FREMANTLE is well represented in this year’s Sculptures by the Sea, with five local artists joining the ranks of some of the world’s best.
Works by East Fremantle residents Olga Cironis, Sally Stoneman and Tony Jones, along with Fremantle sculptors Jon Denaro and Bruce Abbott, will be on show at Cottesloe Beach this weekend.
Perhaps best known for saving grass trees from developers’ bulldozers, Abbott has been making a name for himself in the art world in recent years, and in January he installed an interpretive indigenous garden at Elizabeth Quay.
For Sculptures by the Sea, Abbott has teamed up with mates Tim Burns and Jochen Kitzbihler.
• Bruce Abbott, Jochen Kitzbihler andTim Burns with Re-Entry behind them at Cottesloe Beach.
Kitzbihler hails from Germany and is in Fremantle for a residency at Artsource on Phillimore Street.
Burns, a regular at Sculptures, has been raising eyebrows for years with his controversial works, including last year’s The Dog’s of War, which literally put the boot into then-premier Colin Barnett, with an old boot sporting the message “give this to Colin”.
Somewhat tongue in cheek, Burns tells the Herald that Roe 8 protestors were probably responsible.
The trio’s installation Re-Entry is a giant meteorite crater; a cosmic theme explored in many of Kitzbihler’s works.
He says that meteorite dust rains down on an unsuspecting earth continually.
“Forty thousand tons a year, a hundred tons a day. It’s constantly raining dust.”
• Bruce Abbott’s moon sculpture finishes off his Elizabeth Quay indigenous garden. Photo
supplied
Re-Entry explores this “rain” as cosmic bodies, Abbott says.
“Their relationship in space and landscape, their impact in our world literally and metaphorically, their unknown and knowness and our ability-inability to interact and make sense of what is in part unknown and often unseen.”
Or put simply, it’s a wake-up call, Kitzbihler says.
“Mankind is not as safe as we think.
“It’s good to realise and accept that.”
An artist talk about Re-Entry is at Replants on Wray Avenue, Fremantle, Saturday March 3, 6pm.
For more information call Tim Burns on 0410 083 446.
Sculptures by the Sea is on until March 19.
by JENNY D’ANGER