Canberra artists Philip Spelman and Michael Le Grand shine at Perth's Sculpture by the Sea

This exhibition marks the 50th iteration of Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi, Cottesloe and Denmark over its 25-year existence.

The present Cottesloe show, as has been the case with most of the other Sculpture by the Sea presentations in the past, has Canberra sculptors amongst its highlights. This year it is Michael Le Grande and Philip Spelman.

Philip Spelman's steel Shuffle in mild steel and high-gloss automotive paint is stark, yet elegant, monumental at the scale of 220 centimetres, but at the same time light, kinetic and apparently tumbling through the air. Spelman plays with pure geometric shapes but subverts their implied severity with a fanciful invention of a gravity defying irregular column. This is one of the strongest and most inventive works of his that I have seen to date.

Michael Le Grand, who has exhibited 36 times at various Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions, is also represented by a large block-like steel sculpture Reveal that is also over two metres high. In what is a departure for Le Grand in the works that I have seen, there is a solidity in structure with sculptural elements added around a box-like shape. In some ways, the piece is more effective if viewed within a shallow niche rather than completely in the round.

With an exhibition of about 70 large-scale pieces that have been through a rigorous curatorial selection process, it is a very professional show with works generally of a high calibre. Some of the pieces that leapt out at me included Jimmy Rix's Lone Dingo - a huge figurative sculpture, 222 centimetres high, where the dingo in corten steel with its wonderful rusty colour stands out like a custodian of the outback. Rustic humour and simplified forms have made this sculpture a crowd favourite.

Japanese sculptors, who for many years have made a rich contribution to Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions, have again a strong showing with the work of Kakeshi Tanabe, Keizo Ushio, Haruyuki Uchida, Takahiro Hirata, Wataru Hamasaka, Masayuki Sugiyama, Toshio Iezumi and Akiho Tata. One is ill advised to lump a disparate group of artists into some sort of national school, but what they all have in common is being attuned to their materials - usually hard stone - and creating contemplative, meditative pieces that tap into broader philosophical and environmental issues.

Fiona Gavino, a Fremantle artist, weaves her sculptures out of cane to create wondrous organic forms that envelope nature and suggest all sorts of different realities and forms of order. Kevin Draper, also from WA, creates out of steel an incredible metaphor for forest regrowth after a bushfire that is neither illustrative nor didactic, but very effective on an emotive and cerebral level.

Ron Gomboc, one of the veterans of the WA art scene, offers a family grouping of three tall corten steel forms on which float three stainless steel bird-like forms enjoying their freedom and weightlessness. Mark Grey-Smith, another WA veteran, creates a complex knot of exploding energy, that one could envisage on a larger scale, while Linda Bowden from NSW creates an effective, ambiguous interior space.

Sculpture by the Sea has attracted many thousands of sculptors and has kept many afloat at a time when sculpture has been a fickle art form that frequently has difficulty in attracting patronage. After a two year hiatus caused by COVID, it returns to Bondi in October of this year and, in Canberra's backyard, the Snowy Valleys Sculpture Trail will open later this year with a huge array of sculptures on a trail from Adelong to Tooma supported by a $4 million grant from the NSW Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund.

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