Nov 10, 2011

Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011 (up date)

Murray-White Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011
Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011, Clive Murray-White
Sara Delaney - a head of her time
This post is for the many well wishers I have from around Australia and the world. No we didn't win the big prize but in truth that's not really the main thing with the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture - it only comes around once every 3 years and only 6 participants are selected from the hundreds that apply, it is what I'd call, aimed at the pointy end of the art world. New propositions, stretching the boundaries, questioning what art should or could be - and it is against this background that I feel very honoured to have been selected. I think almost all the other participants were around the same age as my children, in fact we discovered that I'd taught the mother of one of them at art school many years ago.

We all have our ideas about art and for me the great tradition of sculpture was never quite as broken as we though it was back in the 60's and 70's. Painters never threw away painting but the sculptors enthusiastically thrashed the lot and tried to start again (me included). Who knows if they really succeeded - maybe only time will tell.
Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011, Clive Murray-White
Sara Delaney - a head of her time (back)

The public enjoying marble - shortly after taking this picture I saw both the women stand on either side of the sculpture and press their cheeks against Sara's!

Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011, Clive Murray-White
Sara Delaney - a head of her time

Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011, Clive Murray-White
Sara Delaney - a head of her time
I just had to include this snap of a family taking a break




and a glimpse of the festivities at the BMW "Edge" Federation Square, Melbourne

Nov 7, 2011

Sara Delaney goes to Fed Square


7.30am Monday 7 November Sara Delaney - a head of her time gets ready for her ride up Federation Square to take her chances in the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011

And here she is having her feet adjusted by the Fasham's crew (+ a couple of Fed Square guys) so she sits nicely on the cobble paving, all that attention, how lucky can a girl be? Judging takes place tomorrow! Winner announced Wednesday!!

Sep 21, 2011

Frankston Freeway Sculpture Failure

I've thought about this for a little while. So much of what we do as artists never sees the light of day, especially our failed efforts in big competitive public commissions. The images on this page, come from my submission for the Southern Way (near Frankston) McClelland Gallery Freeway Sculpture competition, won by Dean Colls with his large ram's skull recently shown in the Herald- Sun.

The pictures on this page show a work that was to be a self contained and totally relocatable, solar powered museum that contained one perfectly lit carved marble sculpture. I like this idea a lot and feel that it is an optimistic statement that encourages people to consider sustainability.





Aug 20, 2011

Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture - Soiree at the Sofitel





Soiree at the Sofitel

Tough life being a sculptor! Its not not all standing out in my freezing studio rasping knuckles against stone, on Thursday evening we spent a very pleasant time, meeting the sponsors, other competitors, judges and organisers of the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011 up on the 35th floor of the Sofitel - from the plate glass floor to ceiling windows we could look down on our sculpture sites in Federation Square - and - the MCG, Governent House, NGV and out into the bay - Spectacular!! Wine and nibbles were pretty good too!!

Even found time to visit my old mate Alfred Felton and spend time at the Vienna show at the NGVI.

image: Clive Murray-White - The Alfred Felton Centenary Sculpture, commissioned by the Felton Bequest. 2004


Aug 8, 2011

Red Sock Nostalgia



Here's a bit of a blast from the past! something that'll take all those poor students of mine back to their first sculpture class, yes it's the dreaded red sock!!!

For those of you who never attended my classes a little explanation may be in order, picture a sculpture studio in any of our art schools, it's furniture is pushed back towards the walls and there is a lonely chair just sitting in the middle. This is what greeted countless generations of fresh faced enthusiastic first year students.

I take up my position on the chair and start explaining that sculpture is different to the other subjects taught in art schools, for a start it exists in real space, is made of real stuff, can be made from anything and can be very easy to do...........

I take my right shoe and sock off (always guaranteed to keep the student's attention!) and I put the sock on the chair (just like the picture above) and ask, "Why does this work?"

Followed by, "What can we do to improve it?"

And as they juggled socks around, tried re-orientating the chair etc, etc, I quietly said to myself, "Welcome to sculpture!"

Jul 14, 2011

Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture 2011


Isaac Greener & Lucas Maddock
Bianca Hester
Sonia Leber & David Chesworth
Clive Murray-White
Tom Nicholson
Stuart Ringholt

2011 Finalists

An exhibition of the above finalists will be held at Federation Square between

7 and 21 November 2011.

The $5,000 Civic Choice Award 2011 will be open for voting, at this website, only during the November exhibition dates.

All announcements will be made at
www.melbourneprizetrust.org

As you may be able to imagine this makes me very happy and consider it a considerable honour to have been included.

You have to wait until the exhibition to see exactly what I proposed but here are a few words from my application:

"It is a sculpture that challenges conventional concepts about site specifics and urban sculpture by concentrating not on the aesthetics and narrative of space but on the people for whom that space was originally designed. Each person's mind is a specific site.

By claiming air rather than ground this work activates an urban spacial area with no built baggage"

Jul 8, 2011

Finished..................





The little sculpture that refuses to be finished, only 21cms high, it's been on and off the work bench for a year. It started out as my first study of Iris and has been modified each time I've made another sculpture of her. I've kind of said enough's enough but know that as soon as I start the next she'll beckon again.

It is one of the glories of stone that it allows you to treat it, much like drawing, as a series of adjustable approximations.

Apr 21, 2011

Walter and Marion go to Parliament


Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony (well sculptures of them) have moved into their new home, Parliament House, Canberra. Recently purchased they will participate in the Parliament's celebration of Canberra's Centenary.

For those of you who may not know, the American husband and wife architectural team won the international competition to design our capital city in 1911. They are generally regarded as a perfect team, Walter was not much good at drawing his ideas and Marion was brilliant, Walter saw the big broad picture and Marion the detail.

Of all their contributions to our culture I consider their acceptance of the natural Australian landscape the most influential.

Mar 31, 2011

Muse abused again?


Who'd be a sculpture eh? Over the last few days Iris, pictured above, has been bashed, drilled, had stainless steel rods inserted in her, she's been glued to a massive granite slab and as if that's not enough, now she's been forced to spend the day with a plastic bag over her head.

Of course its all in a good cause - she'll be better for it - the bag over the head is just part of one of the last processes and is designed to make her look as good as possible. Explanation - many of the air powered tools can spray little droplets of oil on the marble and while you clean off any that you can see pretty much as it happens, there are bound to be some that get missed. So the sculpture gets a high class wash with a special product that can pull stains out of the stone, you paint it on, cover with plastic, leave for a few hours and then wash it again with clean water.


Feb 13, 2011

i-muse 2







The new Iris sculpture (far right) made it safely into the gallery!! Haven't quite settled on a title yet: The current contenders are i-muse 2 and y-i .

The sculptures seem to be getting along fine with Binu Bhaskar's current exhibition Human Race,

Link to Picasa Album/Human Race Binu Bhaskar

Feb 9, 2011

Iris and Janina


Iris - well the latest sculpture based on her, was allowed out of the studio for the first time yesterday, here she is doing a pretty good imitation of Foo. She came into being with Walter Burley Griffin, (the white quiff) Marion Mahony, obscured by Walt (what's new eh?) and Gammer, black in the background - seems only right that she stays with her friends until she finds her feet. Iris and the gang are on their way into the gallery - Cowwarr Art Space.



Janina Green, good friend and regular at the art space, stayed for a couple of days last week, while she was here there was a bush fire up at Licola, clearly visible from the backdeck. It does make you think - the rest of the state was under water and we had fires!

Janina doesn't seem to believe in any of your mamby-pamby hand held stuff - here she is, field camera, tripod and massive wheelie bag, snapping away at the remains of the fire. We did check with the CFA that it was OK to go up!!

What appeals to me about this picture is that it contains a fair representation of one of the definitions of Romanticism - the smallness of mankind in relation to nature.



By my way of thinking the semi adds to our understanding of Romanticism, you know a sort of contemporary Turneresque element, remember the time he strapped himself to the mast of a small ship to experience "nature"? Don't you love how the truck crosses the white line - but Janina seems oblivious to it!!!

Jan 6, 2011

Del Kathryn Barton silly - New Sculpture finished




Finished this one, new one started, been fishing (didn't catch much), had a great Christmas, met up with old friends, life is pretty nice and then we get that silly story about Del Kathryn Barton's charity snap. And its got to me. No I'm not going to side with the art world on this one because its a complete beat up. It has nothing to do with censorship at all. No one seems to dare to say that these artists entered into agreement with someone to create works to raise money for the Sydney Children's Hospital, an organisation with a very well known policy about the depiction of children, which, of course, is perfectly reasonable. Then Barton purposely ignores this by producing an image of her half naked son covered in spots, and along with the organiser does a classic, "What me!"

At best you could call it downright stupid or naive, but of course she's not that silly, she would have known that there was a huge possibility of a bit a fuss. Artists seeking cheap publicity are getting too thick on the ground for my taste. Using a charity event for this is even lower because really the artist clearly isn't making any serious effort at all to genuinely raise money for the hospital.

There is only one straight forward and simple way for us artists to make money for the charities that we support and that is to give them a high quality examples of what we are best known for.

So thumbs down to Barton from me for being so mean spirited and even insulting towards the Children's Hospital by sending in an ordinary snap of a spotty kid instead of something she does really pretty well.

No one seems to have asked Del Kathryn Barton if she paid her son at the full advertising rate for modelling for this picture before the flack occured, if she didn't surely that constitutes a real exploitation of her own child.



image aquired from SMH with no obvious restictions like copyright