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Alan K | all galleries >> Sydney >> Bondi Beach and Surrounds >> Sculpture By The Sea 2010 > 12181 People Power (62)
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14-NOV-2010 AKMC

12181 People Power (62)

Mackenzie's Bay, Bondi, NSW

I'm really not sure who sculpted this one. The catalogue ascribes it to the late Tom Bass (1916-2010), yet the biography section states that this is a tribute to Bass. And it's highly unlikely that he'd create his own tribute sculpture. Though I can think of a few people who would.

The sculpture is stated to be "a totemic expression of the struggle between ordinary people and powerful institutions". I got that even before I read the catalogue, though I read the "arms" above as struggling rather than "triumphant" as they're described in the statement. I didn't see the lower part as "institutional solidity" though. I'm not sure that I see this kind of struggle as being people rising out of the institutions. The institutions are people too, just ones where the sods have got theirs and have pulled up the drawbridge to ensure that the outsiders don't get their share as well. I'd therefore have assumed that the arms should be flailing against the institution rather than rising out of it.

But that may be pedantry; the sculpture still makes a point worth making.


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