Months of research, weeks of construction and $10,000 - that's what it took to capture the essence of Uriarra.
Loop, the latest work by Australian National University School of Art lecturer and PhD student Dan Stewart-Moore, was unveiled in the village on Sunday as part of the centenary of Canberra celebrations.
The $10,000 piece is his first public artwork for Canberra, a sculpture of 100 timber triangles designed after interviews and forums with the village residents.
''This is something really, really different and the biggest difference is actually working with the community,'' he said. ''I normally sit in my shed and I work away for a few months and no one else has any input.''
Since being approached by the Centenary of Canberra team in August, Stewart-Moore said he had learnt about the history of the village and its devastation during the 2003 bushfires.
''The place was wiped out and a lot of the people living here now are new residents,'' he said. ''But somehow that original spirit has been dispersed into the community and that's the thing that really struck me … the essential feeling was something that drove the work.''
The region's history of forestry was incorporated into the work, according to Stewart-Moore, who designed the ''construction-type'' sculpture to reflect both the part the village played in building Canberra and its current landscape. ''I was looking at the map of the place and it literally does a loop,'' he said.
Stewart-Moore was one of 14 artists commissioned under the Portrait of a Nation: Unmade Edges - Distinctive Places program, which will see works installed in six villages.
