David Handley, Founding Director of Sculpture by the Sea, said: “Regrettably, Minister Burke is misinformed. Each year, the artists who exhibit in Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney and Perth collectively earn $2-3 million from the exhibitions in the form of artist subsidies, awards, and sculpture sales. Each artist in this year’s Bondi exhibition is guaranteed an income of at least $3,000. Thank you to our sponsors, private donors, and Create NSW (the arts funding body of the NSW government) for providing some $300,000 of artist subsidies and awards. All of the information about financial support for the exhibiting artists is readily available on our website, in the artist contract.
Each of the artists in the exhibition applies through an open call for artist submissions, except for a small number of invited artists.
We fully agree with Minister Burke’s sentiment that the artists should be paid much more for exhibiting in Sculpture by the Sea and have been advocating for and applying for grants on the artists behalf for 28 years to Creative Australia and its predecessor the Australia Council for the Arts. These national arts funding bodies have consistently declined the opportunity to support the artists in Sculpture by the Sea, whether they are emerging artists starting out in their careers or some of the most important artists in the world in the last 50 years, such as Sir Anthony Caro, Sui Jianguo and Chen Wenling.
Each artist who applies to be in the exhibition pays a $50 application fee – there are no other charges or costs applied to all artists and again and regrettably the Minister has been seriously misinformed.
The only other possible matter that Minister Burke could be referring to is the small number of artists who have very expensive installation costs who choose to exhibit knowing that they may have to pay more if their use of machinery, such as cranes, exceeds the amount that we can afford to provide for free to each artist each year thanks to the support of our donors, sponsors and Create NSW.
When our organisation received the $1m per year from the Federal Government’s RISE Fund in 2022 and 2023, each year $250,000 of this funding was provided directly to the artists in financial support, so that each Australian artist received a guaranteed $4,500 of income (the support for the artists in the Perth exhibition went from nil to $4,500). In addition, we were able to substantially increase the amount of in-kind support the artists received for their installation costs.
Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi began as a one-day exhibition in 1997 run entirely by volunteers who worked out of the lounge room of the exhibition founder.
We have asked for a meeting with Minister Burke on numerous occasions for the last two years and welcome the opportunity to clarify any further questions he may have about our organisation.”