Australian Sculpture Now

For most of this century, abstraction and the object as subject together commanded the central position in sculpture, but, in the restless search for the new, the impact of world events and significant philosophical concerns also played their part. The tradition of object- making as central to sculpture was put aside in favour of exciting, but non-sculptural, innovation, and the existence of sculpture as a discrete activity was put under sustained attack. For at least the last decade, various other forms of art-making have taken over and become the cuckoo in the nest of sculpture proper, usurping Its identity and diminishing Its vitality.

By the beginning of the 1980s It was apparent that there was a desperate need to throw these non-sculptural cuckoos from the nest and permit sculpture to reassert Itself as an independent activity within the range of other art activities. The work included in the Second Australian Sculpture Triennial and illustrated here, has been chosen because it seemed to do just that; to confirm the persistence of those qualities traditionally associated with sculpture, to reveal the continuing vitality of sculpture from generation to generation, and tentatively to suggest the direction in which sculpture in this country is now moving.

Before making such a selection it was clearly necessary to find a new, flexible definition of the category ‘sculpture’. While perhaps there Is only one ‘sculpture’ which presents itself in multiple forms over time, a more precise definition was needed, something altogether better than that resounding tautology, ‘Sculpture is what sculptors do’. Given that there are no universal parameters for sculpture and that there can be no comprehensive definition to cover all cases, the best one could hope to do was to circle closer and closer towards what one felt to be the essential core of sculptural practice and meaning. Only then, and upon the basis of perceived developments, could a revised definition be attempted and a coherent body of work selected for exhibition.

Sourced from; Graeme Sturgeon, Australian Sculpture Now: Second Australian Sculpture Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, 1984, p.4