Lot19 Spring Sculpture Prize Awards

I was very glad to have the chance to show my kinetic sculpture at the Lot19 Spring Sculpture Prize group show in October.  And also delighted to win the award given by The Bridge Hotel and also one of the awards from The Mill, both in Castlemaine!  Thank you so much to both for liking my work!

With ever mounting despair at the grim march of climate change, loss of biodiversity, deforestation and simple destruction of natural beauty in this world which is so important for our aesthetic and spiritual appreciation of our place here, the tree has for me become a quintessential symbol of that which we must nurture and protect.  As an individual organism, or as part of a symbiotic manifold ecosystem, trees singular or plural provide us and especially first nations peoples so many services, shelter, food, tools, medicine, meeting places, habitat for other creatures or plants we depend on, soil retention, water filtering, oxygen generation on CO2 scrubbing and often and far from least, provision of enormous aesthetic beauty and peace of mind.

So this is in part my homage to a tree, after many abandoned attempts at a more literal interpretation came the realization that I cannot come close the beauty of an actual tree in a literal form, so here is a more abstract version… Hopefully one that will bring moments of tranquility, inspiration, meditation, and perhaps reflection on what we are doing to our world.

Photos and video by the talented Lorena Carrington and James McArdle