From Friday, the first of an estimated 450,000 art lovers and fitness fanatics will enjoy Sculpture by the Sea on the Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk, with a "pink, playful" piece by Queanbeyan artist Philip Spelman taking pride of place on the sand.
This is Spelman's 21st year at Sculpture by the Sea, the world's largest free-to-the-public outdoor exhibition, which this spring is running from October 18 to November 4.
Spelman, who makes his large, bright works at his home studio in an industrial estate in east Queanbeyan, this year has a 2.7-metre-tall sculpture called Scent on display at Tamarama Beach. The work was put in place on the beach this week after being trucked to Sydney.
"It was transported standing up and transporting a sculpture up the Hume Highway always gets a few heads turning, especially when it's bright pink," he said.
Over the years, his hulking, colourful works have ended up everywhere from Denman Prospect in Canberra to a property in Queenstown in New Zealand to by the pool of the home of a private collector in Santa Fe.
His work for Sculpture by the Sea this year is both familiar and a bit out of the box.
"It's a kind of Phil Spelman classic in a lot of ways," he said.
"Except this year, I've used pink. I don't tend to use a lot of colours. I tend to use reds and yellows and a few blues.
"The shape of the work itself [lends itself to pink]. It's got some bottle shapes and large shapes which are quite familiar to what I've done in the past. It's got that still life imagery which I use quite a bit.
"Coming up with the name Scent and coming up with a colour that would go with it was certainly part of it.
"Pink really belies the hardness of the material too. I mean, there's a tonne and a half of steel in it and it softens it quite a lot, which is interesting to me."
The Sculpture by the Sea exhibition started in 1997. Spelman first exhibited in it in 1999.
Th 2km walk between Bondi and Tamarama is transformed into a sculpture park for three weeks, with more than 100 sculptures from Australia and overseas on display this year.
Spelman said he wanted to be at the Tamarama end this year.
"Tamarama, I find, is a very playful space. I mean, they nickname it 'Galmourama' and the piece kind of suits that area," he said.
The works are for sale and Spelman says Scent is up for grabs for $77,000. He says that sounds a lot, but it took 300 hours to make and must also account for the materials and transport.
It also took a long time for sculpting to support him full-time. Spelman, 62, left the ANU School of Art during the pandemic after 30 years of juggling making art with working full-time. He says the success of Sculpture by the Sea is part of that transition.
"It's given sculpture a voice that wasn't really there," he said.
"There were a lot of people making sculpture but there wasn't a lot of people showing sculpture. The public has really embraced it and I think that's really important. They've decide that sculpture is actually a pretty interesting medium which is really nice to see.
"As an early-career artist, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for you but this has certainly changed.
"I think Sculpture by the Sea has made a lot of artists' careers."
