Sculpture & the Community
Sculpture on display at the Kangaroo Valley Public School
2019
As part of the 2019 Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival, Sculpture in the Valley supported an artist in residence program at Kangaroo Valley Primary School.
The project started in Term 1, 2019, and has enabled all KVPS students to engage with the sculptor Elyssa Sykes-Smith as she creates a site-specific work for the school. As part of the school's creative arts program, students participate in the process of making a sculptural work and identify with the role of an artist.
Collaboration between the artist, the KVPS students, staff and parents and Sculpture in the Valley was a very rewarding experience for all.
Kindergarten students at the end of their introduction session with Elyssa.
Year 5 and 6 students planning the school Sculpture section
Year 5 and 6 students commencing work on the sculpture for the school.
Year 5 and 6 students with their maquette displaying a sophisticated understanding of spatial dynamics.
Year 5 & 6 students with maquette finished. It's time to create a section for the school Sculpture.
Kangaroo Valley Primary School students having great fun learning how to make a sculpture.
Proud and excited students who have been working hard with the artist.
Kangaroo Valley Primary School Principal Andrew Smee working with students on sections for the school sculpture.
Sculptor Elyssa Sykes-Smith working on the site-specific installation with help from a parent.
Kangaroo Valley Primary School students with their works.
Sculptures made by the children in Kindergarten
The artist Elyssa Skyes-Smith with children from Kangaroo Valley Public School who worked with her on the creation of this wonderful sculpture.
Close up detail of the sculpture work.
2018
Layered Potential is a site-specific installation that explores the psychological state of the layering of ideas to arrive at new and unexpected conclusions. Perspex – which is a transparent and yet solid material that is able to be manipulated through heat, etched into, cut and joined drawing parallels to assumingly fixed ideas in the mind that have the inevitable fate of change.
The natural environment sets the platform for this psychological narrative to manifest physically and visually. This narrative is dynamically woven into the landscape, around the two tall trees and the expanses of space in between, which act as structural supports to the installation. The artwork utilises the framing ability of the stunning clear backdrop of the sky which will highlight the overlapping shapes and colours of the Perspex elements suspended between the trees, capturing the light.
Layered Potential includes one figure ascending the trunk of the pine, she is depicted in a gesture of reaching out into the space beyond the tree and projecting shapes and colours, representative of the layering of ideas, into the space between the surrounding trees.
Artwork by Elyssa Sykes-Smith
Photography by Clyde Yee
Artist in Residence Elyssa Sykes-Smith installing her site specific work at Sculpture by the Sea Cottlesloe 2018
2017
2017
In 2017 Sculpture Director and Curator, Colleen Fry presented an Art Lecture to ADFAS Youth community on Curating an Exhibition on 2017. The lecture was warmly received and we certainly look forward to presenting more lectures of this nature in the future. The poster for this lecture is shown to the left.