I first stumbled upon the exhibition while doing a longer walk with a friend, from Coogee to Bondi, and since being aware of it I've tried to visit each year. There is something alluring about it, as you wander through meandering tracks and discover beautifully crafted and deliberate additions to the headland. Some are giant unmistakable structures, loudly standing on a cliff-top, while others are hidden away, some are intentionally made to look like their surroundings, blending in but slightly awry.
The process of appreciation is also a process of discovery, it re-captures something of the childhood Easter egg hunt. Whatever the reasons each of the thousands of individual have to attend; the safest conclusion is that Sculpture by The Sea is doing something right.
David Handley (Founding Director of Sculpture by The Sea) says that two main things inspired the annual exhibition.
The first is an outdoor sculpture park set amongst 13th century ruins near the town of Klatovy in northern Bohemia, Prague. Handley recalls visiting the park in the early '90s and experiencing the power, if not the majesty, of sculpture.
The second is the goal of providing community experiences, adding to event such as 'Opera in the Park' and 'Symphony Under the Stars'. Handley says that this sense of community is too rarely displayed or available in the modern world where there are few opportunities for seriously enjoyable cultural activities that are free and not fringe.
I think it is the intersect of these two ideas that gives Sculpture by The Sea its success. Where art meets community, the social and the beautiful. More than just a walk for local residents and tourists and more than simply an exhibition for art lovers, Sculpture by The Sea brings together the two components of its name – art and ocean – and with it, the respective groups that appreciate them.
I find it interesting that into (perhaps on top of) a society that is pursuing and celebrating advancements in efficiency, technology, success and achievement; that there sits this equalizing appreciation of art. That, as Handley has identified, there is inherent to us a strong call to the aesthetic and the communal. And while the unity and cooperation of humans has obvious benefits for society and the development of our people groups and families, art seems to be a superfluous wonder.
There doesn't seem to be a necessary faculty for the appreciation of beauty for our lives here to work. The sunset needn't be stunning, the coast and countryside and forests and mountains are not required to elicit a value from us that we deem 'attractive'. But they do.
Perhaps without having realized it, Handley has tapped into deeps desires that we all have – to enjoy unity and to enjoy beauty. The human is not made to be in isolation any more than we were made to live two-dimensional lives of efficiency, without room to lose our breath to the landscape. The triumph of this event is a testimony to man's deeper dimensions; a longing for more than the physical world can offer and a value for more than words can convey.
Sam Manchester is currently a theology student with an inescapable sociology degree behind him. In an attempt to reconcile the two, he reflects and writes about their coalescence in everyday life.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html