Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: A Conversation with the founding directors Laura Couttie and Adam Stone

LK: What inspired the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, and how does it fill a gap in Australia’s contemporary art scene?

AS: When we founded the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, I was inspired by the DIY culture in our artistic community and the rich history of artist-led projects, as well as a new wave of young art graduates who are starting various project spaces. There is this fertile ground in Melbourne right now. People seem to be taking on different kinds of projects and running with them. That, for me, was the catalyst as well as my personal interest in sculpture. Some of the opportunities for artists working with sculpture no longer exist, such as the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award or McClelland Sculpture Survey & Awards. These opportunities motivated people to make larger works because they offered significant prizes to artists. They also motivated people to invest in sculptural works. I noticed that without this infrastructure, there was less engagement with these kinds of works, which we’ve identified as a ‘burden of objects’ type of issue, which ended up becoming the inaugural curatorial theme for the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale.  

LC: I think it would be remiss not to mention the Mildura Sculpture Triennale which took place between the 1960s and 1980s. That was the first exhibition in Australia that promoted large-scale and site-specific contemporary sculpture as well as the expanded notion of sculpture. There was also the Australian Sculpture Triennale that involved exhibitions of contemporary sculpture in partnership with key Melbourne spaces such as ACCA, NGV, Heide Museum of Modern Art and Gertrude Contemporary. Both of these events existed before our professional lifetime. There are still a number of outdoor sculpture opportunities, in terms of the sculpture prizes in Australia, such as Lorne Sculpture Biennale and Sydney’s Sculpture By The Sea. And sculpture parks, like Pt. Leo Estate.

I think what sets Melbourne Sculpture Biennale apart is that we are looking at sculpture within interior spaces as well, and not just small-scale sculpture, which there are a number of prizes for, like the Deakin University Small Sculpture Award and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. The Melbourne Sculpture Biennale is also not focused on ‘design’; this has been a big thing in Melbourne, particularly with NGV Design Week. The type of sculptural practice that we're looking at doesn't neatly fit into the categories of sculpture that are currently being showcased.

LK: How did you select the nineteen artists?

LC: We wanted to ensure that we weren't just selecting a certain generation or type of artist, or artists from one particular scene. We were also looking for demographic diversity, including a gender balance. We observed that the realm of ‘burden of objects’ sculpture has largely been shaped by male artists, often from a particular generation. I think it was really interesting for us to interrogate why that was and whether that's due to access to money, sales or opportunities. We had to challenge ourselves to look outside of those more obvious choices, and to think of other artists, including female artists, working in that way. It pushed us to consider how objects can carry their own burdens, especially through fragility and delicacy, as seen in works like glass pieces or carved floristry foam.

LK: Could you talk about the theme The Burden of Objects and what it meant for the exhibiting artists?

LC: The Burden of Objects was addressing the various challenges that artists working in sculptural practice face. It often includes the high costs of fabrication materials and then the difficulty of transportation. Also, the fact that sculptural works can be more challenging to sell and artists often end up with these incredible works that they've invested a lot of time, energy and resources into, that then sit in stock rooms, studios or storage units.

The Biennale was also an opportunity to get some of those previously made works out, give them another life and showcase them. Some of these works had been made fifteen years earlier; others had been shown in online exhibitions during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is important for all artists to have feedback and engagement, particularly for three-dimensional works. You really can't replicate the in-person experience through digital means.

AS: When I was thinking about artists who might be interesting for this concept, Julia Gorman came to mind. Julia is someone who's predominantly known as a painter and makes large-scale vinyl wall drawings. I recently came across her extraordinary, playful and dynamic sculptural works ‘Little Sunshine’ and ‘Pinky’ that she made in the early 2000s. When I spoke to her about them, she said something like, “I'm never interested in making anything like this again! It costs too much money. It's too cumbersome. They've been sitting in my backyard since 2007.” It was disappointing to hear because I thought they were such extraordinary works, and this got me hugely inspired to explore this idea and to see if other artists might have had similar experiences.

LK: How long did you have to work on the Biennale, from your fundraiser to final production?

LC: It was such a short timeframe. Adam brought me on to deliver the project when I moved back to Melbourne in early April. Our Creative Partnerships fundraising campaign ran until the end of June. It was only when the fundraising campaign was complete and we knew our budget that we started approaching the artists. We had been discussing and developing our shortlist of artists and knew who we wanted to approach, but from July through to October, that's when the whole project was delivered.

LK: Did the artists make new work or show existing work for the Biennale?

LC: Due to the nature of this being the first edition and having had to fundraise to cover costs, we had a modest budget to work with. We had budgeted for artist loan fees, so we invited the artists to show existing works. A few artists decided to show new works. For example, a couple of weeks before the exhibition, Dan Moynihan came to us and said, 'I really want to make a new work… I've already started making it. The piece is called Site Specific', and of course, it plays upon the idea of site specificity in art and also references the building site. Dan works as a tradesperson alongside his art practice. He made a custom plinth and Perspex box to house a Makita radio. He specified that the radio was to be on at all times, playing Triple M - the archetypal tradie’s soundtrack. We loved that idea and we were very happy to include it. And there was the perfect space to situate the work in: one of the rooms at Villa Alba was previously a bathroom and looked a little bit like a building site, with some of the plumbing still visible.

LK: The majority of the artists are fairly established and have gallery representation. In the future will there be room for more emerging artists to be involved in the Biennale?

LC: Yes, absolutely. There were multiple reasons why we chose those artists but we definitely wanted to establish this Biennale as a prominent art event in the first instance. And part of that was involving artists who are recognised and respected, including artists that have representative galleries. It was also a way of reaching their established audiences. I guess in practical terms, they are artists who have existing sculptures that fit into this idea of ‘the burden of objects’. In the next and subsequent iterations we’ll have different conceptual frameworks that will guide the selection of artists. Hopefully, we will have more funding in the future to commission works and to cover production costs. That will allow us to engage with more emerging artists, and more experimental practices.

LK: How did the Villa Alba's interior influence your curatorial decisions and the way you presented the works?

LC: Thinking about the interiors, each room had its own quality, they were all quite different in terms of decoration. The paintings on the walls, the floors, the fireplaces all had their own kind of feeling. So we did think carefully about the relationship between the works and the site. There were some beautiful dialogues that took place. Yhonnie Scarce’s hand-blown glass bush plums have this luminous blue colour that responded so beautifully to the blue painted decorative panels on the walls. A visitor pointed out that the paintings on the walls depicted swans with elegant necks, which actually mirrored the bush plum stems of Yhonnie’s works. We thought about Steven Bellosguardo’s work being in the observation tower, and the way that the light on all sides of the tower would reflect the silicon that he'd used in his vessels, with the light beautifully bouncing off them. And Catherine Bell's room, where the floral decoration on the mantelpiece and the fireplace and the walls had a beautiful resonance with the bouquet that she carved out of floristry foam. These sorts of considerations were definitely at the front of our minds.

LK: What about public access and engagement, did you attract much of an audience?

AS: We ended up with far greater numbers than we had anticipated. We had roughly 3000 visitors in total. Across our last day, over 1100 people came through when we were anticipating 300 people. This became a bit of a surprise. For example, we had one hundred people come to the artist talk that was set to take place in a room that was fifty square metres. You can't really fit one hundred people in that space, so we had to pivot and take the artist talks out into the garden.

LK: What shapes your curatorial approach?

AS: I have an absolute obsession with looking at art. I’m constantly following different threads, coming across new artists and I really enjoy following their careers closely. Because I come from a background as a practicing artist, perhaps the way that I think about curating is less based on research and is more based on intuition.

LC: Adam and I both spend a lot of time researching artists online, as well as actively going out and seeing exhibitions and graduate shows. Like Adam, I’d say my approach to curating is quite intuitive. For me, it’s about forming connections with artists, understanding their practice and process and supporting them to make their best work. One of the joys of curating is doing studio visits. I really love the process of seeing artworks in progress and talking with artists as they are thinking about and making the works. That didn't happen so much with this edition, but it's something I look forward to with the next Biennales.

Louise Klerks is a curator and educator. She has founded several contemporary art and community art spaces in Naarm/Melbourne including Chapter House Lane, Missing Persons and Coates Community Arts.

un Projects’ Editor-in-Residence Program is supported by the City of Yarra, Creative Victoria and City of Melbourne. Edited by Sofia Sid Akhmed.