore.”

Another example of the form’s renaissance is Stephen Haley’s Here and There series, two massive digital photographs with a sculptural focus. Created in 2010, the images show the buildings themselves – part of our urban environment – and push beyond that to reveal people’s lives and how they operate within those forms.

Hyper realistic works by Patricia Piccinini and Ron Mueck, modernists Inge King and Lenton Parr, Clement Meadmore, and George Baldessin, and more recent works by Rick Amor, Lisa Roet and Ken Unsworth are part of McClelland’s open air collection, home to over 100 sculptures across 16 hectares.

Detail of Stephen Haley’s There, 2010, digital lightjet photograph,130.0 x 240.0 cm. Collection of McClelland. Donated by the artist under the Commonwealth Cultural Gifts Program 2017. Copyright the artist. Credit: Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery.

In the broader collection are over 2600 items, from the 19th century to present day, including work in traditional and new media by Indigenous artists Dorothy Napangardi and Steaphan Paton.

Patricia Piccinini’s Doubting Thomas. Silicone fiberglass, human hair, clothing, chair, 100.0 x 83.0 x 90.0cm. McClelland Gallery+Sculpture Park. Purchased 2010. Credit: The Elisabeth Murdoch Sculpture Foundation

Set up by Annie May McClelland in honour of her artist brother Harry, the gallery’s initial focus was Australian painting. Thanks in large part to Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, a great supporter who lived nearby, that focus moved to sculpture. It was home to Australia’s most significant award for sculpture for many years.

In the last decade, the gallery doubled the size of the sculpture park and now averages 130,000 visitors a year.

As a cultural destination, Frankston and the Peninsula has a rich history. Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck famously shot On the Beach there in 1959. Frederick McCubbin, Violet Teague, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Christian and Napier Waller, Arthur Boyd, Robin Boyd, Roy Grounds, Daryl and Joan Lindsay, and Amor are some of the creatives with strong ties to the area. Later this year, McClelland will publish a book covering the art history, design and architectural legacy of those artists and this part of the world.

The Point Leo Estate and Montalto wineries have both opened significant sculpture parks in recent years, adding to the cultural offerings of the Peninsula.

Later this year, McClelland will host a show of modernist Australian sculptors King and Norma Redpath, along with contemporary Australian female artists who expand on the tradition.

Public art is a strong part of the gallery’s brief, with the McClelland Southern Way Commission resulting in high profile works such as Louise Paramor’s Panorama Station, which resembles a space-station, at the EastLink interchange, and Love Flower by John Meade with Emily Karanikolopoulos at Cranbourne Road. Once the works are turned over, they make their way back to the gallery; the commission started in 2014 and continues until 2036.

The Love Flower sculpture - by John Meade, based on an arrangement by Emily Karanikolopoulos - is designed as a gift to those travelling along Peninsula Link.

Byrne is a big proponent of sculpture in public spaces that can animate a local community. The commissions on Peninsula Link for example, she says, often mark the beginning of a child’s relationship with art, inspiring parents to take them to an exhibition or to Sculpture by the Sea.

“I see the impact of these things through time. It’s not just something that happens on a timeline – cause and effect. It’s through time that the longstanding impacts are really felt and seen and heard.”

The McClelland Collection: 50 Years runs until August 15.