Transfield Invited Artists Announced 

Wendy Teakel, ‘Land Place Site,’ Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2018. Image courtesy of the artist.

Transfield has been a Major Partner of Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi for 14 years. The Transfield Australian Invited Artists Program funds two important new works exhibited at the Bondi exhibition and provides valuable support to the careers of leading Australian sculptors.  We are pleased to announce and congratulate two respected female sculptors Wendy Teakel (Regional NSW) and Alessandra Rossi (Perth, WA) as the recipients for Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2018 with each to receive $15,000.

The Transfield Australian Invited Artist Program funds two major new works each year for Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi supporting the careers of leading sculptors. Transfield has been a supporter of Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi for 14 years.

“We are very pleased to support these two female sculptors and we’re happy to see more women achieving this sort of recognition in the arts, particularly in sculpture,” said Guido Belgiorno-Nettis AM and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis AM, Managing Directors of Transfield Holdings. “Congratulations to Sculpture by the Sea for moving in this direction and establishing the Invited Artist Program.”

Exhibiting for the first time at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi, Teakel will create a large cross structure made of fencing wire, steel, sheepskins and sandbags as a standing reminder of Australia’s agricultural heritage.

Teakel said, “I am delighted to be selected as one of the Transfield Invited Artists for Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi  2018. The invitation seemed to come out of the blue! The work I propose evokes an intersection of meridian and parallel. It may stand as reminder to the agricultural heritage of Australia, our need to frame and tame spaces through creating boundaries and fences while acknowledging the fragility of tenure we have within our places.”

Rossi’s work for Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2018 will be a colourful acrylic, steel and glass mirror sculpture inspired by the ancient tradition of human-made stacks or piles of stones erected as landmarks or pathfinders.

Alessandra Rossi, ‘Cairn (marker#1)’, Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2018. Drawing courtesy of artist.

“Thanks to the support of the Transfield Invited Artist Program, I am pleased to be able to present my work Cairn (Marker #1) at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2018,” said Rossi. “Cairns are human-made stacks of stones that have been raised by many cultures since prehistoric times. In my youth in Italy, I often admired cairns when crossing riverbeds and I was struck by how unassumingly simple and unprecious they were. Here in Australia, I would like to raise my own cairn – a marker that in its abstraction and simplification of form, contains the light and colours of the landscape in which it is placed, exposing the hidden and the imaginary.”